Sports Didactics

Based on previous studies, we have a comparatively good picture of what is going on in Swedish PEH, at least in terms of content, pedagogy, social interaction, socialisation processes, dominant discourses (e.g. of sport and of public health), etc. Research shows that subject matter content and organisation, i.e. the general pattern of how PEH lessons unfold, is not conducive to learning specific capabilities in any long-term and systematic way. Further, these studies indicate that some of the promoted learning capabilities are actually outside the subject’s formal task. The research also shows that teachers have difficulty communicating the basic objectives of PEH to students and parents, breaking down these objectives (which are stipulated by the national curriculum) into concrete learning objects that can form the basis for both communication with students and parents, planning teaching (both long- and short-term planning) and assessing student learning.

The research projects will deal, in particular, with the link between the overall goals of the subject, i.e. both in terms of the particular capabilities that students are supposed to develop in PEH and the prerequisites for working with those capabilities, e.g. in relationship to gender and social issues, in the current educational setting. On the one hand, this is about examining what happens when an overall goal, such as being able to ‘move in different physical contexts’, is interpreted by teachers and broken down into the actual teaching of a specific content. On the other hand, it explores the relationship between what teachers want to accomplish with their teaching, what is happening during lessons (in terms of what learning is promoted) and how the lessons are perceived by the students, i.e. how students discern what they have learnt.