The social interaction within the physical education classroom

Abstract

The article presents the partial results of a research about the social representations of physical education built by the future teachers. Specifically, we address the understanding of the different
types of relationships present in Physical Education (PE) classroom, and how they affect perceptions and emotions experienced by the students of the class. The study was performed from the qualitative analysis of autobiographical narratives of 142 first-year students in Pedagogy in Basic Education, Early Childhood and PE grades in Chile. The main findings identified a distant relation between students and teachers. Furthermore, students criticized teacher’s authoritarianism. A significant group of students perceived the subject with a low social value and they understood it as recreational instead of educative. The Darwinist approach of the subject was denounced in the narrative of the students as they say that it leads to discrimination and mockery situations towards those students with less developed motor skills