Our analysis falls within the field of comparatist studies in didactics, a developing scientific orientation whose premises take root in disciplinary didactics (Leutenegger, Schubauer-Leoni and Ligozat, 2009; Sensevy, 2009). This orientation finds a specific expression in the field of physical, sports and artistic activities (PSAA). Indeed, PSAA practices are applied in multiple places determined by society. The same PSAA (gymnastics, for example) can thus be practised at school (Physical Education lessons), in out of school locations (early-learning activities for toddlers, elite sports, leisure activities, health-related physical rehabilitation), or else in an everyday life context (with family and friends). These institutional places are presented as systems of norms of teaching and learning developed there, as well as the body knowledge that results from them. A comparatist approach of PSAA in didactics should be able to move freely between different contexts, different knowledge objects, different audiences, without defending a priori the predominance of one institutional place over the other. We choose to study various PSAA situations which a priori have “nothing to do” with neither “normalized” school practices, nor with everyday life “free” practices. In these “non-schooling” and “non-daily” situations, the different ways people interact, even if they are regulated, are not necessarily subjected to systematic preliminary agreements among the actors. While most of the didactical research first focused on the PE school discipline, “non-schooling” situations usually perceived as not comparable, were neglected. Yet, confronting these different situations makes it possible to question aspects indiscernible at first sight, hidden or unusual properties, which in return will find an echo in school practices. We wish to highlight the interdisciplinary complexity and to open up a space of comparatism between various PSAA experiences offering little apparent homology.

In order to take this work further, we will gather within the same “family” the following activities: dance, corporal expression, and rhythmic gymnastics. The study presents three non-schooling teaching-learning contexts: 1) The practice of the Indian dance Kathak in an intercultural French-Indian association: the representation by French students of a traditional poetic story; 2) A training course in corporal expression with Physical Education teachers who are not experts in the discipline: the study of comical exaggeration; 3) Training in rhythmic gymnastics in an elite club in Bulgaria: working on a combination of “pivots” at the approach of an important competition. So as to understand the contrasted teaching-learning situations, we thus consider them as “games”, in the sense defined by Wittgenstein and discussed by Sensevy (2007), which are unknown to us and whose “rules” we want to grasp.

The observation of events in various contexts makes it possible to infer from contrasted cases the nature of learning games and rules which call into existence and give meaning to these games. We will demonstrate that learning games, in order to be developed, require a strong articulation with epistemic games. The latter refer to the physical and artistic activity as a cultural universe. They represent both a knowledge target and a set of conditions which structure the construction of the learning games. The interest we have in forms of teaching-learning constructed outside schooling traditions brings us to keep at a distance, which in return, enables us to better assess the usual schooling practices.