The struggle for health! Health as text, discursive and social practice in PETE in Norway

This study contributes to knowledge on how health as educational content is construed in the new Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) in Norway. Moving between Fairclough’s three-dimensional model of text, discursive and social practice, we describe, interpret and explain discourses of health. In our analytical approach, we use intertextuality as a tool to explore how health is construed by being redefined and reconsidered from national policy to the newly formulated PETE study plans in Norway. Our findings describe a struggle for health playing out in the content of PETE through seven discourses, figuring through various exertions of power. Interpreting the struggle, we reveal a productive power figuring within discourse leading to the creation and the change of health. Finally, in explaining the struggle, we see traces of a democratic power figuring behind discourse, producing PETE professionals as autonomous actors in the policy implementation process in PETE in Norway.