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

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.     

简析在高职体育教学中开展拓展训练的意义

拓展训练作为一种体育教育改革模式,被引入高职体育课堂,倍受广大教育工作者的关注。拓展训练主要采用体验式的教学方法,锻炼学生的体魄,提高学生运动技能、良好的心理品质,以及提高人们的综合素质。它是一种动态的教育模式,通过这种模式的活动可以提高高职体育教学的质量和培养学生的职业素养,实现体育教学与职业教育的有机结合。在高职体育教学中,引入“拓展训练”对推动高职体育课程改革具有积极的意义。     

Physical education teacher education in Norway: the perceptions of student teachers

A feature of academic literature on physical education teacher education (PETE) is the expectation that it can and should impact upon student teachers' beliefs and prospective practices in some significant ways. This is despite research over the last 20 years or more alluding to the apparent failure of PETE to ‘shake or stir’ (Evans et al., 1996) what might be termed the (typically conservative and conventional) pre-dispositions of student and early career PE teachers. In this article, we examine the perceptions of PE student teachers in Norway in order to ascertain just what it is that makes them so resistant to change and, for that matter, such infertile ground for sowing the seeds of reflexivity. The study involved semi-structured interviews with 41 PE student teachers from the three routes through teacher education available at Nord University College (Nord UC). Among the main themes identified in the data were the PE students' perceptions of: the purposes (and ostensible benefits) of school PE and PETE as well as the nature of PETE itself (including subsidiary themes of sporting and teaching skills, other ‘competencies’, school placements, mentoring and mentors, PETEs' (physical education teacher educators) teaching styles and the students teachers' relationships with the PETEs). The article concludes that, as far as the students at Nord UC were concerned, the significance of PETE revolved around the programme's efficacy in developing the sporting skills and teaching techniques they viewed as central to their preparation for teaching. The minimal impact of the more theoretical aspects of PETE appeared to be partly attributable to the students' perceptions of PE as synonymous with sport in schools and partly to their particularly pragmatic orientations towards PETE. In this vein, the students viewed experience as the most important, most legitimate ‘evidence’ on which to base their beliefs and practices and were resistant to the ‘theory’ of teacher education, rationalising their tendencies to select the evidence that suited them.     

The position of dance in physical education

Dance has been a part of the physical education (PE) curriculum in several countries for a long time. In spite of this, studies demonstrate that the position of dance in the subject of PE is contested and that little time is devoted to dance. The overall aim of this article is to examine the position of dance as a pedagogical discourse in Swedish steering documents over time. The empirical material consists of five Swedish curricula for PE over a period of 50 years (1962–2011). Discourse analysis is used to identify organised systems of meaning, including privileged and prioritised values. Our theoretical frame of reference draws on Bernstein's concept of codes. Three different knowledge areas within dance are found in the text material: ‘dance as cultural preserver’, ‘dance as bodily exercise’ and ‘dance as expression’. Three pedagogical discourses emerge from these knowledge areas: an identity formation discourse, a public health discourse and an aesthetic discourse. The identity formation discourse in earlier curricula focuses on the perpetuation of Swedish and Nordic cultural traditions, while in later curricula, it emphasises the construction of a broader multicultural identity formation related to the understanding of different cultures. The public health discourse constitutes a prioritised understanding of dance as physical training related to a healthy lifestyle. The aesthetic discourse, which has the weakest position over time, represents the valuing of embodied experiences and feelings expressed through movements. This discourse is closely linked to the construction of gender. Over time, a new performance code came to surpass the former competence code in the steering documents. The performance code positions dance in PE as mainly a physical activity with little artistic or aesthetic value. The pedagogical discourse of dance remains within a highly disciplinary framework of social control.     

From PE experiences to PE teaching practices? Insights from Scottish primary teachers' experiences of PE,teacher education,school entry and professional development

Morgan and Hansen suggest that further research is needed to explore how non-specialist primary teachers approach and teach physical education (PE) based on their personal school PE backgrounds, teacher education experiences and ongoing professional development. This paper adopts Lawson's socialisation model, a theoretical framework subsequently used by many other researchers, to explore how primary teachers' experiences in various contexts ‘shape [their] knowledge and beliefs about the purpose of physical education, its content and teaching approaches’. Examining teachers' beliefs and attitudes towards PE is arguably important as it highlights how they approach the profession and enact particular teaching practices. We examine the views of 327 non-specialist primary teachers who participated in a postgraduate certificate in primary PE run by the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh. This article reports findings from the baseline data of our longitudinal research—arguably crucial in ascertaining teachers' starting point and useful in monitoring the programme's impact. Our findings suggest the prevalence of negative PE experience during primary and secondary years, which we considered part of Lawson's ‘acculturation’ phase. Experiences during initial teacher education (ITE) or ‘professional socialisation’ showed that teachers were only given a basic starting point, which was inadequate for teaching PE effectively. The initial teaching experience or ‘organisational socialisation’ stage also presented major challenges for teachers who endeavoured to apply knowledge and skills acquired during ‘professional socialisation’. We suggest that how teachers' conceptions about PE are formulated and the accounts of challenges they encountered upon school entry are vital for the design and delivery of effective ITE and PE-CPD. Additionally, these findings underpin the need for more critical and reflective learning experiences at all levels of PE.     

A genealogical analysis of Peter Arnold's conceptual account of meaning in movement,sport and physical education

We write as critical theorists who share an interest in how conceptions of physical education are taken forward in policy and practice. In this respect, we are particularly intrigued by Peter Arnold's conceptual account of meaning in movement, sport and physical education, and the subsequent ways in which his ideas have informed national curriculum ambitions. Despite the prominence of Arnold's influence, we are concerned that there has been an insufficiently rigorous and robust review of his theorising to date, particularly in relation to where his ideas originated from. Accordingly, we critically discuss the merits of adopting a genealogical approach in order to support a detailed analysis of Arnold's conceptual account of meaning in movement, sport and physical education; one which especially focuses on learning ‘about’, ‘through’ and ‘in’ movement. We conclude by questioning a number of the complex strands of Arnold's work in the expectation that greater lucidity and purpose can emerge. This it is argued will be beneficial in terms of providing clarity on aim or aims statements in physical education, which in turn can secure greater policy coherence and practice gains.     

The First Historical Movements of Kinesiology: Scientification in the Borderline between Physical Culture and Medicine around 1850

The kinesiology concept is used worldwide and by many different professional groups with scientific aspirations. Yet nobody seems to know much about where it comes from and why it came into existence. This article traces the origins of the concept back to one of Sweden's greatest cultural exports of the nineteenth century – Swedish gymnastics – and the efforts of especially Swedish physiotherapists and physical educators to spread its scientific doctrines throughout the world. Primarily their goal was to convert the representatives of conventional medicine (pharmacology) into a more mechanical mode of understanding and curing illness (physiotherapy). While following in the footsteps of one physiotherapist/physical educator –‘the father of kinesiology’– and examining the ideological and historical conditions his so-called ‘mission’ was ruled by, the social construction of knowledge and science is made visible in a way seldom highlighted in the history of medicine and physical education.     

Requiem for the College Women’s Gymnasium: Disciplining the Female Body in Educational and Architectural Space

Abstract

The women’s college gymnasium’s geographical, architectural and spatializing arrangements have historically been important ingredients in the social constitution of the gendered body. It has provided a critical stage on which struggles within the profession of physical education and its relation to competitive sport have been enacted both within its own boundaries and at the level of the broader campus and its shifting priorities. This paper explores the rise and demise of women’s gymnasia on North American college campuses from the late nineteenth to the latter decades of the twentieth century to illuminate how the shifting academic landscape has reflected changing attitudes towards the perceived needs of female students and the nature of their training in physical education and movement sciences. The analysis focuses upon two women’s colleges in the United States remarkable for their architectural splendour and programme integrity: the University of California at Berkeley’s Phoebe Apperson Hearst Memorial Gymnasium for Women and the Anna Hiss Gymnasium at the University of Texas, Austin. It laments their gradual demise as academic institutions have increasingly shifted their priorities and the world of the female gymnasium has retracted to be reinserted into college campuses’ twenty-first century vision for student recreation and competitive sport.     

Getting in touch with our feelings: the emotional geographies of gender relations in PETE

This paper attempts to illustrate how embodied ways of knowing may enhance our theoretical understanding within the field of physical education teacher education (PETE). It seeks to illustrate how teacher educators’ viewpoints and understanding of gender relations are inevitably linked to socially constructed webs of emotions, as much as to intellectual rationales. Indeed, the paper argues for the need for PETE research to transcend the dualistic divide of reason/emotion.

It builds upon interview data from an investigation interested in illuminating the ways in which teacher educators develop their professional identities, using the lenses of gender equal opportunities and equity to examine the degree to which identities reflect ‘managerial’ or ‘democratic’ professional projects. In particular it analyses the way in which ‘gender talk’ seems to evoke strong emotional reactions, often ‘negative’ feelings, while at the same time, gender equity concerns remain on the periphery of the discipline, despite increasing research evidence which reveals damaging discriminatory learning environments. By using Hargreaves (2000) concept of ‘emotional geographies’ the paper contends that ‘negative emotions’ about gender issues are currently hegemonic on account of today's configurations of human relations in PETE, because the discipline's feeling rules construct ‘negative feelings’ as being reasonable. Acknowledging that professional identities are on-going projects, and that feeling rules can be re-configured, the paper also seeks to illustrate how competing emotions may in the future lead to gender equality assuming a new role in PETE's ‘regimes of truths’.     

Measuring up? The discursive construction of student subjectivities in the Global Children's Challenge™

International concern about ‘alarming’ levels of childhood obesity has seen a proliferation of interventions filtering into school physical education programmes that are designed to influence children's health practices and attitudes. This article addresses one such obesity-prevention intervention, the Global Children's Challenge?, a 50-day pedometer-monitored event, aimed at children and involving their parents and teachers. Our research problematises the effects of the GCC pedometer exercise regime. We demonstrate how the pedometer measurement imperative made available in the GCC not only enables exercise to be measured for potential health benefits but also makes available tools inextricably linked with antagonistic body relations that could propel some students into a self-monitoring world dominated by numbers. We illustrate how the emphasis on measurement allows for comparisons (dividing practices), self-surveillance and surveillance of others in the formation of particular kinds of subjectivities. This study of the discursive construction of student subjectivities in the GCC took place in one strategically chosen Australian primary school. In-depth interviews were conducted with one teacher, four Year-6 students and a parent of each child in order to produce rich contextual data. Foucauldian concepts of power, knowledge and ‘technologies of self’ underpinned the study and Gore's methodologies for analysing ‘techniques of power’ and ‘regimes of truth’ were used to explore the functioning of power and the formation of subjectivities in the GCC. Our analysis suggests a need to move away from the constraining construct of measurement in the primary physical education (PE) classroom and promote self-reflective mindful physical activity rather than telling students when, where and how to move their bodies.     

Gender encounters: becoming teachers of physical education

Pre-service teachers of physical education (PE) bring understandings about gender and bodies to their university studies. These understandings are partially informed by biographies and experiences and bear potential to mediate learning and processes of becoming teachers. In this paper we explore technologies of power/knowledge and technologies of self that inform understandings of gender and the constitution of PE teacher subjectivities. Data were drawn from semi-structured interviews conducted with pre-service teachers studying at an Australian university. Foucault's theoretical perspectives around the constitution of subjects were drawn on to analyse data. Findings reveal that discursive practices frame particular ‘truths’ around gender and, hence, possibilities for being teachers of PE. Discourses of sport were significant in establishing a male norm for bodies and subjectivities. This was problematic for female participants who also turned to discourses of nurturing in constituting their subjectivities. Implications are raised for PE teacher educators with regard to disrupting hegemonic discourses as means for developing pedagogies for greater justice.     

Working through whiteness,race and (anti) racism in physical education teacher education

Background: The persistent gaps between a largely white profession and ethnically diverse school populations have brought renewed calls to support teachers' critical engagement with race. Programmes examining the effects of racism have had limited impact on practice, with student teachers responding with either denial, guilt or fear; they also contribute to a deficit view of racialised students in relation to an accepted white ‘norm’, and position white teachers ‘outside’ of race. Recent calls argue for a shift in focus towards an examination of the workings of the dominant culture through a critical engagement with whiteness, positioning white teachers within the processes of racialisation. Teacher educators' roles are central, and yet, while we routinely expect student teachers to reflect critically on issues of social justice, we have been less willing to engage in such work ourselves. This is particularly the case within physical education teacher education (PETE), an overwhelmingly white, embodied space, and where race and racism as professional issues are largely invisible.

Purpose: This paper examines the operation of whiteness within PETE through a critical reflection on the three co-authors' careers and experiences working for social justice. The research questions were twofold: How are race, (anti) racism and whiteness constructed through everyday experiences of families, schooling and teacher education? How can collective biography be used to excavate discourses of race, racism and whiteness as the first step towards challenging them? In beginning the process of reflecting on what it means for us ‘to do own work’ in relation to (anti) racism, we examine some of the tensions and challenges for teacher educators in PE attempting to work to dismantle whiteness.

Methodology: As co-authors, we engaged in collective biography work – a process in which we reflected upon, wrote about and shared our embodied experiences and memories about race, racism and whiteness as educators working for social justice. Using a critical whiteness lens, these narratives were examined for what they reveal about the collective practices and discourses about whiteness and (anti)racism within PETE.

Results: The narratives reveal the ways in which whiteness operates within PETE through processes of naturalisation, ex-denomination and universalisation. We have been educated, and now work within, teacher education contexts where professional discourse about race at best focuses on understanding the racialised ‘other’, and at worse is invisible. By drawing on a ‘racialised other’, deficit discourse in our pedagogy, and by ignoring race in own research on inequalities in PETE, we have failed to disrupt universalised discourses of ‘white-as-norm’, or addressed our own privileged racialised positioning. Reflecting critically on our biographies and careers has been the first step in recognising how whiteness works in order that we can begin to work to disrupt it.

Conclusion: The study highlights some of the challenges of addressing (anti)racism within PETE and argues that a focus on whiteness might offer a productive starting point. White teacher educators must critically examine their own role within these processes if they are to expect student teachers to engage seriously in doing the same.     

健身街舞和篮球对女大学生身心健康影响的比较研究

文章对健身街舞和篮球对女大学生身体和心理健康的影响进行了对比研究。将80名在校女大学生分为两组,分别进行为期12周,每周3次,每次60min的健身街舞和篮球训练,训练前后分别测定受试者皮脂厚度、肺活量和身体协调能力,并通过问卷调查了解受试者的心理状态。结果表明,女大学生的身体形态、机能和身体自尊及身体自我效能发生了不同程度的变化。健身街舞运动对女大学生皮脂厚度、身体协调能力、除身体状况外的身体自尊各维度的指标和身体自我效能的影响均大于篮球运动。大学体育课程女生项目设置可适当增加健身街舞运动。为优化女大学生运动健身方案的制定和大学体育课程教学内容的选择提供依据。     

Narratives from the road to social justice in PETE: teacher educator perspectives

Developing teacher education programmes founded upon principles of critical pedagogy and social justice has become increasingly difficult in the current neoliberal climate of higher education. In this article, we adopt a narrative approach to illuminate some of the dilemmas which advocates of education for social justice face and to reflect upon how pedagogy for inclusion in the field of physical education (PE) teacher education (PETE) is defined and practiced. As a professional group, teacher educators seem largely hesitant to expose themselves to the researcher's gaze, which is problematic if we expect preservice teachers to engage in messy, biographical reflexivity with regard to their own teaching practice. By engaging in self- and collective biographical story sharing about ‘our’ teacher educator struggles in England and Norway, we hope that the reader can identify ‘her/his’ struggles in the narratives about power and domination, and the spaces of opportunity in between.     

Sport and re/creation: what skateboarders can teach us about learning

This paper explores the role of digital media and creativity in the processes of learning that occur in groups of urban skateboarders. In particular, it examines how the production and consumption of amateur videos contribute to both skaters’ mastery of the techniques of the sport and their integration into the culture of the sport. The data come from an ethnographic study of skateboarders in Hong Kong, which included in-depth interviews, participant observation and the collection of texts and artifacts like magazines, blog entries and amateur skating videos. Skateboarders use video in a number of ways that significantly impact their learning and integration into their communities. They use it to analyze tricks and techniques, to document the stages of their learning and socialization into the group, to set community standards, to build a sense of belonging with their ‘crews’ and to imagine ‘idealized futures’ for themselves and their communities. Understanding the value and function of such ‘semiotic mediation’ in learning and socialization into sport cultures, I suggest, can contribute to helping physical educators design tasks that integrate training in physical skills with opportunities for students to make meaning around their experiences of sport and physical education.     

Striving to be in the profession and of It: the African American experience in physical education and kinesiology

This study analyzes the experiences of African Americans in the physical education and kinesiology profession since the late 1850s. Using a variety of primary and secondary source material, we place special emphasis on the experiences of African American physical educators in higher education and in the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance and its southern, regional, and state chapters. Apparent from this examination is that African Americans have experienced various forms of racially discriminatory practices in physical education and kinesiology and have found it extraordinarily difficult to assume leader ship positions in the profession and be acknowledged for their scholarly and academic accomplishments.     

Telling physical education teacher education tales through pedagogical case studies

This paper analyses two pedagogical case studies (PCS) from a multidisciplinary perspective to highlight the problems of theoretical knowledge in tertiary physical education teacher education (PETE) programmes, school-based physical education (PE) practice and continuous professional learning (CPL) in PE. We argue that a critical view of tertiary PETE and PE teacher educator CPL practice or practices is particularly important if PETE programmes want to develop future PE and current teacher practitioners who are transformative agents. In setting up the pedagogical case study accounts, we recall common conversations about the bodies of knowledge in tertiary PETE programmes that have been positioned as problematic. The accounts highlight the existence of an artificial divide between PE educators as theory generators and both pre-service PE teachers and school-based PE practitioners as theory appliers. We suggest that part of the reason why this divide exists can be attributed to a general misunderstanding of theoretical and practical knowledge that have been wrongly compartmentalised into ‘theory’ and ‘practice’, and hence erroneously taught as isolated entities without any connection or direct link with each other, or the former considered to be less relevant and perhaps even irrelevant in practice.     

Understanding the rationale for preschool physical education: implications for practitioners' and children's embodied practices and subjectivity formation

This paper provides an overview of selected academic research literature that underpins contemporary preschool physical education. We highlight and interrogate diverse rationales and beliefs that serve to influence and structure preschool physical education in various forms. We speculate as to how preschool practitioners and children might engage in specific practices relative to these discourses. Our consideration of preschool physical education discourses relies upon a Foucaultian analysis of the major techniques of power and also raises possibilities of conceptualising subjectivity formation through his concept of the ‘technologies of the self’. Discourses related to motor skill development, play and physical activity, in particular, appear to be prevalent in the selected literature, along with a related pedagogical discourse concerning ‘structure and freedom’. These sometimes competing discourses arguably underpin competing agendas reflecting those who advocate supporting children's free play and those who propose more structured and interventionist practices in relation to young children's physical activity. We conclude that these diverse approaches lend themselves to interpretation and negotiation in the context of preschool physical education, with specific consequences for the embodied experiences and subjectivities of preschool practitioners and children.     

‘It's the other assessment that is the key’: three Norwegian physical education teachers' engagement (or not) with assessment for learning

The international agenda for assessment continues to convey a growing interest in assessment for learning (AfL) as a tool to support learning and enhance teaching. Complementing this, the recent literature on assessment in physical education acknowledges the need for physical educators to integrate AfL into their teaching and assessment practice as an important part of the future development of the subject. Appreciating that physical education must be recognized as part of the larger movement culture in society and is a place to learn about movement culture, this study explores how AfL is understood and enacted by physical education teachers and the extent to which such enactment complements or challenges learning movement cultures within physical education. This study shares how three Norwegian physical education teachers used AfL to term what they were practicing with respect to assessment in physical education. We follow the interactions of the selected teachers throughout focus groups, using the empirical data as our ‘dialogue partner’ in reconstructing and discussing their assessment stories. We conclude that the need of embedding AfL in learning theory may well be one of the strongest challenges to enacting AfL in physical education. We acknowledge that not only are most existing theories of learning defined cognitively, but also that learning connected to physical education and activity is, to a large extent, practical and embodied, and also linked to the powerful discourses of sport and related areas such as health.