Framing and promoting sustainable health in physical education and health

Abstract in English

The point of departure for this thesis is that sustainability education may offer a new perspective and a reorientation of physical education and health. The overall aim of this thesis is to explore how ‘sustainable health’ can be framed and promoted in physical education and health and how perspectives on sustainability can revitalize and transform learning objectives, content and teaching practices. Across four sub-studies, a mixed-methods approach combining quantitative and qualitative methods was employed to examine holistic health, teachers’ understandings and perceived competence regarding sustainability, didactical strategies for sustainability-oriented teaching, and collaborative professional learning and practice development. Overall, the thesis demonstrates how sustainability can function as an overarching pedagogical orientation rather than as additional curriculum content, while highlighting the importance of aligning educational purposes, pedagogy, and content with teachers’ shared understandings and professional culture to reorientate and transform teaching practices in physical education and health. From a didactical perspective, this orientation invites reconsideration of the why, what, and how of PEH by connecting embodied learning and established content with holistic well-being, critical reflection, agency, and social and environmental responsibility. The findings further highlight collaborative professional learning as important for enabling teachers to critically reconsider established assumptions, engage with research-informed perspectives, and collectively develop sustainability-oriented pedagogical practices. The thesis positions sustainable health as a potential normative horizon for PEH, reconnecting and reframing its educational resources around a future-oriented question: how can PEH support young people to develop knowledge, experiences, and capacities that support living well with themselves, with others, and within their local and global environments, now and in the future?