Navigating uncertainty: how do PE teachers respond to competing institutional pressures?

Abstract

Little is known about how PE teachers respond to the particularities of certain institutional pressures. Such knowledge is needed to start a discussion on how external expectations are managed by PE teachers, who in turn make internal adaptions (e.g. change in teaching elements, schedules, feedback models, work teams) that create organisational principles. Such insights might ultimately help shed new light on the origin of unintended consequences arising from policy transformation. In this study, I explored how PE teachers respond to institutional pressures embedded in policy implementation by answering the following research question: What types of responses to multiple institutional logics can be interpreted from PE teachers’ narratives about policy implementation? I utilised an institutional logics approach to analyse the data collected from 16 semistructured interviews with Swedish PE teachers. The results showed that PE teachers respond in four ways: (a) compliance, (b) defiance, (c) compartmentalisation, and (d) combination. In addition, I discuss how PE teachers negotiate competing institutional pressures and point to aspects in the organisation of teaching that are direct consequences of this process.

Keywords:

• Policy
• enactment
• physical education
• organisational analysis
• institutional logics

Introduction

The Swedish Ministry of Education announced in 2018 that the number of PE teaching hours in 9-year compulsory schools would increase from 500 to 600 (Regeringskansliet, 2018). The argumentation forming the basis for the decision was based on research that pointed to a correlation between physical activity and increased learning ability. The government argued that findings from such studies showed positive links between physical activity, motor training, and academic performance (Regeringsbeslut U2014/5377/S, 2014; Regeringskansliet, 2018). After recommendations from the Swedish National Agency for Education (Skolverket, 2018), the 100 added hours were distributed by allocating 20 h to Year 6 and 80 h to Years 7–9 to, for example, counteract sedentary behaviour among students. In practice, this means 30 more minutes a week for Year 6 and 45 more minutes per week for Years 7–9. Over the years, this has been just one of many examples of policy interventions that could be seen as a result of various political, ideological, and economic agendas (Penney, 2013). Regarding Swedish PE, Quennerstedt (2019) claimed that such interventions could be considered a result of more neoliberal political agendas producing effects such as increased foci on classroom-based lectures, assessments, and grading.

This study takes its point of departure in the institutional logics perspective, of which one central tenet is a view of organisations as always exposed to pressure from the external environment. Various political, ideological, and/or economic agendas could therefore be considered examples of institutional pressures, which often vary, resulting in an existence of competing institutional pressures. Because of such pressures, organisations will try to make internal adaptions (e.g. change in teaching elements, schedules, feedback models, work teams) to secure legitimacy (Greenwood et al., 2011). In addition, Kraatz and Block (2008) proposed that contemporary organisational contexts are facing increasing institutional pluralism due to, for example, an increased number of policy interventions. This means that organisational contexts, such as schools, are becoming increasingly embedded in competing institutional pressures, placing conflicting demands on their members (Pache & Santos, 2013). Such conflicting demands need to be managed by organisational members who are situated in organisations with rooted characteristics and inner lives of their own. This means that a policy intervention might not fit the organisation’s unique history, espoused mission, and claimed purpose, affecting its ability to implement change and the intervention’s ultimate consequences (Kraatz & Block, 2008).

Researchers have explored several aspects of institutional pressures in relation to sport organisations and their members. These aspects include the identification of institutional pressures (Stenling & Fahlén, 2009), their changes over time (Slack & Hinings, 1994), their influence on decision making (Gammelsæter & Solenes, 2013), and an explanation of policy outcomes (Strittmatter & Skille, 2017). However, little is known about how organisational members—in this case, PE teachers—respond to the particularities of certain institutional pressures. To address this deficiency, this study’s aim is to explore how PE teachers respond to institutional pressures embedded in policy implementation by answering the following research question: What types of responses to multiple institutional logics can be interpreted from PE teachers’ narratives about policy implementation? To do so, I utilise the policy implementation process, using the 100 added hours (hereafter referred to as the added hours) as a case.

Knowledge about how organisational members respond to external agendas is needed to answer general questions about what professionals do in their daily work and why. But more important, and in the context of this paper, it is needed to start a discussion on how external expectations and pressures are managed by PE teachers, who in turn make internal adaptions that create organisational principles. This knowledge is essential because it shows which organisational principles are the result of certain institutional pressures and whether some are perceived as more important than others. In addition, drawing attention to institutional pressures can suggest shifts in societal thoughts and beliefs about education and what PE is or should be. Such knowledge can be used in efforts to support PE teachers in policy implementation. By applying an institutional logics perspective, I intend to contribute to the knowledge production concerning how context matters for PE teachers’ work and acknowledge nuances of institutional pressure surrounding the Swedish education context and the positioning of PE within such nuances.

The paper proceeds as follows. First, I present a brief contextualisation of the Swedish educational system and PE as a compulsory school subject. Then I review the literature on how various contextual factors affect frontline professionals in policy implementation (Stenling & Fahlén, 2021). Thereafter, I introduce the concept of institutional logics and describe the application of my theoretical framework. Afterward, I present the methodology of my investigation, followed by my key findings showing that PE teachers respond in four ways: (a) compliance, (b) defiance, (c) compartmentalisation, and (d) combination. The paper concludes with a discussion of how my findings contribute to the understanding of how competing institutional pressures are negotiated and how the policy transformation process has consequences for the organisation of PE.

A brief contextualization of Swedish PE

As mentioned in the introduction, the latest major policy concerning PE in Sweden is the added hours, which I utilise as a case in this study. In policy implementation, each individual school was left to decide how to distribute and implement these added hours practically because no additional regulations followed, nor were any changes made in curricular documents (Lindkvist, 2022). These particularities provide an opportunity to ask questions about how PE teachers relate to and manage their surrounding environments. They allow for an investigation of how competing institutional pressures are handled by PE teachers, who, in this case, were charged with implementing policy.

To put this policy into context, the Swedish educational system can be described as highly decentralised, deregulated, market driven, and guided by free school choice (Rönnberg, 2011). Sweden has gone from having a centralised educational system to a decentralised system, characterised by multilevel governance. This means that the government is responsible for decisions concerning school structure and subject content knowledge whereas local municipalities have full responsibility for planning and organising the education provided. As a result of reforms in the last three decades, there are both independent and publicly managed schools. They are both financed by municipal tax money and a central governmental grant. Overall, the Swedish educational system is extensively affected by marketisation, with which independent schools can make a profit (Rönnberg, 2011).

These political changes also affect Swedish PE, exemplified by classroom-based lectures becoming more common along with an increased focus on assessment and grading (Quennerstedt, 2019). This development has been paralleled by an intensified debate concerning PE’s purpose, particularly movement’s educational value (Larsson & Nyberg, 2017), adding to the competing institutional pressures alluded to above. Underpinned by an obesity discourse (Quennerstedt, 2008), being physically active has become equal to being healthy. Quennerstedt (2019) even argued that issues concerning education must be brought back into PE. If educative considerations are not put to the front and centre of the subject, PE risks being dismantled into just a matter of doing sports, fitness, physical activity, obesity prevention, or facilitating fun and enjoyment, all without an educative purpose.

The matter of context for the organization of PE

In this article, I apply the policy implementation process concerning the added hours as a case to explore how PE teachers respond to institutional pressures embedded in policy implementation. This implementation process is, however, just one of many examples of policies targeting PE, eventually requiring PE teachers to implement them in their teaching. More substantive changes to the curriculum were made in 1969, 1980, 1994, and 2011 (see, e.g. Penney, 2013, for an international example of curriculum change). More recently, changes were made in the Swedish school law in 2010, in the form of a first teacher reform in 2013 and through a national strategy for digitalisation in 2017.

Other countries, such as England, Wales, and Australia, have implemented various teaching models such as teaching games for understanding (Casey & MacPhail, 2018), initiatives to increase social inclusion (Houlihan & Green, 2006), and health promotion policies (Leow et al., 2014). These and other policies do not stand in isolation; instead, they are implemented in contextual histories and cultures, amidst other policies, and within varying material conditions and pre-existing challenges and opportunities (Penney, 2013). Consequently, interpreting external expectations and affecting change can be perceived as challenging for PE teachers (Leow et al., 2014; Maguire et al., 2019; Wilkinson et al., 2021), and researchers have identified several contextual factors affecting this process. These factors include but are not limited to changes in educational systems (Redelius & Larsson, 2010), lack of funding and resources (Leow et al., 2014; Maguire et al., 2019; Wilkinson et al., 2021), school ratings (Maguire et al., 2019), and a lack of power vested in teachers (Leow et al., 2014).

Wilkinson et al. (2021) showed that losing funding shaped PE teachers’ priorities, resulting in a policy being used as a sorting mechanism to identify and recruit students with high academic performance to secure funding. According to Leow et al. (2014), schools that lack specific funding can feel hampered and see effects on teachers’ quality of teaching. On the other hand, Maguire et al. (2019) argued that the implementation of policy focussing more on academic subjects than PE could lead to concerns among PE teachers about job security and change the subject’s position in schools. The authors also showed that schools with good ratings are better equipped than others to handle external demands. They are more likely to have various resources and the flexibility to anticipate and plan strategic responses and to meld policy into their culture and ethos.

In Sweden, the change into a more goal-oriented educational system has affected how PE is organised, which has created challenges for PE teachers because they now are expected to collaborate to enact the national syllabi. Redelius and Larsson (2010) argued that these collaboration situations need a common professional language—something that PE teachers have proven missing. As a result, PE teachers have found changing from a school culture focussing on how they should teach to instead focussing on what pupils should learn difficult, possibly due to a more goal-oriented educational system (Redelius & Larsson, 2010). Even though researchers have agreed that the context creates challenges for PE teachers when they organise practice (Leow et al., 2014; Maguire et al., 2019; Wilkinson et al., 2021), a deeper exploration of the negotiation process leading to such challenges is necessary. Regarding that exploration, I turn to the theorisation of institutional logics, which I elaborate in the next section.

Institutional pressures, institutional logics, and individual responses

Previous research has outlined how different institutional pressures regulate Swedish PE teachers’ decision-making processes regarding the added hours (Lindkvist, 2022). In that study, Lindkvist (2022) conceptualised various institutional pressures as four institutional logics. To operationalise institutional pressures in this study, I apply the four institutional logics previously explored (Lindkvist, 2022).

Thornton and Ocasio (1999) defined the concept of institutional logics as ‘the socially constructed, historical pattern of material practices, assumptions, values, beliefs, and rules by which individuals produce and reproduce their material subsistence, organize time and space, and provide meaning to their social reality’ (p. 804). This means that institutional logics provide teachers with ready to use, prescriptive templates to shape their actions in terms of what behaviour is considered appropriate (Thornton et al., 2012; Thornton & Ocasio, 2008). The four institutional logics imbued in the added hours are described in four ways. (1) The democracy logic suggests that participation in PE brings added value in forms of appreciation for cooperation and learning of democratic principles. An important point of departure for this logic is that only by participating in (physical) activities can individuals assimilate these added values. (2) The investment logic suggests that PE is a contractor of sports, producing and consuming the product of sports. PE can therefore be used as a product for the pupils, and participation can lead to (public) health and well-being. (3) The professional logic suggests that professionals are the experts and, with their knowledge, make the most informed decisions. PE teachers are keen to highlight their autonomy and allude to their professional skills and knowledge as superior to external actors’ (e.g. politicians’, stakeholders’, parents’). (4) The bureaucracy logic suggests that bureaucratic structures, such as routines, rules, and standardizations, are where the PE teacher profession and subject content knowledge are controlled. The curriculum forms the foundation on which the profession is controlled but at the same time contains room for interpretation, which PE teachers can use to provide what they consider proper education (Lindkvist, 2022).

Organisational theorists have widely applied institutional logics, and as the perspective developed over time, the focus on institutional pluralism has increased (Kraatz & Block, 2008). ‘Institutional pluralism’ refers to contexts in which organisational members encounter multiple institutional logics that are more or less compatible (Kraatz & Block, 2008). Kraatz and Block (2008) described the situation as such: ‘If institutions are broadly understood as ‘the rules of the game’ that direct and circumscribe organizational behaviour, then the organization confronting institutional pluralism plays in two or more games at the same time’ (p. 243). Institutional pluralism can also be linked to discussions on hybridity. Lucassen and Bakker (2016) argued, ‘Hybridity appears when organizations cannot (or can no longer) be described as completely belonging to the state sector, private sector, or civil society’ (p. 76), which increases the conflicting demands on organisational members (Pache & Santos, 2013). That hybridity also applies to the Swedish school system (and PE), which is governmentally controlled but can be independently managed (Rönnberg, 2011) and develops a partnership with, for example, the Swedish Sports Confederation and voluntary sport clubs (Carlman & Augustsson, 2016).

In this environment shaped by institutional pluralism and hybridity, individuals also need to cope and respond to the particularities of various competing institutional pressures (Lindkvist, 2022). Scholars have highlighted organisational responses to conflicts that competing institutional logics have created (for a review, see Greenwood et al., 2011); however, limited attention has been directed towards how individuals experience and respond to these conflicts (Bridwell-Mitchell & Sherer, 2017; Gebreiter & Hidayah, 2019; Pache & Santos, 2013). Because the institutional logics perspective does not provide the necessary conceptual tools to untangle effectively how individuals deal with institutional conflict (Cloutier & Langley, 2013), the analysis is grounded in a theoretical model Pache and Santos (2013) developed. This model has been proven helpful in unpacking individual responses to multiple institutional logics (Gebreiter & Hidayah, 2019). Pache and Santos (2013) developed a typology of individual level responses comprising five elements:

1. Ignorance. Pache and Santos (2013) defined ignorance as ‘an individual’s lack of reaction vis-à-vis institutional demands’ (p. 12). This means that individuals simply ignore an institutional logic, not as a conscious reaction but based on the individuals’ lack of awareness of its existence.

2. Compliance. Pache and Santos (2013) defined compliance as ‘an individual’s full adoption of the values, norms, and practices prescribed by a given logic’ (p. 12). They argued that this response challenges individuals’ perceptions of compliance, forcing them to act and fully go along with one logic, even if it runs counter to another logic’s prescriptions.

3. Defiance. Pache and Santos (2013) defined defiance as ‘an individual’s explicit rejection of the values, norms, and practices prescribed by a given logic’ (p. 13). This is a conscious response to disagree with a certain logic (unlike ignorance), but the degree of resistance could range from refusal to adherence to a given logic to actively acting to remove a logic.

4. Compartmentalisation. Pache and Santos (2013) defined compartmentalisation as ‘an individual’s attempt at purposefully segmenting her compliance with competing logics’ (p. 13). In other words, individuals are conversant with all competing logics but secure legitimacy by separating them according to, for example, context or audience.

5. Combination. Pache and Santos (2013) defined combination as ‘an individual’s attempt at blending some of the values, norms, and practices prescribed by the competing logics’ (p. 14). Individual responses thus involve selective coupling of elements drawn from various logics or the development of new values, norms, or practices that synthesise existing logics.

In analysing the data, I used this typology deductively, as sorting categories, to show how PE teachers negotiate institutional pressures. This process allowed for a second analysis, which involved an inductive coding to construct as nuanced a picture as possible. By sorting those nuances into subcategories, I was able to answer the question of what types of responses to multiple institutional logics can be interpreted from PE teachers’ narratives about policy implementation. In the following section, I present the methodological process.

Methods

This paper is a result of a larger research project with the aim of exploring how PE teachers organise PE in response to a policy requiring 100 more PE teaching hours. The project’s overall design included interviews with 16 PE teachers who worked during the policy implementation process. I asked questions concerning the PE teachers’ thoughts, considerations, and experiences regarding policy implementation. In a previous paper, I focussed on PE teachers’ thoughts and considerations regarding policy implementation and empirically established the four institutional logics underlying this article (Lindkvist, 2022). In this paper, I focus on the questions about PE teachers’ experiences, more specifically their experiences with challenges and external expectations in relation to policy implementation.

Design

In this paper, I aimed to explore how PE teachers respond to institutional pressures embedded in policy implementation. To do so, I based the criteria for sampling data on three main considerations. First, I considered the choice of Swedish secondary schools (N = 1712) because the added hours, to a large extent, were implemented in secondary school. Second, I only included PE teachers with formal education, as the results would then have more potential to say something about the profession’s challenges. Third, I only invited PE teachers with working experience from before and after policy implementation to participate because the interview questions required knowledge of their experiences with policy implementation. Each school was left to decide how to distribute and implement policy practically; the range of variations was unknown at the outset of the study. Therefore, I could not purposely sample informants meeting the three sampling criteria, so the choice fell to random sampling even though it is not a common strategy in qualitative research (Cohen et al., 2013). Because no national agreement had formed on how policy should be implemented, the PE teachers experienced a variety of challenges. The use of random sampling allowed for variation in the challenges PE teachers experienced, and at the same time, I did not have to seek explanations in independent variables a stratified sample might have produced (Cohen et al., 2013).

To ensure access to enough respondents, using a random number generator, I asked 40 schools to participate via their principals, and 10 schools accepted, including 16 PE teachers (nine male and seven female). I excluded 30 schools, as they did not meet one or more sampling criteria. The 10 schools included represented independent and municipally managed schools, had urban and rural demographics, and had student populations ranging from 18–717. In the interviews, I asked questions about policy implementation, inquiring about teachers’ interpretation of their work; their experiences of external pressures, interests, and challenges; and ways they handled such issues. To encourage reflection, I asked the respondents questions such as ‘Are there any changes you have been asked to make considering that several changes have been made because of the added hours?’ ‘Whose opinions do you need to deal with as a PE teacher, considering that many have opinions about what these 100 added hours are good for and what they should or should not contain?’ and ‘Are there are situations where you feel you need to act in a way that does not match your own opinions on how things should be done?’

I provided all respondents written and oral information regarding the study’s purpose, the conditions for participation, and a code of ethics. I asked all questions in the interview guide in the same order but allowed for some flexibility and follow-up questions depending on the variety of changes that occurred at the schools. The interviews lasted on average 43 min. I recorded and then transcribed them verbatim. All respondents’ names referred to in this paper are pseudonyms.

Analytical procedure

In this study, I applied Pache and Santos (2013) model of individual responses to competing institutional logics, and I was attentive to inductively generated variations. I based the theory-driven analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) on the previously established institutional logics in a Swedish PE setting—(a) the democracy logic, (b) the investment value logic, (c) the professional logic, and (d) the bureaucracy logic (Lindkvist, 2022)—accounted for in line with previous research.

The thematic analysis started with a review of all interview transcripts and the coding of text segments using R software with the addition of RQDA (R package for Qualitative Data Analysis; Chandra & Shang, 2019). In this step, I searched for patterns in how PE teachers managed pressures from these four institutional logics when handling policy implementation. The deductive thematic analysis was informed by the five categories Pache and Santos (2013) described for an overall understanding and as the first step in organising the data. For example, I coded statements such as ‘I cannot let myself be influenced … as long as the Swedish National Agency for Education adheres to its curricula and directives, that is what I will follow’ as compliance. I coded reflections such as ‘I have not thought much about it [external opinions about the added hours], and I have not talked about it, and I have not actually reflected on it, either’ as defiance.

This conceptually derived model was a helpful tool, and after an iterative process of going back and forth between transcripts, codes, and literature descriptions, I eventually settled on four overarching responses: compliance, defiance, compartmentalisation, and combination. The fifth element, ignorance, did not include any codes, so I did not include it in the findings. Thereafter, to illustrate variations and nuances in the overarching responses, I conducted inductively thematic coding. In this step, I revisited the overarching responses and focussed on producing a more detailed understanding of what the responses contained. For example, in some instances, the PE teachers combined logics in such a way that they brought together elements from multiple institutional logics to meet goals embedded in them in an effective way. For example, I coded statements such as ‘You must practice those practical parts; otherwise, you will not learn to run in a technically perfect way. It is not possible to do that just by reading a book, and that is why I get a little afraid sometimes that we should only focus on education’ as instrumental blending, a subcategory of combination. In this third analysis step, I found four inductively generated subcategories: mandatory compliance, compliance with justification, instrumental blending, and transformation. I believe that the subcategories, all of which I define and explain in the findings, allow for a fuller description of the diversity and richness surrounding the PE teachers’ negotiation processes in policy implementation.

Findings

In this section, I answer the question of what types of responses to multiple institutional logics can be interpreted in PE teachers’ narratives about policy implementation. I present the results along with Pache and Santos (2013) overarching responses (compliance, defiance, compartmentalisation, and combination) and the four subcategories (mandatory compliance, compliance with justification, instrumental blending, and transformation).

Compliance

I found some cases of compliance with one specific institutional logic in the PE teachers’ statements even though it had been described as a common response (Gebreiter & Hidayah, 2019; Pache & Santos, 2013). According to Pache and Santos (2013), compliance implies ‘an individual’s full adoption of the values, norms, and practices prescribed by a given logic’ (p. 12). I identified two subcategories containing compliance with slightly different logics, which I elaborate below.

Mandatory compliance

This response referred to instances in which the PE teachers felt obligated to comply with either a bureaucracy logic or a professional logic due to written regulations or normative pressures. The PE teachers highlighted that regulatory rules, policies, and standards embedded in a bureaucracy logic in some cases forced them to take specific actions or adapt their teaching in certain ways due to, for example, resources or curriculum prerequisites connected to the regulative principles in the bureaucracy logics. Kevin explained that conducting ordinary indoor activities at his former school after the policy implementation was not feasible. ‘I do not know how they [politicians] came up with these 100 hours. It’s good; that’s not what I mean, but we were without a gym and wondered, ‘What are we going to do?’ ‘Kevin’s experience was that teachers needed to provide (indoor) physical activities to implement the policy successfully, forcing them to comply and take specific actions. In this case, the teachers merged four classes, meaning that three PE teachers conducted PE lessons with 90 pupils together in one gym.

This response was also connected to the perceived unwritten expectations regarding what kind of teaching and content PE teachers should deliver. In the professional logic, thoughts about expert knowledge and skills are essential at the same time as work is governed via collegiality (Lindkvist, 2022). PE teachers can therefore use policy implementation as an argument for promoting a specific practice and implicitly produce specific content. Amy reflected on the fact that other PE teachers believed that the policy should be implemented for physical activity, which also affected her discussions with other teachers. ‘I’m probably quite affected by the fact that there should be more movement; then I think so, too. But I don’t think you will benefit from going out and say[ing] that you stand for something else.’ It can also be difficult for novice PE teachers to stand up to more experienced teachers, which has consequences for lesson planning and content.

Compliance with justification

This response referred to instances in which PE teachers justified compliance with either a professional logic or an investment logic by explicitly arguing in line with that logic. The PE teachers justified compliance with a PE teacher professional logic by referencing professional autonomy, professional knowledge, and skills. Leah offered an example of what motivated the selection of content because of the added hours, arguing, ‘I can do whatever I want with it [the added hours]. I know what I need to go through, but I can still deal with it my way and do it my way!’

The respondents justified compliance with the investment logic by making associations between more physical activity and increased academic performance, with reference to the added individual and societal benefits that come from participating in PE. Jennie believed the added hours are important and more physical activity could help pupils perform better in school:

I see that pupils who do sports in their spare time, who are engaged, they perform 90%–95% better in the other subjects as well. They plan their school time much more than pupils who do nothing. And I have been saying that for years…. These [the added hours] are an advantage for us; we can then claim the importance for them [pupils] to participate in our lessons. That they get a break from the usual school day with a little bit of movement.

Defiance

This response referred to instances in which the PE teachers simply rejected the values, norms, and practices the bureaucracy logic prescribed by turning away or denying its existence. In contrast to mandatory compliance, in which the respondents felt forced to comply with regulatory rules, policy, and standards, here the PE teachers instead explicitly rejected the bureaucracy logic. This response was often notable when the PE teachers reflected on external opinions control over their own professional decision-making processes. The respondents often were opposed to external structural pressures, hierarchical decisions, or external attempts that tried to influence or control their teaching in one way or another. Interviewees expressed their disagreement, refused to adapt their behaviour, and justified their actions by, for example, highlighting their professional autonomy. In these situations, the PE teachers emphasised their professional expertise, knowledge, and skills as superior and made no attempts to engage with the bureaucracy logic. For example, Adam declared that external demands and control came from ‘inside the organization. But it is still us, at a grassroots level, that decide over our teaching.’

The findings showed that the respondents did not always defy a competing logic in favour of another. In some cases, the PE teachers simply neglected and/or distanced themselves from a bureaucracy logic without acknowledging another one. Eric reflected on the government’s, authorities’, and other organisations’ expectations of what teachers should do with the extra time: ‘No, I cannot relate to it; it’s just words. I cannot understand them. Maybe you understand them much better; in that case, you have to explain them to me.’

Compartmentalisation

This response referred to instances in which the PE teachers went back and forth between an investment logic and a bureaucracy logic to achieve widespread acceptance. By fluctuating between the two logics, the PE teachers could express agreement with both logics without taking a stand and could therefore maintain legitimacy within seemingly different values, norms, and practices. For example, when Marco reflected on the implementation process, he started by saying, ‘Our work is based on the curriculum—prerequisites for implementing it, that is the most important thing.’ However, when reflecting on what pupils should learn in PE, he named ‘the value of movement’ and continued by reflecting on the governmental motives behind the added hours:

I absolutely buy that argument! The heart becomes stronger; it can oxygenate the brain more efficiently, and then you can stay focused longer. A few more minutes in class given that you have a healthy diet and sleep at home. So, I buy that thought straight off.

In the quotation above, Marco expressed the core of an investment logic and a bureaucracy logic when he highlighted (a) the curriculum as a foundation from which his profession is controlled and (b) PE as a producer of physical activity, which can lead to (public) health and well-being for the individual. Pache and Santos (2013) proposed that compartmentalisation implies that individuals secure legitimacy by separating logics according to, for example, context or audience. In analysing this response, it was therefore somewhat surprising that respondents switched between the two logics even though neither the context nor audience changed.

Combination

One response that occurred numerous times in the PE teachers’ narratives entailed them trying to combine conflicting institutional pressures that emerged in the policy implementation. According to Pache and Santos (2013), this response involved the selective coupling of elements drawn from each logic or the development of new values, norms, or practices that synthesised the competing logics. Two subcategories were identified and contained combinations of all four institutional logics in one way or another, which I elaborate further below.

Instrumental blending

This response referred to instances when PE teachers tried to blend all logics together to meet goals embedded in different logics in an effective way. This response involved a trade-off between all logics, meaning that the respondents balanced requirements in various values, norms, and practices (Gebreiter & Hidayah, 2019). This response became visible, for instance, in situations that prompted the relationship between lesson content and assessment/grading. For example, when I asked Adam if he thought any external opinions were more important to consider, he said,

I just tick off these mandatory requirements. There are some requirements that are a bit easier to pinpoint. [So, you tell the pupils] now we are doing this, and you have to do it. Afterwards, they have a different type of freedom of choice in the rest of my teaching, and that makes it easier for me to get them on board. I let them [pupils] decide quite a lot on my lessons because no matter what they decide, I can still pick from the knowledge requirements [in the curriculum] when I look at them. So, I include that in my assessments and in my grading, more formatively.

Adam’s statement shows how he adapted his behaviour and managed various requirements embedded in a democracy logic, a bureaucracy logic, and a professional logic. Because a democracy logic suggests that PE teachers always should try to realise individual adaptions and motivate pupils to participate in physical activity, it affected how Adam shaped and structured his lessons. Because a bureaucracy logic suggests a focus on bureaucratic structures, such as rules, routines, and standardizations, Adam could secure legitimacy by referring to the curriculum content. Because a professional logic suggests that activity outcomes are a result of professional autonomy, knowledge, and skills, it gave Adam the power to control various learning situations.

Transformation

This response referred to instances in which the PE teachers translated and transformed all logics’ interests together into their own. This transformation allowed the PE teachers to move beyond balancing between requirements embedded in different logics, which is implicit in the response of blending, by creating an overlap between logics. For example, when Amy reflected on the biggest challenges she had experienced in her profession, she concluded by saying,

I feel quite confident in how I should realize my own teaching, and I think it is fun that I have found channels outside the school, which means that I can bring in others, other staff and other skills, things like that…. There are many alternatives, and many nonprofit sport organizations are happy to come and help, promote their sport. It’s like an intro as well, but we think it’s important to try to reach as many pupils as possible to find their sport. The goal is to be active outside the school world, as well.

Amy’s statement showed that she was confident that she, as a PE teacher, made the right decision regarding how teaching should be conducted, thoughts embedded in the professional logics. At the same time, she gave away some of her power over teaching to voluntary sport clubs, with the argument that pupils could find their sport. These are thoughts belonging to an investment logic, and they allow the PE teachers to be a part of the production of future athletes. In addition, Amy hoped that this procedure would reach as many pupils as possible and that they would find their sport. This goal could be connected to a democracy logic and the importance of allowing and encouraging all pupils to participate. Because this transformation process allowed the PE teachers to translate the interest of various logics into their own, a completely new logic could emerge.

Discussion

In this article, I set out to explore how PE teachers respond to institutional pressures embedded in policy implementation. Based on Pache and Santos’s typology (2013), I identified four overarching responses: compliance, defiance, compartmentalisation, and combination. In addition, I identified four inductively generated variances of responses: mandatory compliance, compliance with justification, instrumental blending, and transformation. Multiple institutional logics impose conflicting demands on individuals (Pache & Santos, 2013), and the findings also showed that existing institutional pressures influenced the PE teachers’ attitudes, opinions, and decisions regarding policy implementation. The PE teachers actively transformed policy (cf. Wilkinson et al., 2021) and managed these requirements by adapting their behaviours and actions. In other words, the PE teachers’ responses could affect how they shaped and structured their lessons together with the content they considered relevant. Appropriate content being recognised by the respondents and used as bases for decisions in PE were somewhat narrow and grounded in discourses of physical activity, school performance, fitness, and future well-being. These results could be compared with what Larsson and Nyberg (2017) described as a sport discourse guiding PE teachers’ behaviours, which can counteract teachers’ task of developing movement capabilities among pupils. Larsson and Nyberg (2017, p. 147) argued that teachers ‘seem to be trapped in the sense that physical education is not about sport, but developing the capability to move is still framed in terms of sport’. In addition, the PE teachers in this study did not, at least not to any great extent, believe external pressures or opinions influenced them. However, they met such expectations by primarily understanding abilities and skills in PE in relation to physical or academic performance and pupils’ applications of them in milieus outside PE. Wilkinson et al. (2021) highlighted that a narrow view of skills, knowledge, and abilities in PE affects assessment practices, which in turn raises concerns in relation to quality and equity. Knowledge about how and to what extent surrounding discourses influence PE teachers is important for research, practice, and politics because such thoughts are not easily changed. If there is a desire to change such discourses on fitness, movement, and performance, the change must be implemented from the level of policy making to teachers’ actions.

The findings illustrated that by shifting between logics, the respondents balanced requirements in various values, norms, and practices (Gebreiter & Hidayah, 2019). Because that shifting involved a trade-off between logics, it also enabled a status mobility between logics. Therefore, some particularities of certain institutional pressures were made more important than others. For example, answering to contemporary societal discourses embedded in an investment value logic and defying a bureaucracy logic shaped the respondents’ attitudes and preferences towards PE’s means and ends. Larsson and Nyberg (2017) argued that Swedish PE teachers historically have been sceptical about including sports-specific elements in their teaching. However, if such status mobility includes a further mobilisation of an investment logic, these mindsets may be about to change. To support PE teachers better in making informed choices, policymakers need to create bridges between teachers’ experiences and policy goals. According to Bridwell-Mitchell and Sherer (2017), ‘The most effective methods for responding to policy challenges may not be stronger enforcement or accountability mechanisms but attempts to gain cognitive legitimacy engendered by different logics’ (p. 242). This could be done by building on and actively working to change teachers’ cultures, interests, and motivations (Leow et al., 2014).

The various ways the PE teachers responded to multiple institutional logics also became important in the actual implementation of policy and existing institutional pressures. When the interviewees, for example, responded to perceived unwritten expectations and normative pressures governed via collegiality, the formulation and realisation of the added hours revolved around thoughts of physical activity. This study also showed that it was difficult for the PE teachers to see beyond the fact that they were the ones responsible for providing pupils various activities and ensuring that pupils stay physically active. This is similar to the emphasis by Larsson and Nyberg (2017) and Wilkinson et al. (2021) on ensuring that pupils should be physically active. As a result, the policy outcome can be equated with more types of activities promoting physical activity. The data also signalled the impact of changes in the Swedish educational systems (Redelius & Larsson, 2010) and how the hybridity that followed created dilemmas for the professional and material aspects of teaching. Sweden imposes no regulations stipulating that schools be required to provide indoor facilities for PE teaching. In Kevin’s case, the added hours were implemented without thoughts of where he and his colleagues were supposed to conduct PE lessons. Consequently, this had implications for teaching methods, content, learning situations, and teachers’ and pupils’ work environments.

The various responses the PE teachers applied were intertwined, and the respondents seemed able to switch between responses quite effortlessly. For instance, the interviewees were keen to highlight compliance with curricular regulations but could at the same time defy them when they impeded professional expertise. The fact that teachers decouple bureaucratic regulation by, for example, focussing more on activating pupils than on educating them, has been shown (Larsson & Nyberg, 2017; Quennerstedt, 2019; Wilkinson et al., 2021). However, that PE teachers also decouple a professional logic by, in this case, willingly handing over the power of teaching to voluntary sport clubs is not as prominent in previous research, possibly because teachers interpret policy goals differently (Leow et al., 2014). But because PE has been considered committed to a public-health agenda (Quennerstedt, 2008), it could also be a result of teachers mediating pressures from the environment and constructing responses based on these pressures (Bridwell-Mitchell & Sherer, 2017). Even though scholars such as Quennerstedt (2019, p. 614) have argued that ‘the E in PE is under attack’, this reform’s purpose was to increase pupils’ learning ability in more theoretical subjects (Regeringsbeslut U2014/5377/S, 2014; Regeringskansliet, 2018). So, in one sense, PE teachers only did what was asked of them. However, such responses will inevitably prioritise some interests at the expense of others (Greenwood et al., 2011), something that has the potential to entail undiscovered (unintended) consequences. One potential (unintended) consequence is that these types of unregulated collaborations with voluntary sport clubs can lead to new challenges for PE teachers when they are the ones responsible for assessment and grading but someone else conducts parts of the actual teaching. Further, and maybe more important, this could raise questions about the profession’s legitimacy and who is best suited to conduct teaching. These types of collaborations can also become challenging for pupils as expectations and preconditions surrounding their learning environments shift. Moreover, even though PE teachers advocate for more comprehensive and similar teaching with reference to equality (Lindkvist, 2022), these responses can entail the complete opposite, making current issues of equity even more acute (Wilkinson et al., 2021). Therefore, more research is needed to dig deeper into the relationship between competitive sport and PE to explore with what motives these collaborations arise, how they develop, and their consequences for the E in PE.

Conclusion

The rapid growth of institutional pluralism, in which organisations, such as schools, no longer could be described as belonging to only a state sector but instead also are highly influenced by the private sector and civil society, has raised questions of hybridity and the effects organisation members encounter (Greenwood et al., 2011; Kraatz & Block, 2008; Lucassen & Bakker, 2016). Although scholars have highlighted shifts in institutional logics, the existence of multiple logics, and organisational responses to conflicts created by competing institutional logics (Greenwood et al., 2011), limited attention has been directed towards how individuals experience and respond to these conflicts (Bridwell-Mitchell & Sherer, 2017; Gebreiter & Hidayah, 2019; Pache & Santos, 2013). This study not only illustrates how PE teachers navigate a plurality of institutional logics and the variety of responses they apply in policy implementation but also points to aspects in the organisation of teaching as a direct consequence of this process. These responses are based on previously established institutional logics, part of a larger research project (Lindkvist, 2022).

I have tried to be as transparent as possible in my report, but I encountered limitations. The fact that I did not find the response of ignorance does not mean it does not exist. Neither institutional logics nor responses are unchangeable. Therefore, researchers could benefit from further developing this discussion and applying logics in other times and places to expand the knowledge production and create a more comprehensive understanding of how PE teachers respond to broader societal discourses.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).