Gymnastik- och idrottshögskolan, GIH

Earlier research proposes that a school’s social environment among staff functions as an important facilitator for physical activity policy/curriculum dissemination, such as support among colleagues, physical activity ideas shared between teachers, as well as having individuals as ‘agents of change’. It is often proclaimed that physical education teachers inhabit these ‘agentic’ roles concerning physical activity and health promotion targeting youth during the school day. Despite this, little seems to have been researched concerning the agentic roles of physical educators and other school staff and their social networks within the school organization. Consequently, this study aims to explore relations among school staff regarding daily physical activity promotion in a Swedish secondary school from a social network perspective.  

This case study applied a convergent mixed method design with an emergent approach, where the qualitative ethnographic data and quantitative survey data were collected around the same time. Data was collected during one full school year from school staff at one secondary school (students aged 12-16 years, grades 7-9) in a larger urban area in Sweden. The sample included all staff within the school that interacts with secondary students, which involves school management, staff and teachers who are responsible for secondary students at some point during the school day, involved in student health or are engaged in physical activity, as well as physical education and health teachers. Our empirical material consists of field notes (180 hours of fieldwork), transcriptions from interviews (12 staff), as well as survey nomination data (23 participants). Qualitative data has been analyzed through a reflexive thematic analysis, and survey data through a social network analysis, and then further combined in an integrated analysis.  

Preliminary results of the current study show that the school staff’s social networks are characterized in different ways within close everyday-discussion colleague networks, peer networks concerning physical activity, and advisory networks regarding physical activity. In the everyday discussions among staff on topics regarding secondary students, physical education teachers are positioned as isolated islands in the networks. While physical education teachers hold a somewhat key role relating to discussions about physical activity, these discussions also go through other, and sometimes more influential, agents. Conflictingly, the physical education teachers still picture themselves as physical activity ambassadors for students’ daily physical activity. This picture is also shared by other school staff. At this school, the results shed light on important issues concerning how the social (network) context among school staff helps promote and inhibit physical activities for the students.