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The aim of this descriptive study was to find out how people describe their experiences of physical education (PE) in Internet discussion forums. The data for this study were collected during one randomly chosen week in April 2007 via a Google™ search using the Finnish word "koululiikunta" [school PE]. The first 200 hits lead into nine discussion forums, which were analysed by using qualitative content analysis. These nine discussion forums included all together 356 messages. For searching these discussion forums no criteria about the writers' age, race, class, gender or other were set. The messages were coded with sequential classification and grouped into positive, negative and both positive and negative messages. The results revealed that the messages were positive (12%), both (24%) and negative (64%). In the positive messages the focus was on physical education in general and the experiences were more related to the writer him/herself. In the negative messages the emphasis was on factors external to the writer. The writers' messages, in particular where they reported negative experiences revealed strongly held feelings and emotions. We need to widen our understanding of the relationship between PE and the contents of teacher education curriculum to guarantee every pupil the opportunity to have positive experiences in PE. These, in turn, help to create a basis for life-long physical activity and a positive relation to one's body, the main target of PE. In PE one's own body and feelings are intensively involved at a time when vivid and memorable experiences are taking place for a young person and lasting damage can easily be done. Teachers should listen to students' voices and consider what lies behind them in order to develop PE pedagogy and a safe PE learning environment.

The purpose of this study is to examine what kind of role does positive atmosphere play in learning generic skills. The study was carried out in the final year of Finnish physical education (PE) teacher education where teachers of this study module have developed their pedagogical practices for a long time to foster and maintain the positive learning atmosphere of the course. In this study the learning atmosphere was examined from the perspectives of students addressing the following research questions: (1) How do the students perceive and experience the constructed learning atmosphere? (2) What generic skills do PE students report to learn during the final year study module? (3) What kind of relationship exists between the perceived learning atmosphere and learning generic skills? The data of this study were collected via an internet questionnaire (N = 189, n = 125) and interviews (n = 19) and analyzed applying qualitative content analysis and using statistical methods. According to the results, the PE students felt that the learning atmosphere of their final year study module was warm and conversational; it was easy to get their own voice heard during the final year. The PE students reported that they had learned versatile and plenty of different generic skills, particularly various social skills. There were statistically significant associations between positive atmosphere and some generic skills, such as the development of creativity, but they were not very strong. To understand this finding, the instruments of the study are discussed, especially from the perspective of the development of the questionnaire statements. Although the relationship between perceived positive atmosphere and learning generic skills was only moderate, the findings are promising. For example, the good practices documented in this study, such as how to construct a warm educational atmosphere, may be applied when developing other study modules.