Sports one hundred percent important in Sweden : Physical education in ball games and dance from newly arrived pupils perspective

Sweden has in these past couple of years given home to an increased number of newly arrived immigrants, which means that a lot of newly arrived pupils are now being taught in the Swedish schooling system. Many of them have never before been acquainted with physical education. The curriculum states that the education must be adapted to suit each and every pupil, so that everyone can be given the same opportunities to develop their skills and knowledge. Therefore, it is important to better understand the challenges that newly arrived pupils are experiencing in the subject physical education. In this paper, a closer look at how the learning situations in ball games and dance are experienced will take place, in order to better understand the obstacles and possibilities that arise in these situations. This is a qualitative study, where focused interviews with 8 pupils at two different schools in the Värmland region in Sweden were conducted. The results show that the overall experience with ball games and dance in the physical education subject was positive. Most of the pupils in this study admitted that they experienced an understanding for the content and were motivated to take part in these activities. There were a few differences between how the boys and the girls experienced the subject in this study, but the differences within the genders varies in the same way as it does between genders.