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As part of a longitudinal research project on the transition from physical education teacher education (PETE) to school physical education (PE) in Sweden and exploring whether and how PETE matters, this article uses narrative inquiry to ‘represent’ a PE teacher’s professional journey from PETE to the induction phase of PE teaching. The study focuses on his use of, and reflections on, ‘assessment for learning’ (AfL) at different stages of his teaching experience. The purpose of the study is to contribute knowledge about how positive experiences of AfL during PETE can enable the use of AfL in school PE for a newly qualified teacher. This is done by analysing one male PETE student’s reflections on AfL in the context of a campus-based course on PE assessment, his use of and reflections on AfL during his practicum, and in school PE as a newly qualified teacher. The data generation consisted of recordings of a PETE seminar, a stimulated recall interview with the participant during his final school placement, and two interviews with him in his role as a newly qualified PE teacher at two different schools. Through the PE teacher’s tale, we show how the campus-based course on PE assessment in PETE and the student teacher’s positive experience of using AfL during his practicum seem to have inspired him in his later positions. The results are discussed in relation to the perspective of occupational socialisation theory. This narrative inquiry suggests that PETE can make a difference for student teachers who are prepared to face the challenges of the induction phase of PE teaching and are able to navigate between the barriers that get in their way. We conclude the paper with some considerations regarding the study’s potential strength (trustworthiness), sharing (transferability) and service (usefulness).

Det eksisterer ingen oversiktsartikler som systematisk presenterer forskningen på friluftsliv i høyere utdanning i Norge. Artikkelens formål er å gi en slik oversikt, samt diskutere hvordan friluftsliv presenteres i forskningen fra et pedagogisk og historisk perspektiv. Forskningsspørsmålene vi stil-ler er: Hva karakteriserer forskningen på friluftsliv innen høyere utdanning?Hvordan forholder dagens friluftslivsforskning seg til ulike danningsideal? Etter ferdigstilt inklusjonsprosess ble 37 publikasjoner inkludert i studien. Vi identifiserte ingen publikasjoner før 2008. Resultatene viser at et flertall av publikasjonene var kvalitativt innrettet. Gjennom en abduktiv tilnærming til kvalitativ innholdsana-lyse konstruerte vi følgende forskningstemaer i vår studie: (1) studentenes læring, (2) ledelse og personlig vekst, (3) natursyn og bærekraft og (4) kritikk av den neoliberale påvirkningen. Vi fant at friluftslivsutdanningens opprinnelige ideer om økofilosofi og økodanning er lite belyst, og at det er lite forskning på mangfold og inkludering i friluftsliv i høyere utdanning. Resultatet av studien diskuteres i lys av utdanningens funksjon og i relasjon til danningsideal i friluftslivsutdanningen. 

There is a lack of scoping reviews on friluftsliv in higher education in Norway. The aim of this paper is to contribute with such a review and to discuss research about friluftsliv from educational and historical perspectives. Our research questions are: What characterizes research on friluftsliv in higher education in Norway? How is contemporary research on friluftsliv related to educational ideals, and to theory about the function of education? 37 publications were included in the study, none of these were published before 2008. The results show that most publications applied a qualitative methodology. Through an abductive approach to qualitative content analysis, we constructed the following research themes in our study: (1) student learning, (2) leadership and personal growth, (3) conceptions of nature and sustainability, and (4) critique of neoliberalism. We found that origi-nal ideas about ecophilosophy and eco-education are poorly elucidated, and that little research has been done on topics related to diversity and inclusion in friluftsliv in higher education. The results of the study are discussed in relation to educational ideals in friluftsliv studies, as well as to theory about the functions of education.

This study explores how newly qualified physical education (PE) teachers experience the meaning of feedback through reflections on their assessment practices. We focus on the use, purpose, and content of feedback in PE practice. Assessment practices in PE have generally been used for grading purposes, often with little connection to the preceding teaching and learning. The educational quality of feedback depends on teachers' knowledge of what is supposed to be learned and how learners understand what they are supposed to know. Hence, it is important to investigate whether and how PE teacher education (PETE) prepares pre-service teachers for their professional work with feedback in PE. Individual stimulated recall interviews, a focus group interview and individual interviews with eight newly qualified teachers were conducted, and the data was analysed through a phenomenographic approach. The findings reveal that feedback is experienced in various ways, some comprising content that helps students learn what is supposed to be learned. Other ways of experiencing feedback generate content that does not relate to any intended learning goal other than being physically active in the here and now. The findings are discussed in relation to Hattie and Timperley's (2007) model of feedback as well as in relation to PETE and the significance of providing possibilities for future teachers to learn about the ways in which feedback can be educationally worthwhile.

An ongoing discussion is a debate about the benefits of outdoor activities for health, where a narrowness regarding the benefits as a matter of curing or preventing disease has been questioned. Hence, there is an urgent need to theorize further the relationship between outdoor activities and health with robust theoretical frameworks that can guide research and practice, taking different aspects of human-nature relations into account. In the paper, a critique of pathogenic perspectives of health is forwarded, as well as a critique of an anthropocentric human centeredness of health. Instead, a salutogenic model and the metaphor of the swimmer in the river is used to discuss the relation without being restricted to health as the absence of disease or to human health and wellbeing. In the paper, seven different relations, or salutogenic questions, are provided, moving from the swimmer in the foreground, to swimmers in the river to finally foregrounding the river.

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 consideration. In this study, however, the risk of reproducing what is prioritised in PETE is seen as an opportunity regarding the potential reproduction of other content areas than sports. Based on the regulative principles of PE and PETE that privilege sport skills and hinder creative movement learning, we focus on a content area in PETE that provides opportunities for students to engage in creative collaboration and examine how this content area is realised in school PE. Hence, we have chosen to explore ‘Movement Composition’, a content area which has a long tradition at one of the PETE universities in Sweden. Based on an overarching interest in whether and how PETE matters, this exploratory study focuses on the potential transferability of Movement Composition as a particular content area in the transition from PETE to PE.

Purpose and research question: The purpose of this study is to explore Movement Composition as a content area undergoing the transition from PETE to school PE. The research question is: How is the pedagogic discourse of Movement Composition constructed, recontextualised and realised in the transition from PETE to school PE?

Methods: Data was generated through an interview with one of the initiators of Movement Composition. Stimulated Recall interviews and Zoom interviews were also conducted with a group of five PETE students and three experienced PE teachers. In addition, documents such as the study guide, course literature, and written assignments associated with Movement Composition in the PETE programme were included in the empirical material. In the analysis, the combination of Bernstein’s pedagogic device and the Swedish didactics of PE research tradition was used to identify the pedagogic discourse of Movement Composition in the transition from PETE to school PE.

Findings: The findings show how the pedagogic discourse of Movement Composition as a content area is constructed, recontextualised and realised in the transition from PETE to school PE. The construction of Movement Composition as a pedagogic discourse in PETE is about how the content area (the what) is selected and organised for pedagogical purposes. The recontextualisation of Movement Composition is about how the pedagogic discourse is interpreted and translated in relation to the PE syllabus. The realisation of Movement Composition involves how the content area in PETE is implemented in PE practice. 

Conclusions: This exploratory study has shown that what is articulated as a relevant content area and the way it is taught, learned, and assessed in PETE in many regards survives the transition to school PE. The transition from PETE to school PE does not only involve reproduction of sports and sport-techniques from one context to another. PETE also contributes to the use of creative, collaborative, and student-centred learning tasks in school PE. 

Teaching outdoors is an obligatory part of physical education (PE) in most countries; therefore, PE holds great potential to contribute to learning about nature, the environment and environmental sustainability (ES). This paper reports the investigation of whether Swedish PE teachers perceive ES as part of their subject, and if so, how do they implement it? Drawing on 60 PE teachers' answers to five opened questions (53 written answers and 7 oral interviews), and using British sociologist Basil Bernstein's concepts of classification and codes, this study have asked the following research questions: 1. What influences the position and legitimisation of ES in PE? 2. How does the subject culture of Swedish PE influence the introduction of ES? The result from the study shows a complexity regarding the strength of the boundaries that surround ES in PE and what this complexity might offer in terms of enablers and constraints. The result also displays a strong connection between outdoor education and its potential for teaching ES. Various options are discussed with regard to where (in what content areas in PE) and how to implement ES.

The research field of physical education and health (PEH) holds a great potential for exploring environmental issues, but the interest has been scarce. In this paper, we aim to trouble the separation of humans and nature, which has long been reproduced in PEH research and practice. To frame the problem, we turn to environmental education (EE) research, where scholars have argued that the human/nature divide serves as a foundation for environmental degradation. Drawing on Karen Barad's posthumanist framework of agential realism, we explore the emerging conceptualisations of humans and nature when Swedish PEH policy documents are diffractively read through previous research, the concept of agential cuts and our own historicities. The analysis is presented through three diffraction patterns emerging around movement, health and indoors/outdoors, phenomena which are central not only to PEH but also to EE. We conclude that thinking with diffraction can open spaces within PEH educational policy for reimagining existing binaries between humans and nature. In this way, PEH practice might contribute to troubling the foundations for environmental injustices and issues of unsustainability.