When specialists enter: classification, framing, and the pedagogic device in Italy’s primary physical education reform

Italy’s Law 234/2021 introduced specialist physical education (PE) teachers into grades 4–5 of primary school (ages 9–11), replacing exclusively generalist provision for the subject. This qualitative document analysis examines how the reform reorganises the classification and framing of primary PE. The corpus comprises two binding Official Recontextualising Field (ORF) texts – Law 234/2021 and the Indicazioni Nazionali 2025 – and the advisory SISMeS consensus document in the Pedagogic Recontextualising Field (PRF). The analysis identifies an intra-ORF tension: the legislation strengthens subject and teacher boundaries, whereas the curriculum advances a more integrated, holistic orientation. The SISMeS document converges with the curriculum’s holistic orientation while explicitly defining Physical Literacy and rejecting narrow biomedical reductionism. From these patterns the paper develops two interpretive constructs: a ‘hybrid code structure’ produced when a collection-code specialist is inserted into an otherwise integrated-code primary school, and a ‘Bernsteinian paradox’ in which stronger classification alone does not secure curricular coherence. Implications are drawn for specialist teacher preparation and primary PE policy.