Gymnastik- och idrottshögskolan, GIH

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).

Supporting the healthy development of children requires an approach to smartphone and social media use underpinned by age appropriate design and education, argue Victoria Goodyear and colleagues

In 1983, Judith Placek published “Conceptions of success in teaching: Busy, happy, and good?” Placek’s arguments have been picked up widely in research and are often used as a catchphrase to represent bad teaching. Our purpose in this paper is to revisit Placek’s argument and “update” it for modern times. We first contextualize “Busy, Happy, and Good” by exploring the sociopolitical “setting” in which it came from and examine the literature to investigate how the concept has been used. We then outline three challenges physical education faces regarding success in teaching. Lastly, we propose a framework using a revised version of Placek’s concept that engages in the complexities of student learning. In doing so, we discuss five learning “bodies”: (a) Moving Body, (b) Thinking Body, (c) Social Body, (d) Emotional Body, and (e) Cultural Body, and propose educational aims that can guide successful teaching across diverse movement cultures and reposition Placek’s arguments as more positive outcomes of physical education.

Sport promotes enjoyment, social interaction, embodied learning, and health. At the same time, it serves as a setting where people learn and navigate certain ideals and norms. Given the physical nature of sport, body norms and their impact on performance are particularly central. These body norms are intrinsically linked to gender norms. Most sports follow a binary structure, categorizing athletes as male or female, shaping expectations of how bodies should look and perform. Coaches play a key role in reinforcing these norms. For example, they have been shown to encourage weight-controlling behaviors and demand extreme weight loss, arguing that it enhances performance. Research on the athlete’s body and its role in body-critical coaching practices has primarily focused on women’s sports. This study aims to provide in-depth knowledge about the positioning of elite athletes as masculine-gendered beings in sports in relation to norms surrounding the masculine body.Building on the importa

Researchers have highlighted the urgent need for large-scale international collaborative research projects between teacher education and school physical education (PE) to develop practices and understandings that address the grand challenges facing the field ( MacPhail and Lawson, 2021). In response, this article outlines and illustrates the design and methodology of an international project built on collaboration among PE teacher educators, in-service teachers, and pre-service teachers (PSTs). This collaborative work aimed to explore the development and use of signature pedagogies as collective action across diverse PE teacher education contexts, including both initial teacher education and continuous professional development in five European countries. This article serves two purposes. First, it presents a design for international collaborative research between school PE and teacher education, with a specific focus on signature pedagogies in PE teacher education. Second, it illustrates the methodological approach, detailing the research methods used to explore signature pedagogies across varied international contexts. In so doing, the article contributes to the field by offering a framework for designing international research that engages with collective action and pedagogical innovation. We advocate for research designs that employ robust methodologies, clearly defined analytical frameworks, and transparent procedures. Such designs are essential for conducting large-scale international collective action projects involving teacher educators, in-service teachers, and PSTs from diverse PE teacher education contexts. We argue that these elements are critical for scaling up research in the field and for supporting the development, adaptation, and use of signature pedagogies across educational settings.

The aim of this paper is to identify the dominant discourses of health and wellbeing that are offered in health education in Swedish schools. Issues of health and wellbeing are covered mainly in four school subjects in Sweden: physical education and health, home and consumer studies, biology, and social studies, and therefore, we interviewed teachers from those subjects to generate data. Six interrelated health discourses were identified from the data. All discourses were, however, also embedded within a health discourse with a comprehensive description of health as physical, psychological and social wellbeing. Results suggest that schools offer a Western and White discourse of health and that some content is overemphasised, and some is missing in relation to other non-dominant discourses of health and wellbeing.

Concepts like public health, health, and health promotion have been used in relation to sports in different ways in practice, research, and policy. That sport is important and closely associated with public health is quite clear. Many research papers claim that there are obvious connections between the value of physical activity and sport for the health of individuals, as well as for health in society. At the same time, promoting public health is one of the main reasons for large governmental funding for sports in many countries. But how can the relation, or rather the relations, between health promotion and sport be understood? This chapter will theorize the relation between health promotion and sports through five categories: (i) health promotion as an outcome of sports, (ii) health promotion through sports, (iii) health promotion in sports, (iv) health promotion and sports in collaboration, and (v) health-promoting sports. In these categories, the authors discuss and illustrate how research in different ways defines health promotion on one hand and sports on the other and, thus, what research takes for granted in relation to what sports can do. The chapter concludes that understanding the relation between health promotion and sports cannot be achieved by focusing exclusively on only one of the identified relations. Instead of maintaining barriers between different disciplines and relations, researchers and practitioners should work with health promotion and sports as the plaster that stabilizes the whole picture in a changing society. This approach can better utilize the potential of sports in promoting health.

The aim of this paper is to provide insights into how young people who have been forced to migrate perceive school health education. Eighteen individuals aged 15-19 years (10 females, 8 males, average age 16.9 years) took part in either focus group interviews (n = 7) or individual interviews (n = 1). Participants were first presented with short scenarios concerning health education and were invited to use these scenarios as starting points to discuss their own experiences of health education. Participants were then presented with a collection of photographs that portrayed people displaying broad dimensions of health. Participants were asked to discuss the significance of the health dimensions in their lives, and describe how these dimensions were covered in school health education. Our findings suggest three broad perceptions of health education content: a moderately enthusiastic perception, a disengaged perception, and a marginalized perception. These findings: raise questions about whether the provision of health education matches the needs of young migrants, point to cultural differences in the way health topics are understood, and suggest that school health education might influence how migrants interact with health service providers.

In this article we problematize equity as inclusion and make a theoretical argument about rightful presence for the 'fat body' in PE. We argue that equity as inclusion is based on a guest/host power dynamic and a 'culture of hospitality' that comes with it. This argument rests on the assumption that inclusion involves a host who represents and safeguards the norms, values, and power structures of the community, welcoming the guest into that community. The host, in this context the institutional (cultural and material) conditions that constitute PE, will control the guests by the rights extended to them, rights that at any moment can be withdrawn. This creates a guest-host power dynamic by which students that do not fit the usual standards of PE will always be 'other', and their rights of presence and participation will always be conditioned.By introducing the concept of rightful presence, we hope to contribute to a debate on the inclusion of the 'fat body' in PE. In developing this argument, we re-analyze Cat Paus & eacute;'s story as described in her article (Paus & eacute;, C. [2019]. (Can we) get together? Fat kids and physical education. Health Education Journal, 78(6), 662-669) and use the situations she describes as a hypothetical example and an illustration to discuss what exclusion, inclusion, and rightful presence, respectively, mean for fat kids in PE.We argue that rightful presence can function as a fruitful and vital concept in research and pedagogical practice in that it encourages scholars and educators to recognize the right of all students to be fully present and to have the same rights as everyone else. It also helps us to ask new questions from a different perspective regarding, in this case, the rightful presence of fat bodies in PE.

The purpose of this study is to contribute knowledge regarding how physical education teacher education (PETE) matters, what matters in PETE, and for what PETE matters. We explore, illustrate and discuss campus-based and school-based teacher education, the transitions between these different parts of teacher education as well as transitions from teacher education to the first years working as a PE teacher in school.

In the study, we draw on results and re-analysis of generated data from several research projects on PETE in Sweden, which explore either campus-based education, school placement and/or the transition from education to the profession. The study includes nine PhD projects and two longitudinal research projects funded by the Swedish Research Council. As part of our re-analysis, a two-day workshop was conducted where the researchers from the projects met to collaborate, drawing on their respective generated data. The results following the workshop were further analyzed in-depth by the three project leaders (Engdahl, Quennerstedt and Larsson). 

Preliminary results show that teacher education seems to have a substantial impact on teachers' future teaching practice in different respects. Four preliminary themes have been particularly significant so far in the analysis: (a) content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge in cooperation, (b) the importance of content knowledge in movement, (c) campus teaching combined with school field experiences and field studies with a focus on the integration of theory and practice, and (d) explorative ways of working with a focus on becoming a reflective practitioner with emphasis on teachers’ professional identity.

This presentation will provide PETE educators and PE scholars with insights into the profound impact of transitions, or boundary passages (Lawson, 1983), of how PETE can matter for the life-long process of becoming a teacher.

Reference:

Lawson, H. A. (1983). Toward a model of teacher socialization in physical education: Entry into Schools, Teachers’ Role Orientations, and Longevity in Teaching (part 2), Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 3, 3–15.