To have or to be body : a textanalytical study of the compulsory subject physical education

The overall aim of this study is to analyze how the body is understood in the compulsory school subject physical education during the period 1976-2002. With pragmatism as the point of departure the texts of curricula, syllabi and articles from the physical education teacher's specialist press are analyzed. The analytical tools used are two perspectives of the body and human movement, one based on dualistic ideas and the other on Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the lived body. The analysis shows that there are differences in how the embodied person is understood in three different types of text. In the curricula the dualistic ideas where the individual is seperated into body and soul prevail. The picture is more complex in the syllabi whilst in the articles from the specialist press the lived body is found more often. In the articles from the specialist press there is a pattern that shows change over time where phenomenological ideas are more prominent towards the end of the period studied. The dissertation consists of three parts. In the first part there is an introduction to the study and theoretical perspectives are introduced, the second part consists of the analysis of the texts and in the third part these are discussed and possible didactic consequences presented