Physical education in Scandinavia with a focus on Sweden: a comparative perspective

In a significant article from 1993, Crum describes the purpose of physical education (PE) as a 'planned introduction into movement culture'. In broad terms, this purpose is tantamount to the stated purpose of Swedish PE in national steering documents. Crum contends, however, that physical educators do not prioritise learning, which is largely due to the different 'movement cultures' that constitute the PE lessons. This article explores how practice unfolds in movement cultures that are included in Swedish PE and their implications for teaching and learning in the subject. Some 30 (indoor) PE lessons in eight secondary schools in four cities throughout Sweden were video recorded. At 'first glance' these lessons indicated the prevalence of four logics of practice: a physical training logic, a sports logic, a sport technique logic and a dance logic. However, further analysis revealed that the teachers' and students' actions were not entirely in line with a logic of practice of training the body, winning the game, learning sporting skills or learning to dance. Instead, the PE practice largely unfolded as a 'looks-like-practice', where the purpose of teaching was blurred, and where any 'planned introduction into movement culture' was difficult to identify. In the final section, the authors discuss how physical activity logics can be recontextualised in a PE setting in order to emphasise the educational contribution of PE.

Section: Findings: a Pe Looks-like Culturementioning

confidence: 97%

Physical education cultures in Sweden: fitness, sports, dancing … learning?

Larsson

Karlefors

2015

“…The context of PE teachers' work has most definitely been undergoing significant changes during the past decade, illustrated not only by the general changes in education policy and practice as discussed above, but more explicitly, for example, by the wider provision of PE as an examinable subject in several European countries (Annerstedt, 2008;Green, 2005); by the emergence of Specialist Sport Colleges in the UK (Green, 2005) and so-called private 'Elite Sports Colleges' in Norway; and the establishment of the 'Sport Co-ordinator Programme' in the UK (Flintoff, 2003). Physical educationists are also increasingly being called upon to combat broad social issues, such as the socalled 'obesity crisis' ) and the growing numbers of disaffected youth (Sandford et al, 2006).…”

Section: A Post-modern Perspective Of Pe Teacher Professionalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘Are PE teacher identities fit for postmodern schools or are they clinging to modernist notions of professionalism?’ A case study of Norwegian PE teacher students’ emerging professional identities

Dowling

2011

This file was dowloaded from the institutional repository Brage NIH -brage.bibsys.no/nih Dowling, F. J. (2011). Are PE teacher identities fit for postmodern schools or are they clinging to modernist notions of professionalism?: a case study of Norwegian PE teacher students' emerging professional identities. Sport, Education and Society,16, about what counts as 'good' practice. By analysing the student teachers' emerging professional identities the paper aims to reveal not only the students' subjective meanings about professionalism, but also illuminate the current power structures which operate in PETE about relevant 'professional' knowledge.It draws upon data from group interviews with 12 Norwegian PE students in their final year of study for a Bachelor Degree in PE teacher education, and a critical content analysis of PETE curricula at two institutions of higher education.The paper highlights the way in which views about professionalism in PETE tend to be normative in nature, and are not founded upon explicit theoretical ideas about 'good' practice or theoretical understandings of the role of the teacher in post-modern schools.Indeed, PETE programmes seem to do little to disrupt recruits' 'apprenticeship-ofobservation', even though Lortie (1976) revealed this problematic aspect of professional socialisation over three decades ago. The student teachers' narratives seem to be locked into 'modernist' or 'classical' ideas about good PE practice, which are inappropriate for meeting the challenges of working with socially diverse pupils or in collaborative teacher 2 groups. Recruitment to PETE via examinable PE appears paradoxically to accentuate the students' sports performing (teacher) selves, rather than providing them with a solid understanding of PE's content knowledge upon which to develop broader PE teacher professional identities. The paper therefore asks whether teacher educators need to reassess their recruitment policies to PETE, as well as to systematically re-analyse our 'taken-for-granted' notions of teacher professionalism.

“…The lesson was selected for two reasons. In various ways, it represents what Kirk (2010) refers to as a PE-as-sport-technique movement culture, which is recognizable both in Sweden and other countries (Annerstedt, 2008). The movement culture is characterized by the learning of certain sport specific techniques in relation to specific sports.…”

Section: Data Production Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning through group work in physical education: a symbolic interactionist approach

Barker

Quennerstedt

Annerstedt

2015

Self Cite

In line with contemporary constructivist pedagogies, students are frequently expected to learn through interaction in physical education (PE). There is a relatively sophisticated body of literature focusing on learning in groups, peer teaching, and cooperative learning. Current research has not, however, focused on how the body is implicated in interactional learning. This is surprising given that much learning in PE is expected to take place in the physical domain. The aim of this paper is to contribute to current theorizing by examining social interactions in PE practice. By drawing on symbolic interactionist theory, we put forward a framework for considering how inter-student interactions occur in a multimodal sense. Key ideas relate to (1) the sequential organization of interactions; (2) the ways in which semiotic resources in different fields are used to elaborate each other; (3) the importance of interpretation as a driver of interaction; (4) the creation of local environments in which participants attend to and work together within a shared world of perception; and (5) the influence of material environments on social interaction. The specific concepts employed are epistemic ecology, epistemic position, and learning trajectory. The paper includes observational data from an investigation of learning in Swedish PE to demonstrate the explanatory power and limitations of the theoretical tenets presented. The paper is concluded with practical implications of understanding group work in a multimodal manner.