Pedagogical and Didactic Fundamentals of School Physical Education: Pillars of Unit or Debris of Fragmentation?

Abstract

This research work was based on an interview about the relations of Pedagogy and Didactics conducted with Dr. Alfredo Furlán, an Argentinian pedagogue exiled in Mexico since 1974. This work discusses the idea that such subjects constitute, or should constitute, some form of fundamental to physical education as an educational subject. It suggests a horizontal debate among specialists and discourses that articulate theories and practices which are better placed, more local, less global and less abstract than what one tends to presume when theory and practice are discussed as totalizing categories. Without forgetting local concrete tasks that exist in the syllabus, this research work emphasizes that physical education at school has the importance of a finished project, being part of the set of contents that a school selects to be taught. It poses the issue of topic selection and its distribution as a main problem in the construction of a syllabus: discussing which contents (knowledge, skills, and attitudes) need to be guaranteed before defining the competences that currently attract the attention of technocrats; establishing limits and landmarks for a subject to work under its own identity or the “organizing” divisions such technocrats are so fond of.

Keywords*: Pedagogy – didactics – traditions – subjects – syllabus – contents – discourses.