Play, games and sport are a part of the content of physical education (PE), and has been the subject of a longstanding debate among educators internationally and in Scandinavian countries. Play refers to something unstructured and free, while sport is a controlled and managed activity. Drawing on Skovbjerg`s (2021) play theory, this article…

Research in the Scandinavian school context has indicated that physical education (PE) is dominated by activities and values from a sports discourse. The main aim of this study was to explore students' experiences of two competitive activities provided by the teacher. The participants were 49 students (13-15 years old) and their two teachers from…

Teachers are designers and an essential act of the profession is the crafting of learning experiences to meet specific purposes. In this study, we follow a Norwegian physical education (PE) teacher in the design and teaching of a unit informed by a pedagogical model called the practising model (PM). Two research questions guided the study: (1) How…

This paper explores teachers' educational values and how they shape their judgements about physically active learning (PAL). Twenty one teachers from four primary schools in Norway participated in focus groups. By conceptualising PAL as a didaktikk approach, the findings indicated that teachers engaged with PAL in a way that reflected their…

In the Norwegian curriculum for physical education (PE), health is one of several topics students should learn about. However, the way in which many educators conceptualize health can impact both what students learn and how health is taught in PE. According to Mong and Standal (2019), differences in terms of the conceptualizations of health can…

In this paper, we describe and reflect on the Critical Incident Technique (CIT) methodology used to explore how secondary school health and physical education (HPE) teachers address social justice in their teaching practice. The paper is informed by data generated as part of an ongoing three-year international research project involving eight…

In contemporary educational literature assessment is viewed as a key element of pedagogy, and student self- and peer-assessment is viewed as a vital component of the assessment processes occurring within pedagogical practice. This notion is also present within physical education (PE) literature. Within this body of work however, there has been…

Background: The current interest in models-based practice (MBP) as an innovation and framework has necessitated deeper understanding of both what MBP is and how teacher educators teach pre-service teachers about innovative approaches such as MBP. Despite several studies of individual teacher educators enacting MBP, there are few examples of how…

Knowledge is scarce on parental satisfaction with the inclusion of children with disabilities in physical education (PE). This study explored how parents' satisfaction with inclusion in PE was associated with parental and child interpersonal and intrapersonal characteristics. Seventy-two parents of children with disabilities participated in the…

In this qualitative case study, the authors examine teacher students' experiences from teaching creative dance in their practicum in physical education (PE) in Norwegian schools. From a phenomenological perspective, and taking concepts such as "participatory sense-making," "embodied affectivity" and "embodied…

There is a growing body of research on cultural diversity, discrimination and racism in physical education teaching and practice. However, although 'cultural diversity' is a central concern in research, curriculum and policies of higher education, it is not clear "how" and "in what ways" students and teachers should consider…

Even though qualitative research methods are considered important and have become more commonplace in research related to the sport sciences, there is little insight into the efforts made by sport science students to learn qualitative research methods. In this article, the authors use a course on qualitative methods inspired by a phenomenological…

A wide variety of activities, instructional teaching styles and physical activity for health characterise PE practices today. However, for children, PE is about more than performing activities or being physically active for health. Children experience moving in the context of PE in varying and ambivalent ways, which indicates that qualitative…

Background and Purpose: Acknowledging that it is critical that researchers design and implement studies that examine teaching as a complex phenomenon (Strom and Martin [2017]. "Becoming-teacher: A Rhizomatic Look at First-year Teaching. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers), the objective of this study was to examine pre-service teachers' (PSTs')…

The aim of the study is to examine friluftsliv, which has been used as both a Norwegian and English term in the research literature, in relation to physical literacy (PL) in physical education (PE) pedagogies. The term friluftsliv is associated to outdoor recreation and it relates to moving and being moved in nature over a specified period of…