Scholars have long questioned the impact of teacher education programmes. Persistent claims are that pre-service teachers have fixed ideas about pedagogy when they enter training and that they become enculturated once in the profession. Within physical education (PE), similar concerns have been raised with respect to ball games. Research suggests…

The interest in yoga, mindfulness or similar yoga-based practices (YBP) has grown exponentially in the western world, also within education, including physical education (PE). Although some studies have been conducted on YBP in PE, yoga has not yet been researched in the framework of physical education teacher education (PETE). Using a regional…

Physical contact is common in physical education (PE) and is often also perceived as necessary in the subject. At the same time, no-touch discourses in sport and PE affect both teachers and students in many western countries. Teachers in the subject have for example become increasingly reluctant to touch their students due to risks of allegations.…

Research about physical education teacher education (PETE) indicates that the education program attracts homogeneous groups of students, consisting mainly of young men originating from the country in question and who have academic backgrounds. The purpose of this article is, through a case study of one Swedish PETE institution, to explore a cohort…

The purpose of this study is to explore the recontextualisation of Assessment for Learning (AfL) as a particular content area in the transition between a university course and a school placement course within Swedish physical education teacher education (PETE). By combining Basil Bernstein's pedagogic device and Stephen Ball's performativity…

A growing anxiety around intergenerational touch in educational settings has both emerged and increased in recent years. Previous research reveals that Physical Education (PE) teachers have become more cautious in their approaches to students and they avoid physical contact or other behavior that could be regarded as suspicious [Fletcher, 2013.…

Background: Scholars have suggested that students' views of what is important for them to know as Physical Education (PE) teachers are a result of what is assessed in Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE). Thus, there is a risk that students will reproduce content areas such as sports and assess sport-techniques without much critical…

Research within the field of intergenerational touch has shown that there is a tension between the need to use physical contact as an obvious pedagogical tool, and the no-touch discourse. Within this tension physical contact between physical education teachers and students has also been shown to be a gender/ed issue with heteronormative points of…

The overall aim of this study was to explore how upper secondary school students (age 16-19) in Sweden perceive physical education and health (PEH) through the assessment practices they experience in this subject. In particular, the study aimed to examine the students' experiences of what can be considered as valid knowledge and what the students…

Assessment has been identified as an ongoing problem in physical education (PE). Since the student perspective on assessment is often neglected in research, in this paper, we will report on a study that explored students' experiences of assessment in the Swedish school subject physical education and health (PEH). In particular, the aim of this…

Students' perceived learning in physical education (PE) is an important yet neglected area of research. Increased knowledge about students' perceived learning can provide teachers with useful information to promote meaningful learning experiences in PE. Moreover, perceived learning can potentially be an alternative measurement to school grades…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to critically examine previous studies' claims about the magnitude of gender differences and gender inequality in physical education (PE) in Sweden. Method: The data were based on students' (N = 39,980) perceptions of PE and were gathered from four large research projects in Sweden. Three effect size measures…

Background: Over the past five decades, the number of people from refugee backgrounds in developed countries has been on the constant rise. Although the field of refugee and forced migration studies in relation to education and sport has grown considerably in recent years, very little is known about refugee-background students' perceptions of…

In this paper, we critically examine the potential of assessment components in physical education teacher education (PETE) to either reinforce or challenge PETE students' conceptions of what a physical education (PE) teacher needs to know to teach this school subject. To understand the mechanisms that may contribute to the difficulty of…

Teachers in the school subject Health and Physical Education (HPE) need to be able both to teach health and to do so in a healthy (equitable) way. The health field has, however, met with difficulties in finding its form within the subject. Research indicates that HPE can be excluding, meaning that it may give more favours to some pupils (bodies)…