This chapter discusses the pre-school sports market in Sweden and how and why it is manifested. It highlights how pre-school sports businesses represent themselves and their services and how they shape normative values about pre-school sports on their websites. It also focuses on how leading individuals from pre-school sports businesses describe this development and interest from families. We discuss the implications of this development in relation to how Swedish children’s sports traditionally operate. Finally, we argue that pre-school sports businesses contribute to an increase in adult perspectives on children’s activities. This suggests that childhood is seen as a period when guardians can ensure their children acquire desirable skills that adults define as important.

The contexts in which young people participate in sport are diverse. In Scandinavia, as in many other countries, child and youth sport is mainly organised in non-profit, membership-based and voluntary driven sports clubs. In Sweden, this model is now challenged by commercial businesses providing child and youth sport services. The overall aim of this article is to provide empirically based knowledge about these ongoing and largely unexplored commercialisation processes. The focus of the article is to illuminate how commercial businesses produce immaterial values through the promotion of sport services. In this article, we have explored the cultural and social values produced and promoted by commercial businesses in youth sport. Drawing on the website communications of eight commercial businesses from four different commercial strands, we use the concept of immaterial labour to consider the values produced when child and youth sport is turned into a desirable product on the market. The values generated from the texts on the selected websites are the immaterial values of (i) competence, (ii) individually adjusted training and, (iii) happiness. These values are enunciated differently by the businesses in the different strands. We situate the findings in relation to western social and cultural values and discuss the potential consequences of these value productions for contemporary ideas about youth sport and the way it should be organised.

In the Nordic countries sport has a particular connection to civic society, and this is reflected in the Nordic governments 'sport for all' policies. The region also includes large voluntary non-profit sport organizations with an implicit monopoly on competitive sport. During the last decade scholars in Sweden have noted that commercial entrepreneurs have emerged in the child and youth sports landscape. However, empirical research on this phenomenon is scarce. Hence, in this article the aim is to map different commercial businesses and the services they offer on their websites. We make use of a Deleuzioguttarian inspired theory and method and a post-qualitative research practice, which is informed by an ontological (re)turn to realism(s) in social theory. We present four different commercial de-territorialization processes and discuss how they affect the Swedish Sport Confederation in different ways.

A standard based grading system is supposed to support equality and accountability. Nevertheless teachers sometimes refer to an internalized grading (Hay & McDonald, 2008; Svennberg, Meckbach & Redelius, 2014) and the validity of the grades have been questioned (Annerstedt & Larsson, 2008). Our aim is to explore Swedish PE teachers’ grading practice and what they value in the grades they have given their students.

Four PE teachers in compulsory school were interviewed with the Repertory Grid (RG) technique. The RG technique can be used to reveal a person’s perception of a specific topic that the person is familiar with, by examining the similarities and differences between well-known elements (Fransella, Bell & Bannister, 2004). In the first step, the teacher was asked to select seven to eight students from a class that he or she was teaching and grading in PE. The students selected must represent all possible grades (Fransella et al., 2004). In the second step, the names of three of the students at the time were presented to the teacher who was asked in what way, relevant for the grades, two of the students were similar and different from the third (Fransella et al., 2004). In the third step the teachers were asked to rate the students on how they corresponded to the similarities and differences mentioned. The resulting grids were analysed with the programme WEBGRID5.

Besides knowledge and skills all four teachers valued standard irrelevant criteria. Their rating of the students on the standard irrelevant criteria generally matched the grades given. Among the national standards mentioned there were differences in how they matched the given grades. Other national standards were not mentioned at all. It seems like some standards have been better implemented then others.

The results indicate the need for a discussion of why it seems to be an urge to use standard irrelevant criteria such as motivation and effort that is stronger than the desire for compliance to the national grading criteria. Bernsteins’ interrelated systems of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment (2003) can contribute to the understanding. It is also important to discuss why some national grading criteria are easier for the teachers to implement then others.

References: Annerstedt C, Larsson S. (2010). European Physical Education Review, 16(2), 97-115. Bernstein B. (2003). Class, codes and control. (Vol. 3) Towards a theory of educational transmission, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. Fransella, F., Bell, R. & Bannister, D. (2004). A manual for repertory grid technique. (2nd. ed.). Wiley, Chichester, West Sussex. Hay P, MacDonald D. (2008). Assessment In Education: Principles, Policy & Practice 15(2): 153-168. Svennberg L, Meckbach J, Redelius K. (2014). European Physical Education Review, 20(2), 199-214.