To Örebro University

The use of texts has increased in society, not the least in areas which are not normally seen as textmediated (Karlsson, 2006), and thus it may not be surprising that written practices have become more common even in school subjects which have not traditionally been text-mediated, such as Physical Education and Health (PEH). In Swedish research on PEH, the increasing use of written and spoken texts in assessment has been questioned, due to the fact that written and spoken texts tend to be considered as more valid knowledge than embodied learning (Tolgfors, 2017, p. 193).

This study, part of an ongoing ethnographic study of PEH-instruction in a class in lower secondary school, investigates students’ texts used as examinations of three different teaching units: Dance and Rhytmics, Sports injuries and  Setting up goals for training.

The aim is to investigate the texts according to how subject content, subject voice and subject specific language- and textstructures are entextualized (Bauman & Briggs, 1990).

The study draws on New Literacy Studies (NLS), based on the idea that reading and writing can best be understood as situated in social practices. In the study, it means that such literacy practices are situated in PEH-instruction where they get their meaning, while they are also embedded in a wider social and cultural context and affected by e.g. curriculum (cf. Barton & Hamilton, 1998).

Expected outcomes, in terms of what is entextualized in students’ texts, aim to describe possible intepretations of disciplinary literacy in PEH, in this case if and how students’ writing is an integrated part of the subject, and thus has a potential to contribute to the learning of subject knowledge.

Barton, D. & Hamilton, M.  (1998, 2012).  Local literacies:  Reading and writing in one community.  London:  Routledge.

Bauman, R. & Briggs, C. L. (1990). Poetics and Performance as Critical Perspectives on Language and Social Life. Annual Review of Anthropology 19, 59–88.

Karlsson, A-M. (2006). En arbetsdag i skriftsamhället. Ett etnografiskt perspektiv på skriftanvändning i vanliga yrken. Stockholm: Språkrådet.

Tolgfors, B. (2017). Bedömning för vilket lärande?: En studie av vad bedömning för lärande blir och gör i ämnet idrott och hälsa. Örebro Studies in Sport Sciences, 2017.