Gymnastik- och idrottshögskolan, GIH

Background, purpose, and theoretical framework: According to Knorr-Cetina, the development of knowledge occurs in objectual practice within what she refers to as epistemic cultures. We assume this also applies to knowledge in movement. However, there is a lack of insight into the epistemic cultures of movement practices, which may be why physical education (PE) is sometimes reduced to recreational physical activity or 'correct technique' in predetermined movements. In this article, we explore educational gymnastics, a practice often perceived by PE teachers as 'difficult' to teach. The purpose of the article is to explore how the epistemic culture of gymnastics informs gymnastics educators' content knowledge (CK) when they teach educational gymnastics in a PETE context. How do experienced gymnastics educators use the tools that the epistemic culture offers in teaching to support objectual practice?Method: Four TEs specialising in educational gymnastics participated in a workshop with the authors of this paper, where TEs and authors jointly explored the epistemic culture of gymnastics through deliberation and practical examples about how teaching for the development of knowledge in movement is accomplished in gymnastics. Additionally, two gymnastics lessons conducted by one of the TEs were observed, during which ethnographic interviews were held with students and TEs. Knorr-Cetina's notion of epistemic cultures, along with Jeraj and colleagues' aspects of gymnastics feedback, framed the analysis.Results and conclusions: The analysis demonstrated how the TEs used aspects of feedback - visual perspective, visual experience, motor experience, personal relationship, methodological knowing, and biomechanical knowing - to create an objectual practice where the exploration of various gymnastic learning objects, in this case 'stability' and 'rotation' as they are expressed in a trampette jump with rotation, was the focus. The analysis indicated that the objectual practice oscillated between a convergent approach, which provided learners with a sense of direction, and a divergent approach, which provided learners with opportunities to explore different solutions to movement problems.

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.

This article focuses on teachers' responsiveness to changes in assessment policy and how new guidelines affect assessment and grading practices in school physical education (PE). The previous national curriculum in Sweden directed many teachers towards an atomistic approach to assessment. The reformed guidelines, in contrast, mandate that teachers should strive for holistic assessment. Thus, the purpose of this study was to generate an understanding of how teachers interpret and translate the policy for holistic PE assessment and discuss potential consequences of their policy enactments. Data were generated through six focus group interviews with 22 PE teachers working at different secondary and upper secondary schools. The theoretical framework used in the analysis is based on Ball et al.'s ( 2012a) work on policy enactment. The findings show that teachers view the policy for holistic assessment in PE positively. They claim that it enables them to concentrate on the bigger picture, weigh factors in terms of significance during assessment, and connect to students' lives outside of PE. We discuss the potential consequences of the teachers' policy enactments in terms of the backwash of the reform. On the one hand, the reform results in reduced transparency and a risk that certain areas of knowledge may be marginalised. On the other hand, the study suggests that teachers' autonomy with respect to assessment increases. This autonomy, which ideally leads to valid holistic assessments and fair grades, is tailored to the students' conditions and what they see as meaningful knowledge in life outside of school.

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.

Teaching food and health may be challenging, especially in classrooms where young people from different cultures, ethnicities, and religions meet. This article explores teachers' navigation of ethical complexities when teaching food and health in classrooms with immigrant students. Five didactical strategies were identified: (1) The educare strategy, (2) The tiptoeing strategy, (3) The collegial support strategy, (4) The intercultural strategy, and (5) The pluralistic strategy. These didactical strategies are embedded in various educational settings. Our results demonstrate that a further focus on ethical and intercultural competence should be carefully supported and implemented in teacher education and continual professional development programmes for teachers.

School health educational content often entails different subject areas and a variety of topics that students are supposed to learn, and when taught in diverse classrooms, potentially positions students as at-risk. Using vignettes in interviews with migrant students in Sweden, the study focuses on views of the content of health education in relation to different ways that health as risk is enacted. Four aspects of risk were identified: (i) risk as content in health education and risky, including topics such as nutrition, stress, smoking, and pollution; (ii) risk as content in health education but not so risky, including topics such as health care and disease prevention; (iii) not-so-risky topics in health education, including topics such as physical activity, physical health, and social relations; and (iv) not risk as content in health education but still risky, including topics related to sex education. Teachers in health education, regardless of school subject, should be aware that some topics position students as being at-risk, other topics put students at-risk even if the topics are not about risk per se, and lastly, that risk can be something with pedagogical potential if it is used purposefully and educationally.

Scholars have expressed concern about stagnation in physical education research. Specifically, they have claimed that physical education researchers have been investigating the same topics, presenting the same solutions, and at times fail to build on – or in some cases, even acknowledge – existing scientific findings. These are serious assertions that call into question the enterprise of researching in physical education. In this paper, we evaluate the merits of these claims. Through a Bernsteinian reading of four illustrations, the thesis we develop is that physical education has a horizontal knowledge structure. This knowledge structure affects the ways that scholars make scientific contributions, or in other words, how they develop knowledge. Understanding the connection between the knowledge structure and how knowledge is developed draws attention to: (1) the modest ways in which researchers typically make contributions, (2) the routine nature of repetition in research, and (3) the responsibilities researchers have to acknowledge the work of other researchers. We suggest that more generally, a Bernsteinian interpretation of the examples may help researchers acknowledge and accept slow disciplinary development and gain clarity regarding how and in which areas they can contribute in the future.

In recent decades, the development of the school subject of physical education (PE) has in some countries led to that various movement activities (e.g., sports) are no longer seen as synonymous with the notion of ‘content’, although such activities still appear during lessons. Instead, content is now considered to refer to the knowledge and capacities that are integral in movement practice, or which are necessary to fulfil the purpose of the activity (be it recreative, competitive, exercise-related, or else). Partly, this development is related to a greater focus in physical education curriculaon generalised rather than specialised knowledge in movement. Partly, the develop-ment is also spearheaded by assumptions that too great focus of specialised knowledge in movement contributes to marginalisation and exclusion of some groups of students (among other things because specialised knowledge is often as-sociated with set standards, competition and elimination). However, it has proven difficult to articulate what the generalised knowledge in movement consists of. Even if knowledge in movement is mainly embodied (i.e., there is not necessarily any need to be able to verbalise it in order to be able to solve movement tasks), it is nevertheless important within educational contexts to be able to put it into words in order to also be able to, for example, problematise – and possibly critique – it. Not only is generalised knowledge in movement hard to conceptualise, it has also proven difficult to identify a) the primary source of this knowledge, or where it is developed and refined, and b) which ‘parts’ or aspects of the knowledge are selected for teaching purposes in PE. The purpose of this symposium is to present insights from recent and ongoing research that aims to explore, verbalise, and problematise generalised knowledge in movement in PETE. How can this knowledge be systematised and codified, if not in terms of sports and various other movement activities? Or in simpler terms, how can generalised knowledge in movement be described? What are its primary sources and based on what principles is the knowledge to be recontextualised within PETE selected? What happens to the knowledge in the process of recontextualization? How can generalised knowledge in movement become powerful for students in their general education? We perceive that there is significant value in including a symposium about knowledge in movement. The development within PETE over several decades has meant that knowledge in movement more generally is getting less and less space in the education. This can have many reasons. Knowledge in movement is not valued in an academic context. Unlike in most other subjects, future PE teachers are assumed to already know large parts of their subject content. Sometimes, PE is not even perceived to aim at developing knowledge in movement among students and therefore future teachers do not need to be trained in that aspect either.

The health of migrants is often considered a priority area for the government. Research suggests however, that health assumes different meanings in different cultures. For migrants who have crossed cultural borders, what it means to be healthy can become unclear. On the one hand, schools can be one of the main sources to learn about health for newly arrived school-aged migrants. On the other hand, schools can also be a contentious place where knowledge about health that does not fit newly arrived students’ beliefs can create issues or challenges. Discussion on the educational potential and strengths of newly-arrived students, and how these strengths interact with the new health-related content in schools, has been missing from the literature. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to shed light into the (missing) potentials for newly arrived students in Sweden when they encounter health education at school.

Inspired by doing Southern theory in and for education, ‘looking south’ (Connell 2007) becomes a source of unique knowledge and at the same time revealing the limits of northern knowings about health and education. In this study, we worked with 20 immigrant students aged 15-19 with different backgrounds. The participants had migrated to Sweden for various reasons although most sought a less risky, more prosperous life. To generate data, we presented the participants with photographs and vignettes during focus group interviews.

In order to present the results, we used creative (non)fiction writing to construct short stories that focus on the advantages that participants identified about moving to Sweden and learning about health in Sweden. However, the last stories are fictional stories informed by decolonial and Southern theory literature. Therefore, this paper is about both, what we found and what we did not find (but were expecting to find) in the data.

The participants identified several advantages about moving to Sweden, and made reference to other broader health-related beneficial aspects of moving to Sweden. The findings show how Global South concepts related to health and wellbeing were absent from our data. The study demonstrates the need to decolonise health education, as mainly Western perspectives of health were found in the data. More research that investigates what would happen if educators were able to integrate non-Western health-related knowledge in their teaching, and the possible implications of these kinds of pedagogies, is needed.