The physical education (PE) teacher profession has a marginalized status compared to other teachers (Ferry & Westerlund, 2023; Gaudreault et al., 2018; Richards et al., 2018). The marginalization can be characterized by a lack of support from colleagues, parents, pupils, and other stakeholders, a lack of resources (Richards et al, 2018) and isolation (Ferry & Westerlund, 2023). However, the description of the status of PE teachers is not entirely consistent, as, for example, Kougioumtzis et al (2011) describes that the PE teacher profession is experiencing an increased status in some of the Nordic countries. As a result of marginalization, PE teachers experience burnout and lower self-efficacies (Carlson & Henninger, 2011). Following this, there is an outspoken strive among the PE teachers to gain themselves higher status, to become less marginalized (Laquinarion et al, 2024; Richards et al, 2018). This study aims to understand Swedish PE teachers’ pursuit of status.

To study the PE teachers' pursuit of status, concepts from theories of profession are used. Here, a profession holds a higher status than a non-profession. A commonly used definition of a profession is constructed by Parsons (1964). It states that a profession should have a formal education, that the practitioners should show demonstrable skill in applying it, and that there should be institutional mechanisms that warrant that the competence is used in a socially responsible way. Applying this definition to PE teachers, one can argue that they to some extent meet these requirements, and to some extend does not (Sebelius, 2024). Nevertheless, it is assumed in this study that PE teachers are not yet a profession but strives to become one.

To gain a higher status, a profession can monopolize a certain position. This can be seen in the history of PE teachers, where they demand that only trained PE teachers should be able to obtain employment as such (Sebelius, 2024). When PE teachers monopolize a position like this, they use a form of social closure (Weber, 1968) called exclusionary closure (Parkin, 1979). It is seen as a professional strategy to maintain power and status and is directed downwards. The opposite form, the usurpationary closure, is used by non-professions in their pursuit of increased status (Parkin, 1979). In this study, it will be investigated how PE teachers use different forms of social closure to achieve higher status.

In order to understand the PE teachers' pursuit of status, the study takes a historical perspective, where different kinds of texts regarding PE teachers are analyzed. The texts consist of celebration writings, proposals, investigations and propositions, curricula, university websites, and job search sites. The various texts were published between 1913 and 2022 but deal with text published as early as 1813. The rationale for selecting these texts was to collectively illustrate the prevailing zeitgeist regarding the language used about the PE teaching profession. The zeitgeist is seen as "prevailing, typical moods and opinions during a certain period of time" (Dictionaries of the Swedish Academy, 2022).

The aim of the study is to understand PE teachers’ pursuit of status and it examines how PE teachers systematically use the different forms of closure over time to gain and maintain discretion, power and status. Two research questions guide the study design, data generation and analysis: (Q1) What claims about status can be found in texts about the PE teaching profession since GCI's (The Swedish school of Sport and Health Sciences) founding in 1813 until today? (Q2) How can the claims about status be explained with theories of professions? 

The texts underwent thematic analysis in three steps (Bryman, 2021; Guest et al., 2019). In the first step, themes were created through coding, which is a common approach in thematic analysis (Guest et al., 2019). Three major themes were now created: The PE teacher, The PE subject, and Status. In this abstract, the focus is on status. In the second step, sub-themes were created with a focus on the different levels where PE teachers' pursuit of status takes place: the College, Society and the Authorities. These first two analytical steps identified a gap between PE teachers and other teachers, and strategies to overcome it. At the first level, the College, the PE teachers compare their status with other teachers. Among other things, proposals are made for a higher salary, more teaching hours, two subject degrees, and a gymnastics college. The second level, Society, identifies how the PE profession meets mutual support and resistance in society. The third level, Authorities, describes how the authorities can influence the growth and status of the PE subject through financial contributions and decisions on administrative factors such as compulsory education and size of teaching groups. In the first two steps, the analysis procedure was inductive, where empirical evidence was allowed to guide the creation of themes. The last step of the analysis was deductive, as theories of profession was used as an analytical tool (Woo et al., 2017). By examining the empirical evidence based on the concepts of exclusionary closure and usurpationary closure, it was identified how PE teachers systematically use these strategies in their pursuit of higher status.

The result shows that PE teachers use both exclusionary closure and usurpationary closure within the scope of their professional claim. They use the usurpationary closure on four different professional groups in their attempt to achieve higher status, physiotherapists, military, trainers in club sports and teachers of theoretical subjects. At the time being, those professional groups had a higher reputation and higher status than the PE teaching profession. The usurpationary closure is expressed in the form of joint education with the military and physiotherapy, various collaborations with club sports and attempts at a two-subject teacher's degree. The study identifies how PE teachers carry out exclusionary closure on four different grounds: a monopoly on teaching positions with the help of expert training with a specialist degree, an exclusionary requirement for a certain physical competence of the PE teachers and PE students, an exclusionary age requirement and an exclusion of physical therapy and military gymnastics through charter amendments. By using exclusionary closure, PE teachers try to maximize their opportunities and rewards by only giving access to a small group of eligibles: those with the right qualifications, physical conditions, age, and professional background. The PE teachers’ strategies in using social closure have probably had a temporary effect, but since the PE teaching profession is still perceived as marginalized, it can be assumed that the social closure has not fully worked. One reason for this might be that to be able to exclude other professions, clear frameworks are required around one's own, which mark out what is the profession and what is not. The PE teachers have had some difficulties in clearly describing the specific characteristics of the profession (Nyberg & Larsson, 2014), which may affect the possibility of creating clear frameworks around the profession.

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