Single subject courses - Sport Science

These courses are only open for exchange students. If you as an exchange student have any questions about admission, prerequisites etc, please contact the International Office at internationaloffice@adm.vxu.se.

If you are a free mover, please contact the Admissions Office regarding possibilities to study at Växjö University: admission@vxu.se.

Contact Person
Krister Håkansson
Telephone: +46 470 70 87 72
Telefax: +46 470 70 89 74
E-mail: krister.hakansson@vxu.se
School of Education

September–October, 2006
Undergraduate Level
5 points (7,5 ECTS)

This course is specifically offered to international students who want to become acquainted with Swedish culture during their stay at Växjö University. The course will run for approximately 10 weeks (the intensi­ty will be about 50% compared to a full-time course), which should make it possible to combine this course with other courses running parallel.

The main idea is to introduce students to Swedish culture by combining theo­retical aspects with direct experience and to choose sports and leisure as a reference point of such experiences. As the course will include a lot of physical activities, team building and wild life experiences, relatively few traditional lectures are offered and the load of reading is also much less compared to a traditional course. Besides the experien­tial learning approach, comparing the different experiences and perspectives of a culturally mixed student group is another important learning tool in this course.

Contents
Swedish and Scandinavian culture will be initially presented through a series of lectures. The Swedish welfare system, the non-masculine and equal values and the importance of light, the sun, the seasons and the weather are some of the things that we will look at and how it expresses itself in traditions, art, music, literature, film and in the life style and everyday behaviour of Swed­ish people. We will then focus on sports and leisure in Sweden, with an emphasis on experience and participation, which will be the main part of the course. The participants with be exposed to typi­cal Swedish music, both modern and traditional and learn/perform the dances associated with them. Typical or tradi­tional sports will also be studied and in some cases performed jointly, such as floor ball, “brännboll” and bandy. Out­door activities and wild life experiences will be integrated with team-building exercises in the beautiful surroundings of the university and in some cases away from the university. The participants will also integrate such activities with the simulation of historical events in Sweden, which in addition will serve as a pedagogical technique of special inter­est to those who are aiming towards a career as teachers.

One of the learning tools in this module is to use Swedish teacher train­ing students at an advanced level to plan and lead some of the outdoor activities for the rest of the students.

(This course is also offered as one of the modules in the Sports and Culture programme, 20 points, 30 ECTS.)