What frames teaching of friluftsliv? - Analysing a pedagogic discourse within Swedish PE through framing and the pedagogic device

Research indicates that outdoor teaching practices within a Physical Education (PE) context are framed by several factors with the potential to weaken or strengthen PE teachers’ control of pedagogic messages. Drawing on 12 qualitative interviews with PE teachers in compulsory schools in Sweden, the findings in this study suggest that factors claimed to control teachers’ pedagogic communication of friluftsliv (Scandinavian equivalent to outdoor education) is based on the construction of a dominating pedagogic discourse for outdoor teaching in Swedish schools. Analysing the constitution of this discourse through Bernstein’s theoretical concepts of framing and the pedagogic device, Swedish PE teachers and PE teacher education appear to reproduce friluftsliv as a teaching practice carried out in a remote wilderness setting involving specific equipment, financial resources and a certain amount of risk. In relation to these results, alternative ways to think of outdoor teaching in relation to the achievement of the national aims in Swedish PE are discussed.