The methodology of physical education
Le metodologie dell’educazione motoria
Ferdinando Cereda
Department of Pedagogy, Università
Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Milan, Italy) – ferdinando.cereda@unicatt.it
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3120-0684
ABSTRACT
Physical activity’s method has been analysed and
placed in the current educational landscape. The importance of its educational
action on the body and mind is also reported in the context of education in
general and in the school environment. The primary aim of physical education is
to develop all the body and mind skills. Physical education finds its raison d’être
in methodological and didactic models that make it possible to introduce sports
education and actual sport. The aims of physical education must be part of
those of general education and a methodological dialogue must start from these
premises: from what is to be achieved through movement and subordinate the
choice of the means deemed most suitable for achieving them.
La metodologia dell’attività motoria
viene presa in considerazione e collocata nel panorama educativo attuale. L’importanza
della sua azione educativa sul corpo e sulla mente viene riportata inoltre nel
contesto dell’educazione in generale e nell’ambito scolastico. L’educazione
motoria si pone lo scopo primario di sviluppare tutte le funzioni della persona
intesa in tutte le componenti che la costituiscono. L’educazione fisica trova
la sua ragion d’essere in modelli metodologici e didattici che rendono possibile
l’introduzione all’educazione sportiva ed allo sport vero e proprio. I fini
dell’educazione motoria devono rientrare in quelli dell’educazione generale e
un discorso metodologico deve partire da queste premesse, da cosa s’intende
realizzare attraverso il movimento e subordinare la scelta dei mezzi ritenuti
più idonei per realizzarli.
KEYWORDS
Physical education, Sport, Teaching, Method
Educazione fisica, Sport, Insegnamento,
Metodo
CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
The Author declares no conflict of interest.
If general education is the
action aimed at developing all human faculties, physical education must be
included with full rights and in its rightful place (Le Boulch, 1979;
Sibilio, 2015a). Schools should fulfil this task with no less interest and
attention than those devoted to other aspects of general education (Carraro, 2004).
Movement education is a training discipline because it addresses the total
personality of the individual and carries out its educational action on the
body and psyche of the subject.
Moreover, the essence of man
is not conceived as pure intellect, nor as pure will, but as a real unity that
is not only psychological (of intellect, feeling and will) but psycho physical.
In other words, the relationship between physical life and psychic life, or
better still, between the body and the spirit, is to be considered as a
constant relationship, to represent a single reality, in which only by
abstraction are the two domains distinguished from each other (Novara, 1962).
Physical education can be
counted among the educational sciences and is important in the definition and
construction of training and educational processes (Lipoma, 2014). The
principles and explanations of its didactics are of great benefit to the entire
education system. A didactic that differs from all others because of that
mixture of practicality, logical coherence, verifiability, and falsifiability
present in it. Physical education is a language and as such possesses:
·
a semantic dimension, constituted
by all the factors of motricity;
·
a syntactic dimension,
constituted by the set of links of the factors of motricity;
·
a logical dimension,
constituted by the hierarchical arrangement of motricity.
The physical activity and
its codes can be expanded more and more and, therefore, educated. Thus, the
specific education of physical activity, as movement education is realised (Sotgiu, 1989). This, in turn, can be used to educate
and expand other languages, thus realising education through movement.
Schools and especially
primary schools, should play a central role in encouraging the practice of a
wide variety of physical experiences, providing not only tools and
opportunities for practice, but also elements of knowledge and skills, which
can guide choice, motivate participation and, not least, contribute to the
well-being of pupils and teachers (Carraro, 2008).
However, precisely in the
context of the search for well-being, the role of the school is fundamental.
The primary school, for example, represents one of the fundamental places for
the growth and education of the individual, processes that cannot but be encountered
with the body, with corporeity and with the numerous opportunities offered by
the experience of movement. It is felt that this task cannot be attributed to
other educational agencies, such as sports clubs, or to other professional
figures, such as the experts who are sometimes called upon to intervene in
specific projects.
The keyword of one of the
educational models that pay particular attention to movement education is «variability
of practice» (Pesce, 2015). In this educational model, the main aim is,
starting with the formation of the body in movement, to arrive at the formation
of the citizen’s life skills, riding the wave of children’s natural joy of
movement.
In the same direction,
interventions are being implemented, still at an experimental level and mainly
in the United States, which follow a new teaching technique: the ‘physically
active lesson’. This inserts physical education into school teaching in an
innovative way. Teacher-led sessions aim to incorporate physical activity
directly into the teaching of other school content and subjects (Norris et al., 2015).
Physical education should be
implemented by means of differentiated general and specific procedures and
methodologies, aimed respectively at the basic training of each pupil and
multi-sport education. The primary aim of physical education is to best develop
all the functions of the personality defined as an extremely complex
theoretical construct, which reacts unitarily to its own and external stimuli
and is formed by virtue of the continuous interaction between the biological endowment
and the environment in which it is located (Meinel, 1984; Rikard, 2006).
Despite the recognition of
the value of physical activity and sport as promoters of personal well-being,
these are not directly able to influence the uptake of sport. Surveys carried
out as part of the evolution of physical education report a progressive deficit
in physical efficiency in the school population (Pesce, 2015). One cause
of this situation can be identified precisely in the concept of ‘sport–spectacle–commerce’.
The instrumentalization of the body ends up nullifying the playful dimension of
movement and, instead of developing potential and encouraging overcoming one’s
limits through sport, it selects and marginalises. Furthermore, the synergic
action of educational agencies has had significant results in introducing
topics such as lifestyles, well-being, health protection into common thought,
unfortunately without bringing about a real change in the population’s
lifestyle habits.
To tackle the social
emergency of sedentariness, the derogation to fair play and the early
abandonment of physical and sports practice, a new path of continuity must be
outlined between the family, the school, and the world of sport. These actors
together must guarantee education ‘for’, ‘in’ and ‘through’ physical and sport
activities (Nordmann, 2007), following a model consistent with the
educational pathway outlined in the National Indications provided by the
Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (Cereda, 2016).
There are three essential
elements for change: integrated training between the various players in the
educational and sporting worlds, support for schoolteachers by graduates in
Physical Education, and a new way of involving and motivating children in physical
and sports activities.
On the other hand, the
proposed difficult aim is to increase the population that will make active and
healthy living and fair play a permanent habit, in line with the World Health
Organisation’s HEPA guidelines (European Commission, & World Health
Organization Regional Office for Europe, 2014) and in coherence with the
transversal perspective of Education for Civil Coexistence (MIUR, 2009),
an essential aim of the national education system. Furthermore, in a holistic
perspective of human capital development, the fundamental contribution of physical
activity and especially Physical Education for the integrated development of
the individual’s, physical, emotional, intellectual, social
and productive capital should be emphasised (Bailey et al., 2013).
Be that as it may, the
setting and solution of the methodological problem constitutes a fact of
doctrine, which brings research to the scientific foundations of physical
education to know motor skills in its anatomic-physiological and
psycho-pedagogical aspects, abandoning any form of empiricism.
It is therefore a question
of renewing methods that are no longer in keeping with the times, and of
gearing teaching to the most up-to-date conceptions of man in his
bio-psycho-pedagogical aspects, to implement an appropriate didactic line.
In this perspective, for
example, a new methodology is emerging that is based on the visualisation of
the body in kinesiology (Azzarito, 2010).
One observes an attempt at technical revision to give
movement a new, dynamic, aesthetic expression, but one that is still far from a
new methodological orientation, since it is still tied to a physical education
carried out according to the traditional arrangement, rather than by
motivation. It is about free-body exercises, with small apparatus, on large
apparatus, short and fast running, gymnastic and pre-sports games, instead of
expressing motivations of a physiological, psychological, pedagogical order.
That is, talking about the ends of physical
education that are part of those of general education (Gamelli, 2004). A
methodological discourse must start from these premises; from what is to be
achieved through movement and subordinate the choice of the means considered
most suitable for achieving them.
Movement is a means, as much as tools are, to realise
what the individual of our time demands, as his real need, and what general
education proposes him to acquire in order not to be overwhelmed by conditions
of life created by himself, which today oppress, determine
and condition him (Cereda, 2013).
For this reason, any methodology, to be valid, must
wear the clothes of the man of his time, understand, satisfy, correct, and
direct him. It is therefore fair to say that the aim of physical education is
not so much the possession of health, strength, speed, power, etc., ends in
themselves, as the sense of full balance and well-being that comes from their
possession.
In the methodology of the ‘visualisation’ of the body
(Azzarito, 2010), new methods of analysis are researched and even
proposed, with the support of images chosen according to specific criteria to
be submitted to young people; also, with the use of interviews conducted with
them, again on the basis of viewing images. New
methods are thus adopted to enable young people to ‘talk’ in a meaningful way
about their experiences and their perception of the body in the context of
physical activity.
While the study of the body as a ‘machine’ has
dominated the research and production of knowledge by sports scholars (e.g.,
biomechanics, motor learning, sports pedagogy), investigating the physical dimensions of the body in
kinesiology, of the ‘body in culture’, allows researchers to explore the
interdependent relationships between power, cultural meanings assigned to the
body and issues of inequality in physical activity environments.
In short, it is suggested that researchers’ adoption
of qualitative research in its various forms can lead to sociological insights
into the ‘body in motion’ precisely in the field of kinesiology.
Therefore, the contemporary problem of how visual ‘narratives’
of the body are constructed is also considered. Western societies are
increasingly characterised by global trends through which popular media culture
fabricates endless images of the active body in fitness, health, and sports
contexts (TV, magazines, internet...). The way young people see themselves and
others in sport are inextricably linked to the way they perceive and understand
body images produced precisely by the media (Azzarito & Harrison, 2008).
Scholars need to recognise that young people’s learning of values, attitudes,
and beliefs about their appropriate or inappropriate behaviour and body
appearance (e.g., shape, size, muscularity) upon which their sense of self and
physicality is constructed does not only or primarily take place in school.
Rather, it takes place outside school through their connection with images and
visualisations produced by TV, magazines, the Internet, and other media.
Furthermore, the adoption by researchers of innovative
methodologies that mix two ways of thinking such as the critical analysis of
visual culture and the investigation of the body as a social, historical, and
visual text could generate new ways of understanding the contemporary cultural
condition of young people’s bodies. In short, new methodological approaches are
needed to enable young people to participate in research, to ‘talk’
meaningfully about their bodily experiences and to communicate their knowledge
and identities. Through the research process, participants can be enabled by
visual methodologies to creatively make sense of themselves and to reflect on
the ways in which they create their identities and bodies not only verbally,
but also visually (Gauntlett & Holzwarth, 2006). In order to understand how body hierarchies, inform young
people’s subjective bodily experiences, are created and sustained, it is
crucial to proceed with the research of visual body culture in kinesiology.
Given the inextricable link between visual culture and the body in contemporary
Western culture, considering that «method is inseparable from theory and
analysis» (Banks, 2001, p. 178), a critical visual study of the
body provides innovative methodologies that can lead us to a meaningful
understanding of the body.
Physical education consists
of a set of coordinated activities aimed at the physical and psycho-pedagogical
development of the individual. Physical training, as a complex of regulated
movements with various aims, falls within the scope of physical education, but
can also be related to the preparatory practice of a sporting discipline.
Physical and sports
education can coexist when the common traits of the two educational moments are
understood, thus making them operate on a uniform basis of principle and
method. If the former does not want to possess the attribute of sport, it must
make a concept of sport its own: training. There are no divergences in the
bio-psychic goals to be achieved, only differentiations in degree and
techniques (Cilia, 1996). Physical education is not the expression of basic
gymnastics preparing for sport or an activity complementary to sport itself. It
must be the physical activity that sees in sports education nothing other than
its logical continuation, both because of the utilitarian and more complete
nature of the sporting gesture, and because of the interest it arouses in the
young individual. Any movement should have a purpose of obvious utility, which
can be transferred outside the gymnasium and the purely scholastic moment, to
natural or sporting activities to be performed outdoors (Faigenbaum
et al., 2007).
Physical education would
lose its meaning if it did not have methodological and didactic reasons for
introducing sports education and, for the gifted, actual sport. For this to
happen, it is necessary that the methodology of physical education does not stop
its interests at the bio-psychic aspects of the individual alone, but expands
them to assess the individual’s living conditions, his needs and tendencies, in order to direct him towards solutions that are beneficial
to him. It is necessary to propose recreational, emulative, moral
and aesthetic motivations in order to combat the damage of sedentariness and
lack of exercise (Lloyd et al., 2014).
For example, ‘physically
active lessons’, i.e., those that incorporate physical activity into the teaching
of other subjects, are precisely intended to increase children’s physical
activity during lesson time.
There is a clear
effectiveness of physical activity interventions in schools. In fact, the
school environment provides a unique opportunity to ensure physical activity
for as many children as possible over long periods of time, considering,
however, that although teachers support such interventions, there is often
insufficient time to implement them, preferring more strictly academic tasks.
The range of possible interventions derived from the experience of ‘physically
active lessons’ provides a variety of ideas for researchers and teachers to
adapt and replicate (Norris et al., 2015).
However, there is a need for
further, broader, and more rigorous investigations that can firmly assure the
effects of physically active lessons. Future interventions in this area will
necessarily have to be developed with teachers and the school environment as an
indispensable basis, with the aim of reducing sedentary school time while
maintaining educational value.
It is reductive to delineate
a methodology based exclusively on strictly scientific, biological, and
psychological premises, as much as it is indispensable to evaluate the
historical time in which the individual lives, the environment
and its requirements, since it is these elements that determine the various
deficiencies and needs. Man must be able to satisfy his needs through the
rational motion activities that are proposed to him. This rationality is
identified not only in proposing mechanically or functionally valid movements,
but in knowing, intuiting, and identifying the needs specific to each one,
linked to the somato-organic and psychic profile
typical to each individual, in the different ages of
life, depending on gender, education and social environment. What is needed,
therefore, are methodologies and didactics that consider not only bio-psychic
facts, but also time and environment factors.
Whatever purpose and
orientation a lesson may take, regardless of the dominant formative, rhythmic,
sporting, recreational characteristic, it should remain bound to the general
principles that determine the character of physical education (Calidoni, 2000; Sibilio, 2015b). This means that
the educational goal is still the preeminent one and that any other factor
should be understood as a means. The acquisition, therefore, of the correct
technical gesture cannot constitute the end of the lesson. It should be understood
as a part of the general physical education that one wants to teach, the
component of a whole in which it must be inserted, linked to what has already
been acquired in the other moments of the lesson and in function of what will
be done later.
If educational physical activities
were to be limited to the physical sphere alone, they would be reduced to
either a simple transposition of lines of thought or didactic solutions, or to
a purely kinesiological evaluation of movement (Cereda, 2015).
‘Educational physical
activities’ are a discipline for the formation of the individual identified as
body and spirit in a global sense. In this sense, Educational Gymnastics
(movement, play, sports education) and sport require an overall commitment of
the one, a collaboration of the physical and psychic faculties, until arriving
at a perfect harmonic synthesis (Cilia, 1996).
The body is the physical
condition of myself, and if I treat it through systematic education, an
education of the personality will also be achieved. It will foster the
evolutionary process from birth to death through continuous mutations.
Systematic education of the individual body-spirit is not limited to
physiology, sport, but extends to the psychological, sociological, pedagogical
field and enriches educational gymnastics with a vast humanistic context (Cereda, 2015).
The language of the body is
to the individual as language is to a culture; just as the cultural,
biological, social experiences of that people are stratified in that language,
for the individual his body contains all his personal history, that is, his
subjective and relational experiences and their meanings. His subjectivity is
embodied in the body even if in a way unknown to him (Biccardi, 2001).
From this point of view, only by recognising authentic
awareness in body language, we can build an educational model that can
contribute to the integral formation of the human being, and the teaching of
the body and movement in schools recognises in the body and in movement the
basis of a process that starting from sensoriality
induces, precisely, awareness.
In the field of experience of the body and movement in
the nursery school, we read that
«children become aware of
their bodies, using them from birth as a tool for self-knowledge in the world […]
because movement is the first factor in a child’s learning and it is through
movement that the child searches, discovers, plays, jumps and runs and the
action of the body makes them experience emotions and pleasant sensations,
relaxation and tension» (MIUR, 2012).
Becomes indispensable to stimulate the expressive and
communicative potential of the body in education to refine its perceptive
abilities and knowledge of objects, its ability to orient itself in space, to
move and communicate according to imagination and creativity (Palumbo et al.,
2017).
All the physical and sports activities planned in the
Physical Education curriculum contribute to the promotion of cognitive, social,
cultural, and affective experiences and the conquest of motor skills, as well
as the possibility of experiencing the success of one’s actions are a source of
gratification that stimulate the pupil’s self-esteem and the progressive
broadening of his or her experience, enriching it with ever new stimuli.
Azzarito, L., & Harrison, L. Jr,
(2008). “White men can’t jump”: Race, gender and
natural athleticism. International Review for the Sociology of
Sport, 43(4), 347–364. https://doi.org/10.1177/1012690208099871
Azzarito, L. (2010). Ways of Seeing the
Body in Kinesiology: A Case for Visual Methodologies. Quest, 62(2), 155–170. https://doi.org/10.1080/00336297.2010.10483639
Bailey,
R., Hillman, C., Arent, S., & Petitpas,
A. (2013). Physical activity: an underestimated
investment in human capital?. Journal of physical activity & health, 10(3),
289–308. https://doi.org/10.1123/jpah.10.3.289
Banks, M. (2001). Visual Methods in social research. London: Sage.
Biccardi, T. (2001). La comunicazione corporea. In M. Sibilio
(Ed.), Il laboratorio come percorso formativo. Napoli: Esselibri.
Calidoni, P. (2000). Didattica come sapere professionale. Brescia: La Scuola.
Carraro,
A. (2008). Educare al movimento.
Lecce: Pensa MultiMedia.
Carraro,
A., & Lanza, M. (2004). Insegnare/Apprendere
in Educazione Fisica: problemi e prospettive. Roma: Armando.
Cereda,
F. (2013). Teoria, tecnica e didattica
del fitness. Milano: Vita e Pensiero.
Cereda,
F. (2015). Attività motoria, sport e processi educativi. Tra implicazioni
didattiche e aspetti pedagogici. Pedagogia
e Vita, 73, 260–272.
Cereda,
F. (2016). Attività Fisica e Sportiva: tra l’educazione della persona e le
necessità per la salute. Formazione &
insegnamento, 14(2S), 25–32. Retrieved January 31, 2023, from https://ojs.pensamultimedia.it/index.php/siref/article/view/2006
Cilia,
G., Ceciliani, A., Dugnani, S., & Monti, V. (1996). L’educazione fisica. Padova:
Piccin.
European Commission, & World Health
Organization Regional Office for Europe. (2014). First Meeting of the
European Union Physical Activity Focal Points Network rome,
Italy 21-22 October 2014: Meeting Report. Copenhagen: WHO Regional Office
for Europe. Retrieved January 31, 2023, from https://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/272676/FirstMeetingEUphysicalActivityFocalPointsNetwork.pdf
Faigenbaum, A. D., McFarland,
J. E., Johnson, L., Kang, J., Bloom, J., Ratamess, N.
A., & Hoffman, J. R. (2007). Preliminary evaluation
of an after-school resistance training program for improving physical fitness in middle school-age boys. Perceptual and motor
skills, 104(2), 407–415. https://doi.org/10.2466/pms.104.2.407-415
Gamelli, I. (2004). Pedagogia ed educazione motoria. Milano:
Guerini Reprint.
Gauntlett, D., & Holzwarth, P. (2006).
Creative and visual methods for exploring identities. Visual Studies, 21(1),
82–91. https://doi.org/10.1080/14725860600613261
Le Boulch, J. (1979). Verso
una scienza del movimento umano. Roma: Armando.
Lipoma,
M. (Ed.). (2014). Le ontologie
pedagogiche dell’educazione motoria. Lecce: Pensa MultiMedia.
Lloyd,
R. S., Faigenbaum, A. D., Stone, M. H., Oliver, J.
L., Jeffreys, I., Moody, J. A., Brewer, C., Pierce,
K. C., McCambridge, T. M., Howard, R., Herrington, L., Hainline, B.,
Micheli, L. J., Jaques, R., Kraemer, W. J., McBride,
M. G., Best, T. M., Chu, D. A., Alvar, B. A., & Myer, G. D. (2014).
Position statement on youth
resistance training: the 2014 International
Consensus. British journal of sports medicine, 48(7),
498–505. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2013-092952
Meinel, K. (1984). Teoria del movimento. Roma: Società Stampa Sportiva.
MIUR.
(2009). “Cittadinanza e Costituzione” al via la sperimentazione nelle scuole
italiane. Comunicato Stampa del 4 marzo 2009. Retrieved
March 5, 2009, from https://www.istruzione.it/archivio/web/ministero/cs040309.html
MIUR. (2012). Indicazioni nazionali per il curricolo delle scuole dell'infanzia e
del primo ciclo di istruzione: Regolamento e testo definitivo. MIURAOODGOS/7734. Retrieved
January 31, 2023, from https://www.istruzione.it/archivio/web/istruzione/prot7734_12.html
Nordmann,
L. (2007). Bildung im Sport - Bildung
für Sport - Bildung durch
Sport: Neue Wege einer modernen
Trainerausbildung. Leistungssport,
36(5), 19–24. Retrieved January
31, 2023, from https://www.iat.uni-leipzig.de/datenbanken/iks/ls/Record/2000057
Norris,
E., Shelton, N., Dunsmuir, S., Duke-Williams, O.,
& Stamatakis, E. (2015). Physically
active lessons as physical activity and
educational interventions: a systematic
review of methods and results. Preventive
medicine, 72, 116–125. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2014.12.027
Novara,
G. (1962). Teoria e Metodologia delle
attività motorie educative. Trapani: Chirone.
Palumbo,
C., Franco, S., & Cereda, F. (2017). Motor technique and didactics: a possible alliance
from an educational point of view. Education Sciences & Society, 7(2), 91–105. https://journals.francoangeli.it/index.php/ess/article/view/3948
Pesce, C., Marchetti, R., Motta, A., & Bellucci,
M., (2015). Joy of moving. Movimenti e Immaginazione. Giocare
con la variabilità per promuovere lo sviluppo motorio, cognitivo e del
cittadino. Torgiano (PG): Calzetti e Mariucci.
Rikard, L. G., & Banville,
D. (2006). High school student attitudes about
physical education. Sport,
Education and Society, 11(4),
385–400. https://doi.org/10.1080/13573320600924882
Sibilio,
M. (2015a). Il corpo educativo. In M.
Sibilio (Ed.), L’agire educativo (pp. 108–119). Brescia: La Scuola.
Sibilio,
M. (2015b). La funzione orientativa
della didattica semplessa. Pedagogia Oggi,
2015(1), 327–334.
Sotgiu,
P., & Pellegrini, F. (1989). Attività
motorie e processo educativo. Roma: Società Stampa Sportiva.