In the thesis the aim is to investigate different aspects of what teachers value when grading in Swedish physical education (PE) and to analyses how sociological background factors impact students’ grades. Grades in PE have included aspects other than those prescribed in the grading criteria, for instance motivation and effort. Teachers sometimes find their value-setting difficult to articulate and refer to a “gut feeling”. In order to explore both explicit and implicit forms of value-setting, the Repertory Grid interview technique is employed. The thesis includes four sub-studies, three interview studies with Swedish PE teachers and a fourth study based on registry data from the Swedish National Agency for Education. The data of all students leaving nine-year compulsory school in 2014 (n=95317) is analysed to explore how sociological background factors, such as migration background, parents’ education, school provider and gender, affect PE grades. The results reveal aspects of grading that are not detectable in the official description of the grading assignment and highlight problems that teachers need to address when grading. Four themes are discerned in the teachers’ grading practices: motivation, knowledge, confidence and social skills. The implementation of a new national curriculum with specified knowledge requirements seems to improve the alignment with the national criteria, but there is still a gap between policy and practice. The knowledge requirements for movement are often interpreted as performances in competitive sports, even if the teachers try to find other interpretations. The odds ratio for getting a higher grade in PE is greater for the variables migration background and parents’ education than for the other investigated variables. The concepts formulated by Bernstein are applied to explore the relations between teachers’ grading practices and cultural and political influences and to discuss how the tensions between different interests could affect teachers’ grading. The conclusion is that the gap between policy and practice confirmed in this study is related to tensions between the interests and purposes of different agents, all of whom strive to influence steering documents and practice. Cultural and political influences need to be considered and facilitate discussions about how to understand which knowledge is valued in PE and who has better possibilities to assimilate it. / Forskningslinjen Utbildning

Few studies have focused on how learning takes place in physical education and health (PEH) practices, and even more so in relation to artifact use. Dance is a core content in the Swedish curriculum, but according to previous research it nevertheless rarely occurs in practice due to many teachers’ lack of knowledge. Movement qualities are something that students are supposed to develop in the subject, where dance can be used as a form of activity. The aim of the licentiate thesis is to examine students’ use and development of different movement qualities in a learning process where dance exergames are used as teaching aids in the PEH practice in upper secondary school. The research questions in the study are: (1) what kind of movement qualities do students use when they interact with each other and with dance exergames, and (2) how does the learning of movement qualities occur when dance exergames are used as teaching aids? A series of seven PEH-lessons were designed. Four of the lesson had a spe-cific purpose, such as working with rhythm and coordination where the exergames Nintendo Wii Just Dance 3 and 4 were used as teaching aids. In two other lessons the students worked in groups to create their own dances, and as a final goal, at lesson seven, the groups presented their dances. All the lessons were video recorded. A framework inspired by Laban’s movement analysis was used to analyze the students’ movement qualities, based on four aspects: body, space, effort and relationship. To be able to analyze the students, the dance exergames and the context as a whole, the study involved a socio-cultural ap-proach to learning. Learning situations in the ongoing practice were also ana-lyzed, where learning was investigated as something that occurs through inter-actions between students and between students and artifacts. The results show a way to describe students’ movement qualities, which con-tribute to PEH-teachers language of knowledge in movement. The results also demonstrate that learning occurred through imitation, repetition, communica-tion, negotiation, practice, modeling, instruction and using metaphors. A con-clusion is that students’ use and development of movement qualities do not depend on the use of the dance exergames per se, instead it depends on how the dance exergames are used in PEH practice. / Forskningslinjen Utbildning

La présente thèse a pour but d’approfondir l’étude du geste dans le cadre de l’interaction Homme Machine. Il s’agit de créer de nouveaux paradigmes d’interaction qui offrent à l’utilisateur de plus amples possibilités d’expression basées sur le geste. Un des vecteurs d’expression du geste, très rarement traité en Interaction Homme Machine, qui lui confère sa coloration et son aspect, est ce que les théoriciens et praticiens de la danse appellent « les qualités de mouvement ». Nous mettons à profit des collaborations avec le domaine de la danse pour étudier la notion de qualités de mouvement et l’intégrer à des paradigmes d’interaction gestuelle. Notre travail analyse les apports de l’intégration des qualités de mouvement comme modalité d’interaction, fournit les outils propices à l’élaboration de cette intégration (en termes de méthodes d’analyse, de visualisation et de contrôle gestuel), en développe et évalue certaines techniques d’interaction.Les contributions de la thèse se situent d’abord dans la formalisation de la notion de qualités de mouvement et l’évaluation de son intégration dans un dispositif interactif en termes d’expérience utilisateur. Sur le plan de la visualisation des qualités de mouvement, les travaux menés pendant la thèse ont permis de démontrer que les modèles physiques masses-ressorts offrent de grandes possibilités de simulation de comportements dynamiques et de contrôle en temps réel. Sur le plan de l’analyse, la thèse a permis de développer des approches novatrices de reconnaissance automatique des qualités de mouvement de l’utilisateur. Enfin, à partir des approches d’analyse et de visualisation des qualités de mouvement, la thèse a donné lieu à l’implémentation d’un ensemble de techniques d’interaction. Elle a appliqué et évalué ses techniques dans le contexte de la pédagogie de la danse et de la performance. / The thesis studies gesture in the context of Human-Computer interaction. It aims at creating new interaction paradigms that offer the user further expressive possibilities based on gestures. The theorists and practitioners of the dance call "movement qualities” (MQ), a notion that conveys expressive content describing the way a gesture is performed. This notion has been rarely taken into consideration in the field of HCI. Our work draws on collaborations with the field of dance to explore the notion of movement qualities and to integrate it as interaction modality. 

The contributions of the thesis are in the formalism of the notion of movement qualities and evaluation of its integration as interaction modality in terms of user experience. 

We also provide computational tools for considering MQ in interactive systems in terms of analysis, representation and gesture control methods. On the representational level, our work have demonstrated that physical models based on masses and springs systems offer great opportunities for simulating dynamics related to MQs and for real-time gesture control. On the analysis level, we developed innovative approaches to automatic real time recognition of movement qualities. Finally, we implemented of a set of interaction techniques based on movement qualities that we applied and evaluated in the context of dance pedagogy and performance.