This review paper identifies the conceptual underpinnings of current movement research in Physical Education. Using a hermeneutic approach, four analogies for movement education are identified: the motor program analogy, the neurobiological systems analogy, the instinctive movement analogy, and the embodied exploration analogy. Three issues related to logical consistency and its relevance for movement education are raised. The first relates to tensions between the analogies and educational policy. The second concerns differences among the four analogies. The third issue relates to the appropriateness of specific analogies for dealing with certain movement contexts. In each case, strategies for improvement are considered. The paper is concluded with a brief summary along with reflections on issues that require further attention.

Research suggests that young people’s understanding of how their bodies move in space and time is deteriorating. The aim of this study was to examine how students learn to analyse sensations and feelings while running. In total, 94 students aged 16–19 years and seven physical education (PE) teachers from two different secondary schools participated in the study. Five different PE lessons were designed, conducted and analysed based on the tenets of variation theory. Two questions guided the investigation: (a) What aspects of the running movement do students discern as critical for increased awareness of body posture in running? (b) In what way do lesson designs and teaching techniques affect students’ identification of critical aspects of body posture in running? The paper provides examples of how embodied exploration of body awareness can be used as an educational means to enhance movement capabilities. Two themes are identified and described: tentative critical aspects of body posture for running, and differences in students’ ways of developing movement capability. The paper concludes with a summary of the main results along with reflections on issues that require further attention.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore in what way gradually increasing teachers’ theory-based instruction affects the students’ learning outcomes, illustrated by the example of learning how to regulate body tension in the upper secondary school. Design/methodology/approach – In total, 72 students from four classes participated in the study. The way the students were offered to understand “regulation of tension” was designed by variation theory, and the method used was learning study, an iterative process whereby the results from the first lesson are the basis for the design of the next implementation in a new group of students. Findings – There is a significant increased learning outcome in all four lessons, but in Lesson D, where the highest increase (129 percent) was found, all students improved their results. The use of the theoretical framework had effect on the teachers to vary only the most important aspects in the instruction in the last cycle, where the features chiselled out during the study (e.g. heart rate, respiration, muscle tension) were contrasted more clearly, which had an impact on the students’ learning. Based on the theoretical framework, the teachers got more skilled at experiencing what should vary and what should be kept invariant in order to facilitate the students’ learning. In the last intervention, the teachers found one pattern of variation which was more powerful than the previous. In this one, the physical activities were kept invariant, but different responses of the sympathetic nervous system were contrasted, one at a time, to establish knowledge of different bodily responses to tension. Originality/value – Learning study has mainly been used in subjects such as Mathematics or other theoretical issues but this paper describes in what way learning study can be used in PE. So second, the result of this study contributes to knowledge about how students’ learning outcome in PEH can increase by directing focus on an object of learning rather than actual learning activity. The object of learning in this study is to learn to regulate tenseness and the learning outcomes have been analyzed in the perspective of variation theory.

Characteristics and consequences of different body ideals' are a mandatory curriculum content in Swedish physical education (PE). Didactic strategies for teaching on body ideals are, however, scarce. In this paper, we introduce a classroom-based teaching unit on body ideals and present didactic possibilities and challenges of the unit. We used a lesson study approach, drawing on Nutbeam's concept of health literacy. Our methodology involved focus group interviews with students and teachers, lesson observations and minutes of meetings which we analysed thematically. We found teaching on body ideals to be highly meaningful to students but their engagement differed based on personal backgrounds, school context and didactic design. The gendered nature of body ideals and a lack of embodied didactics constituted challenges, while the use of storied cases emerged as a potent didactic strategy. We conclude with practical recommendations for teaching on body ideals in PE.

The aim of this article is to elucidate how teacher researchers use a theoretical framework as mediated tool to create boundaries in communities of research practices (CoRPs) and how this effects student learning. If, and in what way, knowledge developed in one practice can be used to inform the next is also examined. Two teacher researchers implemented two CoRPs each, one as internal participant and one as external participant. In total, 202 students, 22 teachers, 2 teacher researchers, and 1 researcher participated. The qualitative analysis is framed by Wenger's three boundary dimensions: engagement, imagination, and alignment. The results show that teachers' actions in the second practice, no matter if they were internal or external participants, are characterized by a higher degree of security and knowledge and the lessons implemented are more effective regarding the students' learning outcomes than in the first. The results show that knowledge develops in an interaction order regardless of the internal or external community order. The result from the first team informs the starting point for the second team, and knowledge boundaries are transferred by the teacher researcher from one CoRP to the other.