Convergence and integration: a proposition for elementary physical education classes from 5th to 8th grade

Abstract

The main objective of this research was to present and analyze a proposition in order to provide foundations for the teacher's intervention in Physical Education classes, from the Fifth up to the Eighth Elementary School Grade. For this purpose propositions previously elaborated in the area were critically reviewed, especially during the last two decades of the Twentieth Century. It was considered, based on that review that an approximation among the analyzed tendencies is a necessary condition for a better context comprehension of Physical Education classes, because teachers might use constitutive elements of that diversity to everyday problems solution. In that sense, the National Curricula Parameters for the Physical Education area constituted a coherent approach in relation to the very possibility of approximation among tendencies. However, its curricular principles, particularly the contents, were limited in broadening, since the established relations among the scientific studies fields - Kinesiology, Human "Motricity" Science, Movement Body Culture, Sport Sciences, and Health related Physical Fitness - and the intervention proposition are precarious. Methodologically, the proposition grounded itself on hermeneutics and epistemology to investigate a possibility of integration among thematical content units. Convergence between scientific study fields and School Physical Education approaches could be understood as a set of similar elements: curricular principles, and axiological and teleological principles that would lead to a common epistemological backward standpoint and to a common problem setting.