In this paper, I introduce the aims and preliminary design of my planned dissertation project on students’ educational support needs in the subject of physical education and health (PEH).

National evaluations of Swedish compulsory school have repeatedly shown that achieving inclusion and ensuring equal educational opportunities for all students remain persistent challenges in the subject of PEH (Skolinspektionen, 2010, 2012, 2018). These challenges are frequently linked to long-standing traditions within the subject that emphasize competition, performance, and bodily ability – traditions that tend to privilege certain students while marginalising others (Londos, 2010; Quennerstedt et al., 2008; Svennberg, 2017). Such traditions are likely to shape not only teaching practices but also teachers’ expectations of students’ achievements and their understandings of who is perceived as being in need of subject-related educational support.

In this thesis, “Educational support” refers here to subject-related, targeted, and regularly provided support based on individual students’ needs in PEH. Such individual support may be delivered to students individually or in group settings. This includes both formal, school-regulated support and informal support embedded in everyday teaching, such as verbal guidance or physical assistance, aimed at helping students reach the subject’s learning goals. 

All teachers, regardless of subject, are required to provide educational support to students who need it. This means that they must make pedagogical adjustments in their everyday practice and adapt their teaching accordingly. The pedagogical adjustments need to be based on judgements about the students’ educational support needs, that is, what a specific student requires in a given instructional situation in order to benefit from the teaching. What these judgements are based on, and how they in turn construct students’ support needs, is complex and requires in-depth investigation. 

Against this background, the overall aim of this thesis is to explore how educational support and students’ subject-related support needs in PEH are constructed in policy documents, and by teachers, and how these constructions are enacted in teachers’ everyday practices. To address this aim, the thesis first examines how policy documents construct what counts as desirable and legitimate knowledge and ability in the subject, and how these constructions have changed over time. These historical policy constructions are assumed to underpin teachers' understandings and constructions of student's educational support needs in PEH, and how these constructions are enacted in practice. The thesis consists of three interrelated studies, each guided by a specific research question: 

RQ1: How are students’ educational support needs in PEH constructed in curriculum material from 1994-2022?

RQ2: How do teachers understand and construct students’ educational support needs in PEH?

RQ3: How are teachers’ understandings and constructions of students’ educational support needs enacted in everyday PEH practice, and how are these enacted through supportive interventions?

The thesis is theoretically informed by critical policy sociology, drawing primarily on the work of Stephan Ball and colleagues (2012). From this perspective, policy is not understood as a neutral set of texts or directives, but as a social and political and formative process shaped by power relations, dominant discourses, and historical conditions. According to Ball et al. (2012), policy is enacted rather than simply implemented in a linear manner. This means that while policy provides discursive and material frameworks, it is interpreted and enacted differently in practice. From this perspective, variations in teachers’ understandings and constructions of students’ educational support needs cannot be understood without attention to subject traditions and contextual conditions. which means that policy both shapes and is shaped by context, suggesting that variations in enactments cannot be understood without attention to the contextual conditions. This perspective informs Studies 2 and 3, which examine how policy is enacted in teachers’ everyday practices in PEH. 

The thesis employs a qualitative research design and consists of three interrelated studies. Study 1 addresses the macro level through an analysis of how conceptions of knowledge are constructed and transformed over time within the PEH curriculum materials. Study 2 focuses on the meso level by examining how teachers understand and construct students’ educational support needs within the subject. In this study, educational support refers to needs that teachers describe as individual, recurrent, and necessary for students to be able to reach subject-specific goals across different aspects of PEH practices. Study 3 addresses the micro level by analysing how teachers’ understandings and constructions of students’ educational support needs are enacted in everyday PEH practice. Together, this design enables an exploration of the interconnections between discourses, professional understandings, and teaching practices. The proposed conference presentation focuses on RQ1 and Study 1. It examines how policy documents construct what counts as desirable and legitimate knowledge in PEH, and how these constructions have shifted over time. The analysis focuses on how particular understandings of knowledge are foregrounded in policy, as well as what is marginalised or left unarticulated. These constructions are also understood to shape the conditions under which educational support needs come to be understood within the subject. They are therefore treated as an important backdrop against which teachers' understandings and constructions of students’ educational support are formed and enacted. The empirical material comprises PEH-specific syllabi from three curriculum reforms (Lpo94, Lgr11, Lgr22) and supplementary commentary published by the Swedish National Agency for Education (Skolverket, 2022). The material will be analysed using a genealogically inspired policy discursive analysis based on Bacchi’s (2009) approach: What’s the problem represented to be? (WPR). This approach conceptualises policy as a set of problem representations and enables a systematic examination of underlying assumptions, silences, and discursive shifts within policy texts. Through this WPR-inspired analytical lens, the study explores how constructions of knowledge in PEH shape the boundaries of what becomes seen and constructed as educational support needs within the subject.

Expected insights from the genealogically inspired WPR analysis of the PEH syllabus (see RQ1): The analysis is expected to highlight how knowledge has been constructed in policy over time, and how certain forms of knowledge are foregrounded while others remain marginalised or silenced. It may also contribute to identifying both continuities and shifts in these constructions across different curriculum reforms. These policy constructions are understood as shaping the conditions for what comes to be perceived as educational support needs within the subject. In this sense, the analysis may provide an important analytical backdrop for the subsequent studies by offering a contextual understanding of how teachers’ understandings and constructions of students’ educational support needs take shape and are enacted in practice. At the conference, I also intend to discuss insights from the presented study in relation to how students’ educational support needs are addressed in supranational educational policies, such as OECD and EU policy documents. The purpose of this discussion is not to conduct a systematic comparison, but to reflect on whether the ways in which Swedish curriculum materials construct support needs in PEH appear to be specific to the national context, or whether similar tendencies can be identified in other countries’ policies.

Bacchi, C. L. (2009). Analysing policy: What’s the problem represented to be? Pearson Australia. Ball, S. J., Maguire, M., & Braun, A. (2012). How schools do policy: Policy enactments in secondary schools. Routledge. Londos, M. (2010). Spelet på fältet: Relationen mellan ämnet idrott och hälsa i gymnasieskolan och idrott på fritid. Lärarutbildningen, Malmö högskola. Skolinspektionen. (2010). A lot of sport and little health: The Swedish Schools Inspectorate’s report from the flying inspection in physical education and health (Ref. No. 2010:2037). Skolinspektionen. Skolinspektionen. (2012). Physical education and health in compulsory school: With learning in motion (Ref. No. 400-2011:1362). Skolinspektionen. Skolinspektionen. (2018). Quality review of the subject physical education and health in years 7–9 (Ref. No. 400-2017:3948). Skolinspektionen. Skolverket. (2022). Curriculum for the compulsory school, preschool class and school-age educare – Lgr 22 [In Swedish]. Skolverket. Skolverket. (2022). Kommentarmaterial till kursplanen i idrott och hälsa – grundskolan. [Elektronisk resurs]. Skolverket. Svennberg, L. (2017). Swedish PE teachers’ understandings of legitimate movement in a criterion-referenced grading system. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 22(3), 257–269. https://doi.org/10.1080/17408989.2016.1176132 Quennerstedt, M., Marie, Ö., & Eriksson, C. (2008). Physical Education in Sweden – a national evaluation. Educationline, 1–17.