This study compares the physical education between two Swedish schools from 1925-1930. One school is all female while the other is all male up until the school reform of 1927 when girls got access to higher education in Sweden.  The study aims to: •    Study how the two different schools educated their pupils in gymnastic and sports •    Compare how the all-female school differs from the boys’ school in terms of physical education. •    Analyze how the school system contributed to reinforcing social gender stereotypes in Swedish society. Physical education as a subject has been a part of the Swedish educational system since the end of the 19th century. Since its introduction, the subject has seen several changes in both name and content. But for a long time, it has always contained some form of ling gymnastics. Ling gymnastics is a type of gymnastic which is known for discipline, military exercises, and controlled movements with the help of commands from a teacher. I have analyzed the annual reports of the two schools in this subject to study the differences in the two school’s application of ling gymnastics, through a theoretical framework based on gender theory.  The results of the study show that there was a significant difference between the education of boys and girls. The boys’ education aimed more at making them strong and competitive while including military exercises which the girls did not. The girls’ education was more aimed at flexibility, grace, and simpler sports. This shows that the physical education system in Sweden did segregate the genders and enforced the social-gender stereotypes.

This study aims to investigate and describe the direction of the ideological development of the Swedish gymnastics association Gymniska Förbundet. Between 1928 and 1932, this organization transformed from a purely gymnastic and cultural association into an influential platform for the production of Swedish nationalist ideology. Based on theories of National Socialism’s formation within modern society, the analysis focus on the conditions regulating Gymniska Förbundets relation to modernity. Thus the study examines the association’s ideas in relationship to the concept of modernity. The analysis shows that the ideological fusion between ideas regarding gymnastics and culture on one hand, and of Swedish racial biologyon the other, provided the conditions needed for an alternative vision of modernity, similar to that which international research has characterized as the blut und boden-ideology. By presenting how and in what ways the Swedish blut und boden-ideology emerged and took shape, the study contributes to the research on the party-politically independent National Socialist ideology in Sweden. Furthermore, the analysis reveals networking strategies and idea transfer within the ideological movement based on wider applications of ideas concerning racial biology.

For almost 200 years the University College of Physical Education and Sports in Stockholm (former Royal Central Institute of Gymnastics; GCI later GIH; Stockholm College of Physical Education and Sports) has been educating PE teachers - and still does. In the very beginning and throughout the first 100 years, gymnastics was a major part of the studies at the institute, and also in ordinary schools. Early gymnastics were invented by Per Henrik Ling, the father of the Swedish Ling gymnastics, and later developed by his son, Hjalmar Ling. The part of the Ling system called pedagogical gymnastics, consisted of “daily gymnastic training exercises”, which showed how gymnastics should be taught and performed. The aim of this thesis is to follow and describe gymnastics as a subject and its development at the PE teacher-training programme at GCI/GIH. Special attention is placed on the movement part without apparatus (the floor exercise) for male and female students. The time period studied is 1944 to 1992. The thesis consists of two separate empirical studies, with a shared interview study of 12 former teacher educators participating in both studies. Besides the above-mentioned interviews, the methods used are document analyses and visual analyses. Triangulation is used in order to follow the changes of the subject’s content, figuration and representation. The first empirical study investigates the institution of gymnastics’- collective memory, its content and legitimacy. This is done by looking at what time was allotted to the subject in relation to other subjects, and also which concepts were used in relation to floor exercise. The interviews deal with the objectives of the subject and what kind of influences the former teacher educators came in contact with. From a semiotic approach, the second study deals with visual analyses of film sequences, with floor exercises performed by male and female students. (See enclosed CD). The film material comes from the Institute’s events. The content and composition of the film sequences are analysed, and the representation of the movements is interpreted by semiotic discourse analyses. The interview study deals with the former teacher educators’ pedagogical view of the formation of the gymnastics. The results show that in 1944 the subject gymnastics took approximately 40% of the total study time. In 1992 the time allocated for gymnastics has been reduced to approximately 9%. From the 1940s to the 1970s, two separate gymnastics discourses existed, one male and one female, expressed in the movement content and in the figuration of movements. The male discourse was maintained almost intact, without any changes. The female discourse, on the other hand, was continually changed and developed over the actual period of time, strongly influenced by rhythmic and dance. When coeducation was implemented in the late 1970s, a new culture of body movements was developed – which was unisex. Between 1949 and1970 in the film material, the masculine discourse was represented by the body image of a systematically trained and disciplined body, executing corrective gymnastics exercises, according to an instrumental way of looking at physical training. The smooth, healthy looking young body image of a woman, executing rhythmical aesthetical gymnastics, according to existing values, characterised the feminine discourse. There seems to have been aesthetics fostering rationality that ruled the female gymnastics. In 1985 the representation of the body image changed, and focus on the performance of the movements disappeared. The objectives of the subject have changed from the collective, corrective and/or aesthetical form of gymnastics to a gymnastic discourse where the attention of simplifying the movements, the individual and the social climate in the group are central. Finally, the findings show that four factors have influenced the changes and development of the subject and the teacher-training programme. Firstly, changes in society in terms of equality, gender roles and a changed role of the PE teacher. Secondly, the impact of the sport discourse outweighed the status of the gymnastics discourse and its legitimacy. The cultivating values, in terms of the aesthetical schooling for the female students, disappeared. Thirdly, the striving for research-related instructions in the teachertraining programme, (urged by the state from 1977) affected both time allotments for gymnastics and sports and the relation between theoretical and practical courses. Finally, over the years, the subject gymnastics has been strongly influenced by different scientific discourses: first the medical discourse, followed by the physiological discourse and from the1980s and on, by the social scientific (pedagogical) discourse.

The purpose of this thesis is to, based on interviews and document studies, critically discuss how the introduction of kickboxing in Physical Education (PE) could affect gender equality in society. Based on a queer feminist and norm critical perspective on the prevailing teaching of PE, which, despite official efforts to challenge and modernize PE, persists in reproducing gender norms by e.g. spending 75% of class time on ball games. The hypothesis is that girls accessing violence (empowerment) through a bodily awareness in the form of kickboxing, positively would challenge the power imbalance that gender norms create. Girls are brought up, even today, in accordance with gender norms arguing against girls/women wanting to use their bodies as powerful tools to set limits. In accordance with the traditional Ling gymnastics, in which body and mind develops into a harmonious whole, the introduction of kickboxing in PE would have a major impact on how girls and boys could relate to each other in the community as well as develop the mind and body in harmony. It can be hypothesized that by including kickboxing in PE girls' bodies would be given the opportunity to be powerful, thus enable girls as well as boys to identify themselves as transcendent individuals rather than to experience the powerlessness and mental illness which often develops already during puberty. / Uppsatsens syfte är att med utgångspunkt i samtalsintervjuer och dokumentstudier kritiskt diskutera hur införandet av kickboxning i skolämnet Idrott och hälsa skulle kunna påverka jämställdheten i samhället. Diskussionen förs utifrån ett queerfeministiskt och normkritiskt perspektiv på rådande undervisning i Idrott och hälsa, som trots Skolverkets delvis normutmanande styrdokument framhärdar i att reproducera genusnormer genom att ägna 75% av lektionstiden till bollspel. Hypotesen är att flickors tillång till våld (empowerment) genom ett kroppsligt görande i form av kickboxning, på ett positivt sätt skulle förändra den maktobalans som genusnormer skapar. Flickor uppfostras ännu idag i enlighet med normer som hävdar att flickor/kvinnor inte vill, kan eller bör ha möjlighet att använda sin kropp som ett kraftfullt redskap för att sätta gränser. I enlighet med den traditionella Linggymnastikens grunder, bör kropp och själ utvecklas till en harmonisk enhet. Införandet av kickboxning i Idrott och hälsaundervisningen skulle vara en normkritisk pedagogik med stor inverkan på hur flickor och pojkar skulle förhålla sig till varandra i samhället och utveckla kropp och själ i harmoni. Genom att även flickors kroppar ges möjlighet att vara kraftfulla kan det hypotetiseras att flickor skulle kunna se sig själva som transcenderande subjekt istället för att uppleva den maktlöshet och psykiska ohälsa som ofta befästs under puberteten.