This paper explores teachers’ educational values and how they shape their judgements about physically active learning (PAL). Twenty one teachers from four primary schools in Norway participated in focus groups. By conceptualising PAL as a didaktikk approach, the findings indicated that teachers engaged with PAL in a way that reflected their professional identity and previous experiences with the curriculum. Teachers valued PAL as a way of getting to know pupils in educational situations that were different from those when sedentary. These insights illustrate how PAL, as a didaktikk approach to teaching, can shift teachers’ perceptions of pupils’ knowledge, learning, and identity formation in ways that reflect the wider purposes of education. The paper gives support to a classroom discourse that moves beyond the traditional, sedentary one-way transfer of knowledge towards a more collaborative effort for pupils’ development.

In 2018, the Centre for Physical Active Learning (SEFAL) designed a comprehensive one-year workplace-based continuous professional development (CPD) program for in-service teachers in Norway. The CPD program aimed to enhance the pedagogical feasibility of integrating physically active learning (PAL) within all theoretical subjects by advancing teachers’ competence. This article provides an overview of the SEFAL CPD program’s conceptual framework and design. Although the article does not provide an independent evaluation of the framework, we discuss it based on our continual development during the period from 2018 to 2023, during which 1,363 teachers from 77 schools participated. As the framework continues to inform the SEFAL CPD, the article concludes by identifying prospective directions and potential avenues for further refinement and utilisation of this and similar programs.

In broad terms, physically active learning is a phenomenon that combines health and educational disciplines to integrate physical activity and core educational goals. Despite a growing research interest within the physically active learning field, conceptual clarity on combining and synthesising research disciplines appears to be needed. This article thus explores knowledge production within the physically active learning research field. First, it outlines the origin of the research field. Secondly, the terms multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary are applied to confront how knowledge is produced. Finally, the three approaches' theoretical and ethical implications are discussed. The article contributes to conceptual clarity within the field by proposing that physically active learning is inherently inter- and transdisciplinary because it embraces the complexity of integrating and synthesising knowledge from health and educational disciplines to address real-world problems. To conclude, awareness of physically active learning's practical and theoretical dimensions through the three approaches is central to evolving the field.