The constitution of the professional intervention in physical education: interactions between the "formalized" knowledge and the strategies of action

Abstract

Important considerations and essays have been published about the critical points of the Physical Education, as well as its relation to the professional education. However, very little is known about the professional intervention and its effective content. The purpose of this study was to identify and understand, along with the physical education professional, who perform their activity outside the school, the types and categories of knowledge adopted, the strategies of action they use and the representations about their own interventions. A theoretical basis was established in order to identify the objective and subjective properties of the professional intervention so, in order to understand the combination of these aspects in a dynamic setting; it was chosen the methodological procedure within the qualitative approach. The choice for the ethnographic type of study was an essential condition to clarify how some processes become significant in the decision-making of the physical education professionals. Three physical education professionals responsible for the development of physical activity programs for adults in gyms, took part in the study. The most important strategy was to identify what was the basis of the articulations among the several resources that the professionals had to face the professional situations and so to understand and apprehend what was underlying the professional intervention. It was finally considered that: the establishment of the physical education as a professional group requires necessarily the understanding of the increase of the complexity of the performed roles, of the jurisdictional tensions with other areas, of the diversification of social demands and responsibilities, what characterizes the peculiarity of its nature, content and structure of the professional knowledge.