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.

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One important challenge ahead for sport and exercise pedagogy (SEP) researchers is to consider afresh 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.

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