Didactic research and teaching practice in Physical Education: a semiotic-pragmatic manifest

Abstract

This essay aims to problematize the relationship between theory and practice in school Physical Education, referencing the semiotics and pragmaticism of Charles S. Peirce, who understands thought as action mediated by signs and rooted in experience. It is also based on data generated in an ongoing training program for Physical Education teachers, which was guided by principles of action research, understood as an investigative approach. The implications of this problematization indicate that theory does not precede teaching experience, but emerges from it through investigative efforts. Semiosis, the process of signification that understands life as an incessant movement of actualizing meanings, absorbs "theory" and "practice," because in experience and in the interpretation of experience, everything is a sign, without hierarchy or opposition. The theoretical categories that structure the semiotic-pragmaticist proposition were identified: language of movement (the specificity of Physical Education); contents (dynamic signs that are updated in the teacher-learners-environment relationship), learning (semiotic process that results in change or acquisition of beliefs and habits) and teaching conduct (intentional actions mediated by beliefs, doubts and habits). From the methodological point of view, it was concluded that didactic research should: (i) be led by university academics and basic education teachers in a collaborative, interlocutory and dialogue regime; (ii) start from the concrete, formulating abstractions and generalizations; and (iii) return to the concrete, feeding semiosis and reorganizing experience. The semiotic-pragmaticist proposition offers theoretical-methodological tools for epistemological and pedagogical surveillance that pursues the coherence of teaching and learning processes, as well as reaching the concreteness of school contexts and valuing teaching knowledge and conduct.