It is widely argued that continuing professional development (CPD) for physical education (PE) teachers is important, yet questions remain about ‘effective’ CPD. We consider these questions afresh from a Deweyan perspective. An overview of the CPD/PE-CPD literature reveals conflicting positions on teachers as learners. Considering the nature of contemporary PE, and the learning needs of teachers, we argue that a different model of PE-CPD is required to reflect the dynamic nature of contemporary practice. We propose John Dewey's classic concept of ‘education as growth’ to underpin a new conceptual framework for the design, delivery and evaluation of PE-CPD. We argue that ‘effective’ PE-CPD will not be found in formal policies, structures and processes, however, well-intentioned, unless it (i) focuses on the dazzling complexity of the learning process, (ii) prioritises context and contemporary challenges; (iii) bridges research/theory–practice in innovative ways; and (iv) nurtures the career-long growth of PE teachers.
The value assigned to friluftsliv (activities similar to outdoor education) in Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) and in the PE syllabus in Sweden does not seem to result in the implementation of friluftsliv in the practice of teaching in Swedish schools. This study investigates how the identified values of friluftsliv, expressed in interviews with 17 PE teacher educators in Sweden, reflect struggles for legitimate and privileged knowledge in PETE. The exploration of friluftsliv within PETE reveals positions that appear to be an effect of the dominating logic of sport within Swedish PETE and the limited influence of the academic field. The educational consequences of the identified values are analysed and discussed from a socio-cultural perspective.
Emotional dimensions of physical education have garnered attention from scholars in the last two decades. Many scholars claim that emotions significantly affect learning and that positive emotions such as joy and pleasure are necessary for continued participation in movement activities beyond the classroom. Much of the existing literature, however, is based on the idea that emotions comprise internal mental states that are retrospectively oriented. In the current paper, we work with alternative principles that can create new understandings of the affective dimensions of PE and specifically, movement learning. We draw on symbolic interactionist principles, framing emotions as multimodal communicative resources that are performed in social contexts. From this perspective, we demonstrate how emotions: (1) can be investigated as part of the production of broader sequences of pedagogical action and (2) relate to issues of knowledge, identity and authority. We present observational material generated with PE teacher education students as they develop movement capability. We focus on three interactional episodes in which fear, joy and resignation are performed by students interacting with either peers or an observing researcher. In each case, we demonstrate how emotions: affiliate or dis-affiliate the actor with the movement knowledge in focus, index an institutionally recognizable identity and influence the subsequent actions of the participants in the interactional sequence. The key thesis developed in the paper is that as symbolic resources, emotions have important consequences for actors within movement learning environments. The paper is concluded with reflections on the implications of the approach for practitioners along with a consideration of questions in need of further scientific attention.
In line with contemporary constructivist pedagogies, students are frequently expected to learn through interaction in physical education (PE). There is a relatively sophisticated body of literature focusing on learning in groups, peer teaching, and cooperative learning. Current research has not, however, focused on how the body is implicated in interactional learning. This is surprising given that much learning in PE is expected to take place in the physical domain. The aim of this paper is to contribute to current theorizing by examining social interactions in PE practice. By drawing on symbolic interactionist theory, we put forward a framework for considering how inter-student interactions occur in a multimodal sense. Key ideas relate to (1) the sequential organization of interactions; (2) the ways in which semiotic resources in different fields are used to elaborate each other; (3) the importance of interpretation as a driver of interaction; (4) the creation of local environments in which participants attend to and work together within a shared world of perception; and (5) the influence of material environments on social interaction. The specific concepts employed are epistemic ecology, epistemic position, and learning trajectory. The paper includes observational data from an investigation of learning in Swedish PE to demonstrate the explanatory power and limitations of the theoretical tenets presented. The paper is concluded with practical implications of understanding group work in a multimodal manner.
The body has become a vital research object in several disciplines in recent years. Indeed, in the social sciences and humanities, a corporeal turn in which embodiment has become a key concept related to learning and socialisation is discussed. This cross-disciplinary paper addresses the epistemological question of how we know what we know and theoretically and empirically contributes to current arguments of a shift from embodiment to emplacement. In other words, this study strives for understanding of the intersection of mind, body and place through a focus on how bodily knowing is formed as part of a moving world. The purpose of the paper is to explore the kinaesthetic experience as bodily knowing in emplaced semi-formal teaching. Through long-term ethnography in a Swedish skateboard setting and in-depth analysis of digital visual material, this paper demonstrates how kinaesthetic experience might be viewed as knowing and how a particular type of this experience might be interpreted as explosiveness and, as such, an act of physical remembrance and energy transformation. Knowing is formed along paths of movement and rhythm, and kinaesthesia is identified as a multisensory experience. It is argued that a fruitful way of bridging the mindbody divide is to view the body as un/knowing, rendering it both knowing and not knowing simultaneously. Moreover, emplaced via its senses in a sociocultural and spatiotemporal environment, this conceptualisation of a moving body in a moving world might allow for re-thinking regarding how a body in context knows, teaches and, possibly, learns.
In this article, we present a framework for exploring participation in and social stratification of movement culture based on Pierre Bourdieu?s concept logic of practice. The background to our approach is Lars-Magnus Engström?s struggle to understand the impact of social stratification on participation in movement culture in a now nearly fifty-year follow-up study. The aim of the article is to elaborate further a framework, which Engström drafted in one of his last publications. Here, we assume that participation in movement cultures is guided by a number of logics of practice that are historically, culturally and socially constituted, and which relate to people?s tastes in particular ways that lead to social stratification. These logics are grouped into three overarching kinds of practices: performing, improving and experiencing, which engender both practice and social stratification. Further, the different logics of practice are linked to a principle of uncertainty, which means that quantitative empirical data must be interpreted rather than measured in a strict sense. The here outlined framework suggests that future research about participation in movement culture needs to take into account information about the structure, rhythm and tempo of the practice, as well as of the directionality of the actions. Information about these issues can hopefully contribute to a more elaborated understanding of the impact of social stratification on participation in movement culture, and in what forms movements are pursued.
According to the cultural sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, gaining access to a social space or a position within a social space requires a specific capital. For teachers, this is normally indicated by a valid teaching certificate with relevant subject knowledge. However, when no qualified teachers are available, which is the case for the subject of school sports in Sweden, other assets gain recognition. Drawing on Bourdieu's conceptual framework, this paper examined the conditions for school sports in Sweden, and based on questionnaires answered by 109 teachers, explored the competencies, education and backgrounds teachers in upper secondary school sports possess. The paper address the question: what valuable resources are required to become a teacher of school sports and gain recognition as symbolic capital? The results show that while school sports in Sweden are carried out through a school subject and thus regulated by the government, it is influenced by both the fields of education and sport. Furthermore, the questionnaire results show that a majority of the teachers are employed as coaches instead of teachers and that less than half of them (45%) have a teacher education background, while 95% have a coaching education background. However, the results also show that teachers assessed their competencies for teaching school sports as high, especially with regard to competencies in specific sport skills. In conclusion, this paper shows how coaching education and experience in competitive sports are an important resource required to become a teacher in school sports and is thus recognized as symbolic capital. Therefore, school sports cannot be viewed as a legitimate part of the field of education but can be viewed as a part of the field of sport.
The aim of this study is to highlight gender norms in physical education (PE) dance lessons, in order to analyse how secondary school students, both girls and boys, negotiate these norms. To do this, we used Bourdieu's concept of masculine domination and Butler's theory of heteronormativity. Video material was collected from eight Swedish secondary schools. This material was analysed qualitatively with the help of masculine domination and heteronormativity. We bring to light three relevant vignettes that illustrate gender norms during the dance lessons. The first vignette explains that, in most cases, girls choreograph and boys execute. Hence, this situation testifies the emergence of traditional and normative gendered positions between students, accordingly to their gender. Secondly, if the roles are reversed between girls and boys, suggesting that masculine domination is less prevalent during the dance lessons, we demonstrate that girls are still dominated because they teach boys how they should lead girls (at least so that it looks like they are leading). Finally, we observed that masculine domination can be considered a double oppression on boys and girls. There appears a co-construction of the students' own submission because girls teach boys how these have to be masculine, meanwhile boys, victims of their own oppression, keep the position as followers in this feminine activity. In parallel, girls assign masculine and feminine positions according to the gender of the students and support, eventually, the reproduction of balance of power representing the heteronormativity of gendered norms. In conclusion, masculine domination seems, at first glance, to be challenged in PE dance lessons because girls have the dominant role. However, by keeping the balance of power between the gendered positions, they strengthen heteronorms, that is, a principal element of the emergence of masculine domination.
An international evidence-base demonstrates that healthy lifestyle digital technologies, like exergames, health-related mobile applications (‘apps’) and wearable health devices are being used more and more within educational settings. Despite this, there is a lack of in-depth empirical evidence on young people’s experiences and uses of healthy lifestyle technologies. In this article we focus on young people’s uses of a wearable health device – Fitbit – and the associated health app. Informed by the work of Foucault, the purpose is to investigate the surveillance, self-surveillance and resistance that occur by young people. One hundred 13–14 years olds (53 females, 47 males), from five physical education classes in two UK schools participated. Data were generated through 8 focus group interviews, and the nominal interview group technique was applied. Data were analyzed using key concepts from Foucault’s theoretical framework. The results demonstrated that, the daily 10,000 step and calorie burning targets set by the Fitbit device encouraged the young people to do more physical activity. Increases in physical activity occurred because of the self-surveillant practices promoted by the Fitbit through; (i) the monitoring and recording of steps and calories burned, and (ii) peer comparison (or monitoring). Surveillance and self-surveillance practices, however, were clearly connected to health equating to fitness and being ‘fit’ or not being ‘fat’. These narrow interpretations of health, equally, underpinned resistance. Daily step and calorie burning targets, (i) did not sustain young people’s engagement with the device beyond a few weeks, (ii) promoted negative feelings, and (iii) the device was resisted because it did not record physical activity accurately as part of young people’s daily lives. In turn, the young people resisted the educational value of the Fitbit and demonstrated a sceptical stance toward introducing health devices in school and physical education settings.
Individuals with intellectual disability (ID) are less physically active than individuals without ID, and rarely reach the recommended daily level of physical activity (PA). It is understood that both social interaction and the ability to perform physical work affect participation in daily activity as well as PA. Individuals with ID generally have a higher risk of hypertension and obesity-related cardiovascular diseases than individuals without ID. Professional service providers, teachers and parents are often those being asked about potential challenges related to PA, as it is more seldom that this knowledge comes from the target group (ID) themselves. This identifies a lack of knowledge about PA and sports for individuals with ID. The aim of this study was to identify perceptions of, and motivation for, PA and sports among adolescents with ID. Twelve Swedish male and female adolescents with ID participated in the study, which comprised one semi-structured interview. The interviews identified three main categories: Activity, Surroundings and Body- and health awareness. Adolescents with ID seemed intrinsic motivated to participate in PA, organised sports and activities in general. Support from significant others, teachers, family and friends and support as well as the feeling of joy are connected to normative beliefs which all seem crucial. The participants were aware of their limitations, but sometimes feel bullied and afraid of being excluded, which relates to their normative beliefs. Participation in PA and organised sports may be positively associated with health, but limitations such as lack of awareness and support from society challenge the perception of ‘fitting in’. This research has raised the voice of adolescents with ID and identified the need for increased knowledge of their perceptions for a more inclusive world. School PE is an arena where adolescents can still be reached regarding PA and thereby should be prioritised.
Students' perceived learning in physical education (PE) is an important yet neglected area of research. Increased knowledge about students' perceived learning can provide teachers with useful information to promote meaningful learning experiences in PE. Moreover, perceived learning can potentially be an alternative measurement to school grades when analyzing equality of outcome. Given that gender and migration background are associated with equality issues in PE, these groups are of particular focus in this study. With this background, the aim of this paper is threefold: (a) to explore students' perceived learning in PE in Sweden, (b) to analyze what perceptions of PE are most prominent, and (c) present a way to quantitatively illustrate how perceptions about PE vary across gender and migration background. The analysis was based on a question about students' perceived learning and was conducted in two steps. First, the students' answers were categorized using qualitative content analysis. The analysis shows that the perceived learning in PE can be categorized into the following categories: 'Physical doing', 'Emotional experiences', 'Health', 'Do not learn', 'Outdoor Education' and 'Social interaction'. Second, by quantitatively illustrate all answers in relation to the six categories, the result showed that the category of 'Physical doing' (36%) was the most prominent, and thereafter, in descending order are the categories of 'Emotional experiences' (22%), 'Health' (18%), 'Do not learn' (10%), 'Outdoor Education' (10%) and 'Social interaction' (4%). The results also showed that regardless of gender and migration background, students have somewhat similar perceptions of what they learn in PE. In this study we: (i) present a categorization of students' perceived learning in PE, (ii) show that physical doing is a prominent aspect in students answers, lastly (iii) by quantitatively illustrate students' perceived learning in PE, this study also suggest an alternative measurement to analyze equality in PE.
School grades are among the most common measurements used to analyze equality of outcome in education. Large or increasing ‘gaps’ in school grades between boys and girls and between students with different migration background are considered strong indicators of inequality. Based on students’ school grades, several studies have shown that equality in Swedish schools has decreased during the last two decades. Although equality has been described as one of the most important goals in physical education (PE), studies that focus on equality of outcome are lacking. Moreover, there have been no studies that focus on equality of outcome since the 2011 implementation of a new school grading system in Sweden. Therefore, the aim of this study is to contribute with new knowledge on equality in PE in Sweden – in regard to gender and migration background. The study is based on register data for all students enrolled in Swedish schools during the years 2012–2016 from Grades 6 and 9 and Year 1 in upper secondary school N = 1,294,990). Based on a cross-sectional approach, analyses were conducted to explore general trends in students’ school grades in PE in the study period 2012–2016, and to calculate the percentage difference in PE grades between students with a Swedish background and both students with a foreign background and foreign-born students. After controlling for grade inflation, regression analyses with Wald tests were used to analyze how gender has moderated the relationship between migration background and school grades in PE in Sweden between 2012 and 2016. The results from this study suggest that (a) the intersection of gender and migration background is related to unequal school grades in PE, (b) there are gender equality issues in relation to students’ school grades in PE and, (c) the most prominent equality issues concern the group foreign-born girls.
Elite-athlete Karin was 17 years old when the considerably older team coach Selma became her girlfriend. Responding to calls to prevent harm and sexual abuse in sport, this study represents Karin’s story, investigates how she makes sense of her coach-athlete sexual relationship, and analyses what can be learnt about consent. Although sexual consent is often the defining criterion of sexual abuse, consent is rarely explicitly defined or its social implications examined. Moreover, there are no studies on coach-athlete lesbian or gay relationships despite sexual minority vulnerability. The interview with Karin was analysed using narrative case study methods; represented as a short story and discussed in reference to sexual consent theory. The analysis outlines contextual factors conditioning the negotiation of consent and problematizes heteronormative, gendered perpetrator and victim stereotypes. Secrecy, alienation, and isolation is recognised, extending into additional vulnerability inflicted on socially problematic and atypical coach-athlete relationships. In conclusion, social implications of consent are more complex than yes/no to sex or inherent incapability to consent. Consent is multi-layered, alternately absent and present; an ongoing process that includes compromises, contradictions, and (re)negotiations influenced by structure and agency. Further research examining a diversity of sexual experiences among majorities and minorities is proposed.
Coach-athlete romantic relationships and consensual sexual relations are commonly accepted among coaches and athletes, although a growing number of sport organisations discourage or prohibit such relationships. In research, coach-athlete sexual relationships are lumped together with sexual abuse, suggested to harm athletes’ well-being, performance, athletic career and team dynamics, and to inherently constitute an abuse of power, trust and ethics. In addition, mistrust of coaches’ motives, related to physical touch and fear of sexual misconduct, has resulted in a growing anxiety among coaches. This paper highlights and critically discusses research conceptualisations, contextual understandings and critical issues surrounding coach-athlete sexual relationships, on which there is no comprehensive research outside the sexual abuse context. Studies of authority-subordinate romantic relationships in other social settings have reported that such relationships facilitate both positive and negative characteristics and outcomes. To prevent and reduce harm and to promote well-being, functionality and safe practice in coach-athlete sexual and non-sexual relationships, I suggest that comprehensive research outside the sexual abuse context is required. In addition to the previous research focus on harmful and abusive relationships, coach-athlete sexual relationships that are experienced as consenting and mutually fulfilling by the involved parties need further examination.
The contexts in which young people participate in sport are diverse. In Scandinavia, as in many other countries, child and youth sport is mainly organised in non-profit, membership-based and voluntary driven sports clubs. In Sweden, this model is now challenged by commercial businesses providing child and youth sport services. The overall aim of this article is to provide empirically based knowledge about these ongoing and largely unexplored commercialisation processes. The focus of the article is to illuminate how commercial businesses produce immaterial values through the promotion of sport services. In this article, we have explored the cultural and social values produced and promoted by commercial businesses in youth sport. Drawing on the website communications of eight commercial businesses from four different commercial strands, we use the concept of immaterial labour to consider the values produced when child and youth sport is turned into a desirable product on the market. The values generated from the texts on the selected websites are the immaterial values of (i) competence, (ii) individually adjusted training and, (iii) happiness. These values are enunciated differently by the businesses in the different strands. We situate the findings in relation to western social and cultural values and discuss the potential consequences of these value productions for contemporary ideas about youth sport and the way it should be organised.
Over the last one of two decades, researchers within the physical education (PE) and sport pedagogy research frequently use the concept ‘the material body’. An initial purpose of this article is to explore what a concept of a ‘material body’ might mean. What other bodies are there? Who would dispute the materiality of bodies? I suggest that the use of a concept as ‘the material body’ suggests a hesitation before the radicalism of the linguistic turn in the sense that the concept ‘discourse’ does not include a material dimension. In this way ‘the material body’ relates to an interpretation of ‘the socially (or discursively) constructed body’ as void of matter. A further purpose with the article is to re-inscribe matter in the concept of ‘discourse’. This is done by way of discussing what theorists like Michel Foucault and, in particular, Judith Butler, has to say about the materiality of the body. In their writings, discourse should not be limited to spoken and/or written language. Rather, discourse is understood in terms of actions and events that create meanings—that matters. One conclusion of the article is that it is important to problematise the mundane view of discourse as ‘verbal interchange’ because it reinforces the promise of an objective knowledge that will eventually shed light on the ‘real’ body and the mysteries of sexual difference, what its origins are, what causes it. Another conclusion is that the PE and sport pedagogy research should pay less attention to the body as an object (what it ‘is’), and pay more attention to how the body matters, and e.g. how movements make bodies matter.
This article sets out to show how physiological knowledge about sex/gender relates to power issues within sport. The sport physiology research at the Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences (Swedish acronym: GIH) during the twentieth century is analysed in relation to the political rationality concerning gender at GIH and within the Swedish Sports Confederation during the same period. The analysis is constituted by Michel Foucault's notion of power–knowledge relations and regimes oftruth. The construction of sex/gender in the physiological research changes over time. Comparative studies on the function of ‘sexual difference’ during strenuous work, which, in hindsight, might be seen to restrict women's sport participation, was gradually displaced by a lack of interest in sexual difference, and later by a growing fascination with sexual difference from a ‘gender perspective’ in terms of women being ‘different but equal’ to men. This displacement goes hand in hand with a displacement of the political rationality concerning gender at GIH and within the Swedish Sports Confederation, where a pre-World War II strategy of excluding women's competitive sport participation, restricting women's physical exercise to gymnastics, was after 1945 followed by a strategy of including women. This was at first in the name of ‘women's right to do sport’—where the physiological research advocated this endeavour—and later in the name of ‘women's right to do sport on their own terms’. However, the research was still being conducted based on the male physiology as the norm.
In a significant article from 1993, Crum describes the purpose of physical education (PE) as a ‘planned introduction into movement culture’. In broad terms, this purpose is tantamount to the stated purpose of Swedish PE in national steering documents. Crum contends, however, that physical educators do not prioritise learning, which is largely due to the different ‘movement cultures’ that constitute the PE lessons. This article explores how practice unfolds in movement cultures that are included in Swedish PE and their implications for teaching and learning in the subject. Some 30 (indoor) PE lessons in eight secondary schools in four cities throughout Sweden were video recorded. At ‘first glance’ these lessons indicated the prevalence of four logics of practice: a physical training logic, a sports logic, a sport technique logic and a dance logic. However, further analysis revealed that the teachers' and students' actions were not entirely in line with a logic of practice of training the body, winning the game, learning sporting skills or learning to dance. Instead, the PE practice largely unfolded as a ‘looks-like-practice’, where the purpose of teaching was blurred, and where any ‘planned introduction into movement culture’ was difficult to identify. In the final section, the authors discuss how physical activity logics can be recontextualised in a PE setting in order to emphasise the educational contribution of PE.
School-based physical activity (PA) interventions stand out as a highly valued knowledge technology in relation to attempts to promote daily physical activity (DPA) among school youth. The purpose of the paper is to explore technologies of knowledge that guide school-based PA interventions in lower secondary schools and discuss their power-related implications. Foucault’s notion of discourse as the ensemble of regulated, deliberate, and finalised ways of doing things underpins the analysis of six school-based PA intervention studies that were identified in the literature between the years 2003 and 2021. The analysis concerned the scientific domain of the studies, their justification of school-based PA interventions, the purpose and results of the interventions, and problems with implementing the interventions. The analysis indicated a distinct narrative where researchers within medical science and psychology proposed that (a) young people's level of PA is too low and therefore they are increasingly exposed to the risk of lifestyle diseases; (b) schools appear as the obvious context for attempts to increase the PA of young people, for example through interventions; (c) contextual factors are often pointed out as significant for the success of the interventions, yet these factors are not systematically placed under the research magnifying glass; (d) few studies demonstrate any tangible change in student behaviour because of the interventions; (e) non-occurring behaviour changes are explained by contextual factors, or that school staff simply do not adhere enough to the intervention efforts. These results are discussed through Foucault’s concept of governmentality, that is, the integration of technologies of knowledge, power, and the self. It is concluded that the examined research gain function within a neoliberal governmentality where scientific knowledge aims to change the individual self, rather than to change the social structures in which individuals live their lives.
Responding to calls about the need to ‘give voice’ to groups previously marginalized in research and to challenge meta-narratives about men in sports this paper explores the use of a narrative approach to illuminate men's experiences—and the doing of gender—within equestrian sports, a sport dominated by women in Sweden. Adopting the position of a storyteller three literary short-stories were constructed from interviews with men active in equestrianism. (Re)presenting research findings in this way evoke a lot of questions in academic circles. We have often been askedhowthe stories were constructed and how one judges whether they are representative and trustworthy. These are legitimate questions, no doubt. But questions that are of importance to all qualitative research. It is as if the writing of stories is some kind of mysterious abracadabra activity and not a deliberate and theoretically informed creative process. While reading critique of narrative ways to (re)present research findings, where some researchers suggest that narrative inquiry is a retreat from the difficult academic work of generating new and important ideas, our assumption is that it stems from this misunderstanding about story writing. And maybe the construction of stories has not been given enough attention in narrative research. The purpose of this article is therefore to illustrate the difficult but inspiring activity of transforming 19 interviews into literary short-stories and to highlight methodological concerns relating to presenting these stories. We also demonstrate that creative analytical writing is not just a way of presenting research findings but also a method of inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]
In this article we explore aesthetic experience as an aspect of embodied learning with focus on the moving body. Our theoretical framework is mainly based on the work of John Dewey. In the first part of the article we identify our understanding of central concepts and draw some lines to their implication for physical education (PE). In the second part we then use the theoretical framework in an empirical study inspired by the tradition of pragmatism. The aim is to study how physical education student teachers (PETE students) feel when participating in ball game, and how their feelings are related to the moving activity. Empirical data were mainly generated through observations from two ball game lessons and stories written by 16 PETE students. All stories were subjected to a categorical analysis of content. After analysing the empirical material, four categories emerged built on two pair of words: familiar or unfamiliar, and pleased or displeased. In the discussing section of this article, we put forward that moving activities in PE often are regarded as being technical or instrumental. By using an aesthetic perspective on embodied learning, however, we can go beyond that impression and show other dimensions of participation in ball game. It may become an important shift from exploring performance only to studying learning connected to feelings.
This article focuses on widening participation in higher education and the low recruitment of students from diverse backgrounds within sport-related programmes. The purpose of the study has been to describe and increase the understanding of how the preconditions and premises for choosing to study ‘sport’ appear to students from diverse backgrounds who have started their studies. An interview study was carried out with eight students from three institutes, based on a purposeful sample. The study draws on Bourdieu’s analytical concepts of habitus, capital and practical sense. The findings indicate that the interviewees’ had sufficient symbolic and cultural capital to enable a ‘practical sense’ that choice and action were possible, including evaluating the consequences of choice. For some, this meant a choice that crossed boundaries. Achieving a greater widening of the recruitment to higher education in sport-related programmes seems to need a clarification of transformable capital.
Dance has been a part of the physical education (PE) curriculum in several countries for a long time. In spite of this, studies demonstrate that the position of dance in the subject of PE is contested and that little time is devoted to dance. The overall aim of this article is to examine the position of dance as a pedagogical discourse in Swedish steering documents over time. The empirical material consists of five Swedish curricula for PE over a period of 50 years (1962–2011). Discourse analysis is used to identify organised systems of meaning, including privileged and prioritised values. Our theoretical frame of reference draws on Bernstein's concept of codes. Three different knowledge areas within dance are found in the text material: ‘dance as cultural preserver’, ‘dance as bodily exercise’ and ‘dance as expression’. Three pedagogical discourses emerge from these knowledge areas: an identity formation discourse, a public health discourse and an aesthetic discourse. The identity formation discourse in earlier curricula focuses on the perpetuation of Swedish and Nordic cultural traditions, while in later curricula, it emphasises the construction of a broader multicultural identity formation related to the understanding of different cultures. The public health discourse constitutes a prioritised understanding of dance as physical training related to a healthy lifestyle. The aesthetic discourse, which has the weakest position over time, represents the valuing of embodied experiences and feelings expressed through movements. This discourse is closely linked to the construction of gender. Over time, a new performance code came to surpass the former competence code in the steering documents. The performance code positions dance in PE as mainly a physical activity with little artistic or aesthetic value. The pedagogical discourse of dance remains within a highly disciplinary framework of social control.
Sport, health and physical education (SHPE) researchers have increasingly embraced the salutogenic model of health devised by Aaron Antonvosky, to re-understand and problematise the relation between movement, physical activity or physical education on one hand, and health on the other. However, contemporary research employing Antonovsky's theories has almost exclusively focused on the sense of coherence scale. In so doing, we suggest salutogenic researchers have missed opportunities to explore the sociological aspects of Antonovsky's work. In responding to this challenge, we demonstrate the generative possibilities posed by social theory for those seeking to inform and design salutogenically oriented SHPE programmes for children and young people. As such, we first review Antonovsky's theory of salutogenesis to highlight the sociocultural aspects of his model. We then draw on these sociocultural underpinnings to propose additional, alternative approaches to salutogenic research in SHPE, according to the theoretical and methodological tools devised by Michel Foucault [1990. The use of pleasure: The history of sexuality (Vol. 2, R. Hurley, Trans.). New York: Vintage Books]. In conclusion, we propose a schedule of research questions to inspire qualitative endeavours that move beyond privileged biomedical perspectives, to investigate health in terms of how individuals live a good life. In short, we contend that such investigations are best achieved when researchers approach ‘health by stealth’.
This article takes a point of departure in the debate whether physical education should consider a limited or an increased commitment towards public health goals and a public health agenda. The article further discusses the relationship between physical activity and health, and the perspective of health in physical education. This is done through a critique of the dominance of a pathogenic perspective of health, as well as through a salutogenic approach regarding health as a process. A salutogenic approach makes, as suggested in the article, other questions*salutogenic questions* possible. In this sense, physical activity and movement can be regarded as something more than mere protection against disease or overweight, and by posing salutogenic questions we can enrich our understanding of the relation between physical activity and health, and in consequence richness to the perspective of health in physical education. With a salutogenic approach, the pupils’ unique and common experiences of health, movement, body ideals or outdoor-life can meet a wider perspective of health. This would facilitate a health perspective in physical education that draws attention to the qualities, abilities and knowledge that pupils can develop, and, in the name of learning health, point the way to the possible contribution of physical education in pupils’ health development in terms of how physical education can enrich their lives, strengthen them as healthy citizens and contribute to a sustainable (health) development.
The paper is the Jose Maria Cagigal Scholar Lecture presented at the AIESEP World Congress in Edinburgh 2018. In the paper I argue that the only real sustainable aim for physical education is more physical education, where different ways of being in the world as some-body are both possible and encouraged. To reach this aim, a focus on the art of teaching is vital as a way of critically scrutinising and designing transformative and genuinely pluralistic physical education practices. In order to do this I discuss education as being educative, a certain view of the child as well as teaching as a continuous act of making judgements about the why(s), what(s) and how(s) of education, normative judgements about desirable change. The take home messages involves: (i) reclaiming a certain view of the child in education, (ii) reclaiming the open-endedness of physical education, and (iii) reclaiming the art of teaching in physical education, which is about being educative and making judgements about what to bring to the educational situation. We then must start with the purpose of education - the why - before deciding on the what and how.
With a point of departure in a transactional understanding of epistemology, the purpose of this paper is to explore practical epistemologies in PE by investigating how knowledge is produced and reproduced in students’ and teachers’ actions in PE practices posted as clips on the user-generated video sharing website YouTube. YouTube can be understood as a disordered public video archive of (in this case) ongoing PE practices created by both students and teachers. With a transactional understanding, knowing, and in consequence questions of epistemology, can be conceived of as something we do; something practical (Dewey & Bentley 1949). In this paper, practical epistemologies in PE are, in line with Dewey (1938, 1941), investigated by exploring ends-in-view and habits-of-action in students’ and teachers’ actions in PE practice. The practical epistemologies identified in the study are: (i) Knowing by doing correct movements, (ii) Knowing by trying, (iii) Knowing by imitating, (iv) Knowing by praising and cheering, (v) Knowing by cooperating, (vi) Knowing by creating, (vii) Knowing by being changed into gym clothes, (viii) Knowing by acting in a certain locality and (ix) Knowing by resisting. The categories represent different ways of how knowledge is produced and reproduced in PE practice and describe the functions that different actions and actors have in how knowledge is produced and reproduced as well as in the direction this takes.
Introduction
The focus of this special issue is how learning occurs in physical education (PE) practice in relation to different movement cultures in various contexts. The basis for the special issue is the Invited Symposium held at the AIESEP World Congress 2014 in Auckland, New Zealand, entitled Physical education – a subject for learning? The symposium revolved around learning in PE and the presenters, in line with a Swedish Didactics of Physical Education research tradition, were inspired by research in didactics and what in a wide sense can be called a sociocultural perspective of learning. In relation to learning, Wertsch (1998 p. 24) states that: ‘The task of a sociocultural approach is to explicate the relationship between human action, on the one hand, and the cultural, institutional and historical contexts in which action occurs on the other’.Researchers from other countries were also involved in the special issue in order to attract and include scholars from a wider research community. The special issue accordingly aims to bring scholars from different countries together in order to explore learning in PE and what is considered as valuable knowledge in different movement cultures.
The history of physical education has seen the embracing of practices that have promised idealized scenarios and visions of the future. These practices are in many respects ideological and this paper explores the ideological workings in physical education with a particular focus on physical literacy. The purpose is to articulate and discuss a set of discursive logics in research and policy on physical literacy in terms of what is claimed in its name. We draw on the logics of critical explanation framework and use recent research, policy documents and organisational web pages on physical literacy to identify the social and political logics that underpin the practice. Specifically employing the concepts beatific and horrific narratives, we explore the fantasmatic logics of physical literacy to reveal the shared ideological workings of this collection. Fantasmatic logics is applied to grasp the visions of what will come to pass if physical literacy is, or is not, implemented in sports and physical education. Together, the logics reveal an increasing seduction of physical literacy and its operation as an all-inclusive grand narrative through the hopes and fears that policymakers, researchers and other stakeholders attach to the practice of physical literacy. In contrast to previous ideologies in physical education where the horrific narratives were strong, it is an over-investment in beatific narratives that is at the core of physical literacy. It seems to be enacted in a relation between ideals and measurement, and in policy the narratives with grand promises of physically literate citizens also seem more opportunistic, not seldom ignoring conflict without recognition that the claims made are incommensurable. This erasure of conflict can become problematic if we don’t continue the debate around what physical literacy reasonably can be held accountable for. Otherwise the wellintended beatific narratives risks over-investment and as a consequence ideological closure.
The purpose of this paper is to suggest and describe a methodological approach for studies of learning within school physical education (PE) in order to investigate and clarify issues of learning in an embodied practice. Drawing on John Dewey’s work, and especially his use of the concept transaction, a transactional approach is suggested as a way of developing an action-orientated method necessary for investigating learning in PE. The approach is illustrated by extracts from a video analysis of a PE lesson in Sweden, and shows how an analytical focus on meaning making, actions, events and participators in meaning-making processes can help to overcome methodological challenges related to dualist and cognitivist approaches and reach a deeper knowledge of student learning issues in PE.
One important challenge ahead for sport and exercise pedagogy (SEP) researchers is to consider a fresh questions about learning. Learning in the fields of sport, physical activity and physical education (PE) is a particularly complex business. Most existing theories of learning are defined cognitively, yet learning in sport and physical activity contexts is also practical and embodied, and is linked to the powerful wider cultural contexts of sport and related areas such as health. Yet, even though learning in these contexts is particularly complex, practitioners rarely draw upon specific learning theories to ask questions about practice, and researchers in SEP have tended to focus on content and issues of teaching and coaching instead of using learning theories as a way to explore learning or investigate learning. This paper draws on data from a project in Sweden on learning in PE to illustrate the ways in which a learning theory framework can be used to guide research questions, offer important insights into the learning process and make a contribution to the wider literature on learning theory. We also argue that research design grounded in learning theories has the potential to result in greater coherence across studies, thereby offering a more valuable service to practitioners.
Based on a socio-cultural perspective on learning, the aim of this article is to examine how aims and learning goals are communicated in physical education (PE) practice. A special focus is on scrutinising how teaching practices are framed in terms of whether and how the aims and learning goals are made explicit or not to students. The aim is also to relate these kinds of communications to different movement cultures. The result shows that many of the students taking part in the study do not understand what they are supposed to learn in PE. However, if the goals are well articulated by teachers, the students are more likely to both understand and be aware of the learning outcomes and what to learn in PE. The opposite is also true. If the goals and objectives are not clarified, students find it difficult to state the learning objectives and know what they are supposed to learn.
The interest in yoga, mindfulness or similar yoga-based practices (YBP) has grown exponentially in the western world, also within education, including physical education (PE). Although some studies have been conducted on YBP in PE, yoga has not yet been researched in the framework of physical education teacher education (PETE). Using a regional lifeworld approach, the purpose of this article is to investigate how PETE students experience their participation in a YBP didactics unit when it was included in the PETE programme. What thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations were evoked in the students as they explored YBP and their prospects for teaching it themselves? The project involved 13 students during their fifth year in one of Sweden's PETE programmes. Questionnaires and diaries were used as information sources. Ten of the 13 students were also interviewed. In the phenomenological analysis, the phenomenon of friction 'showed itself' to be an essential part of the perceived experiences. Friction was characterised by a tension between an absence of friction, which describes experiences of participating in YBP smoothly, and the presence of friction, which included experiences of resistance. The students also oscillated between experiences of I-here and now, and Me-my future teaching profession. At least to some extent, the YBP that was practised during the course changed the students' views of what education in 'human in motion' can be by discovering and breaking their habitual attitudes towards PE. Rather than being discussed in terms of 'benefits', the YBP practice charged the body, the room and the group with a heightened awareness of the present moment that could also be expressed verbally. It is anticipated that this kind of reflexive knowledge will help the student to make careful didactical considerations in their future teaching practices.
The aim with this article is to contribute knowledge about the meanings of friluftsliv in educational practice. This is done by investigating what friluftsliv becomes in the ongoing practices of PETE in Sweden and how these meanings are established in the studied activities. The empirical material consists of different kinds of material from friluftsliv activities in PETE programmes: study guides, field trip plans, students’ vlogs from overnight stays outdoors, video recordings from two longer field trips, audio recordings from evening seminars during the field trips and students’ written reflections after them. In order to identify meanings of friluftsliv and how these are established we used a transactional analysis based on Dewey. Five different ways of what friluftsliv becomes in PETE practice were identified in this study. The different meanings reflect the complex picture of contradictions and lack of common ground for the content and motives identified in the outdoor education field. Our study also confirms how the meaning of friluftsliv as skills is established by putting up tents, lighting fires, building wind shelters and so on, and how this contributes to a focus on the instrumental values in PETE. On the other hand, our study shows that other meanings of friluftsliv are established in the ongoing practice, where more intrinsic values are at stake even if they are often overshadowed in PETE practice. In conclusion the results also point to the potential of fritluftsliv in terms of a suggested move away from an activity-based personal and social development discourse in favour of experiences of educating for environmentally sustainable human-nature relations. The challenge is how to make these experiences educational in PETE and how to guide students in transforming experiences in more exclusive friluftsliv into pedagogical competence as future teachers using friluftsliv for different purposes in school PE.
What does it mean to promote girls’ participation in sports and which girls are seen as needing support? In this article we focus a government-financed sports venture and scrutinize the frames governing what is possible to say about girls and their participation in sports. By analyzing project applications from local sport clubs we investigate how the category of girls is discursively constructed in projects designed to promote girls’ sports participation. The study employs the Foucauldian concepts of governmentality, power, biopower and normalization. The analyses show that teenage girls in particular are in focus and a number of ideas are presented about what becoming a teenage girl means. We consider the projects as part of governmentality. Framing girls as both ‘capable’ and ‘at risk’ is reasonable in liberal governing, where they become subjects of scrutiny, regulation and productivity.
In the field of education, the international trend is to turn to criterion-referenced grading in the hope of achieving accountable and consistent grades. Despite a national criterion-referenced grading system emphasising knowledge as the only base for grading, Swedish physical education (PE) grades have been shown to value non-knowledge factors, such as students’ characteristics and behaviour. In 2011, a new national curriculum was implemented which attempts to deal with the problem by prescribing specific knowledge requirements with a clear progression as the only basis for different grades. The aim of the present study is to explore the impact of the new knowledge requirements on what teachers consider important when assigning grades. It is also to discuss what non-knowledge-related aspects (if any) teachers continue to look for and why these seem to remain resilient to the reform. The Repertory Grid technique was employed to interview the teachers before (2009) and after the implementation (2013). During the interviews, the grading of 45 students was discussed, which generated 125 constructs. After the implementation, there was a near doubling of knowledge constructs, half as many motivation constructs and an almost total elimination of constructs based on confidence and social skills. While motivational factors were still considered valuable for the award of a higher grade, clear criteria seemed to be important, but too limited for the teachers’ needs. In order to understand the persistence of motivational factors, we discuss the results in relation to Bernstein’s interrelated message systems of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. We emphasise the need to discuss how valid grades can be achieved and, at the same time, give value to the regulative discourse in order to realise the overarching national goals of values and norms in education and PE.
This paper focuses on how 'ability' is conceptualised, configured and produced in movement assessment tools. The aim of the study was to critically analyse assessment tools used for healthy and typically developed children. The sample consists of 10 tools from 6 different countries. In the study, we pay special attention to content and evaluation methods. The theoretical analysis explores and discusses what kind of movement ability the tools construct. The theoretical framework is inspired by Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, capital and field which are used as analytical tools to explore how the testing processes and content shape what is regarded as ability. Our findings show both a great variation of concepts and evaluation methods and a narrow view of what is regarded as valuable to assess. The assessed movements are strongly related to traditional sports and construct a specific form of physical capital. None of the tasks assessed take place in natural outdoor environments. Open skills, rhythmical movements to music or tasks including a wider range of flexibility are also absent in the assessment tools. The explored tools and tests assess a limited number of decontextualised movements and produce a narrow view of 'ability'. Hence, the testing process itself often promotes a child who is physically mature and benefits those who have experience of traditional sports. In other words, the assessed 'taste for sport' and the 'embodied physical capital' construct what is considered to be legitimate knowledge in relation to movement and physical culture. Accordingly, the social construction of movement ability through assessment tools is far from a neutral concept and could affect how children see themselves and their 'ability'.
As part of a longitudinal research project on the transition from physical education teacher education (PETE) to school physical education (PE) in Sweden and exploring whether and how PETE matters, this article uses narrative inquiry to ‘represent’ a PE teacher’s professional journey from PETE to the induction phase of PE teaching. The study focuses on his use of, and reflections on, ‘assessment for learning’ (AfL) at different stages of his teaching experience. The purpose of the study is to contribute knowledge about how positive experiences of AfL during PETE can enable the use of AfL in school PE for a newly qualified teacher. This is done by analysing one male PETE student’s reflections on AfL in the context of a campus-based course on PE assessment, his use of and reflections on AfL during his practicum, and in school PE as a newly qualified teacher. The data generation consisted of recordings of a PETE seminar, a stimulated recall interview with the participant during his final school placement, and two interviews with him in his role as a newly qualified PE teacher at two different schools. Through the PE teacher’s tale, we show how the campus-based course on PE assessment in PETE and the student teacher’s positive experience of using AfL during his practicum seem to have inspired him in his later positions. The results are discussed in relation to the perspective of occupational socialisation theory. This narrative inquiry suggests that PETE can make a difference for student teachers who are prepared to face the challenges of the induction phase of PE teaching and are able to navigate between the barriers that get in their way. We conclude the paper with some considerations regarding the study’s potential strength (trustworthiness), sharing (transferability) and service (usefulness).
This paper aims to understand how pupils and teachers actions-in-context constitute being-a-pupil and being-a-teacher within a primary school physical education (PE) movement culture. Dewey and Bentley's theory of transaction, which views organism-in-environment-as-a-whole, enables the researcher to explore how actions-in-ongoing activities constitute and negotiate PE movement culture. Video footage from seven primary school PE lessons from a school in the West Midlands in the UK was analysed by focusing upon the ends-in-view of actions as they appeared through the educational content (what) and pedagogy (how) of the recorded PE experiences. Findings indicated that the movement culture within the school was a monoculture of looks-like-sport characterised by the privileging of the functional coordination of cooperative action. Three themes of pupils' and teachers' negotiation of the movement culture emerged U-turning, Knowing the game and Moving into and out of games. This movement culture required teachers to ensure pupils looked busy and reproduced cooperative looks-like-sport actions. In fulfilling this role, they struggled to negotiate between their knowledge of sport-for-real and directing pupils towards educational ends-in-view within games activities. Simply being good at sports was not a prerequisite for pupils' success in this movement culture. In order to re-actualise their knowledge of sport, pupils were required to negotiate the teacher's 'how' and 'what' by exploring what constituted cooperative actions within the spatial and social dimensions of the activities they were set. These findings suggest that if PE is to be more than just the reproduction of codified sport, careful adjustment and consideration of ends-in-view is of great importance. Without regard for the latter there is potential to create significant complexity for both teachers and pupils beyond that required by learning and performing sport.
In physical education, bodies are not only moved but made. There are perceived expectations for bodies in physical education to be ‘healthy bodies’*for teachers to be ‘appropriate’ physical, fit, healthy and skilful ‘role models’ and for students to display a slim body that is equated with fitness and health. In teachers’ monitoring of students with the intention of regulating health behaviour, however, the surveillance of students’ bodies and associated assumptions about health practices are implicated in the (re)production of the ‘cult of the body’. In this paper, we consider issues of embodiment and power in a subject area where the visual and active body is central and we use data from Australian and Swedish schools to analyse the discourses of health and embodiment in physical education. In both Swedish and Australian physical education there were discourses related to a fit healthy body and an at risk healthy body. These discourses also acted through a range of techniques of power, particularly regulation and normalisation.
Presented as a six-course meal, this article addresses the ethics of innovations, interruptions, and intrusions in physical education (PE). The central ingredient in this meal is Michel Serres' character-concept of the parasite. We begin by interpreting debates about PE's purposes, futures, beneficiaries, and so on, as offering researchers and practitioners food-for-thought about the status quo in PE and its transformation. We then introduce the tastes and textures of the parasite and explore these flavours further using PE research on outsourcing and the use of healthy lifestyle technologies. In the main course, we propose a situated and symbiotic parasitic ethics grounded in hesitation and discuss what this set of sensitivities offers debates in PE about outsourcing and healthy lifestyle technology-use. Recognising there will never be a PE without parasites, we advocate an attunement to what it is to parasite well in PE and to the role of the parasite in the composition of any PE collective.