Gymnastik- och idrottshögskolan, GIH

Recent research has urged us to rethink how we promote ‘more’ physical activity in school settings. However, schools are also arenas of competing paradigmatic interests among scientific communities. This raises the question: how are school contexts for adolescents’ physical activity conceptualized and articulated as a response to the well-being agenda across interventionist, pedagogical, and critical research perspectives?

How Physical Activity and School Settings Are Framed – School contexts are often narrated as ‘ideal’ for promoting young people’s physically active lives, with physical activity research often carrying broader assumptions where (often) the goal is to prescribe movement, to get students to be more active. However, such assumptions are underpinned by a set of onto- episteme-axiological commitments – about what physical activity is, how it should be studied, and why it matters. ​​​Schools are increasingly seen as dynamic spaces for promoting physical activity through whole-school and comprehensive strategies that integrate curriculum, culture, policy, and community. While ecological frameworks are commonly used to guide these efforts, their application varies across academic discourses and often overlooks critical issues like power and equity. Addressing these gaps is vital as the field moves toward more interdisciplinary and inclusive approaches. ​

Ways of Knowing, Ways of Doing – ​This project adopts a meta-perspective, and methodologically, it combines ethnography, social network analysis, cross-sectional data, and systematic review – offering a novel, cross-paradigmatic approach to studying adolescents’ physical activity in Swedish secondary schools.​​Three rhetorical patterns were identified in how school contexts are constructed in relation to adolescents’ physical activity: (i) as an (in)effective backdrop focused on behavior change, (ii) as meaning-centered spaces shaped by student-teacher interactions, and (iii) as sites of either oppression or empowerment. These patterns reflect differing priorities – highlighting the complex and contested nature of promoting physical activity in schools.

Future Pathways Forward?​ – This project identifies spaces and offer pathways for collaborative, multidimensional research grounded in effectiveness, meaningfulness, and equity – foregrounding agency and co-creation through participatory methodologies, in reframing of physical activity research.