According to Lidar et al (2012) and Lundqvist et al. (2012), a teaching tradition shapes the curriculum in the sense that it contains ideas about the goals of school subjects and therefore about the kind of skills expected from the students in order to achieve these specific goals. Contrary to science education for which Östman (1996) defined a threefold teaching traditions typology (academic, moral, applied), no such typology exists for physical education, even if multiple perspectives of physical education are described in the literature (Krüger, 2012; NASPE, 1995; Cliff et al., 2009 and Kirk, 2010). The aim of this paper is to clarify and discuss similarities and differences between the curricula for physical education in secondary schools in Sweden, France and Switzerland, with a special focus on gymnastics and fitness. We chose these two practices because they are liable to highlight the similarities and differences across contexts in terms of didactic transposition (Chevallard, 1985/1991). How is their artistic dimension considered? What is the priority between creativity and imitation? What kind of interactions between students or between teacher and students are proposed? The analysis take the following dimensions into account: (a) historical roots of the curriculum texts; (b) general structure of the curriculum texts; (c) general recommendations; and (d) skills expected from the students and examples of subject contents in both focused practices. The historical roots of the curriculum texts influence current structure, general recommendations, skills and subject contents, and contribute to determine regularities whose identification would be a first step in determining teaching traditions in physical education. Gymnastics and fitness can be taught within different teaching traditions. In the presentation we also discuss how the results from this research can be used in studying teaching and learning, as they are observable in the teacher’s and students’ joint action.

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