State of art and didactics opportunities of Physical Education teaching in Primary School

Abstract

Physical education in primary school is one of the eight curriculum teaching disciplines of primary school and is a compulsory teaching as the others disciplines in compliance with the current legal framework. Specifically, the assignment of the disciplines takes place at the end of a process that starts from the class planning and ends with the assignment of disciplines to individual teachers by the head teacher. The planning activities concern the choice of contents and methods to achieve the objectives set by the Academic plan (POF) with the aim of harmonizing the physical education teaching with all the other disciplines. Actually, there is a limited contribution of physical education, like other education (Music, Technology, art and image), due to the limits of the educational system that amplifies the presence of the Italian and mathematics disciplines, followed by English, Science and History. This situation could soon be resolved because, on the basis of the past government actions, physical education has been promoted with specific measures. The Parliament discussion of the consolidated Law, which entrusts teaching to specialists in place of the current teachers and requires 2 hours of teaching per week, is of crucial importance. If it passed, we should make the appropriate modifications to the didactic model and then to the developing of the Academic plan. The goal is to analyse the actual situation and suggest changing in the future. The method is the archive search with analysis of normative documents explaining the application methods, to foresee possible problems and indicate the solutions. The usefulness of knowing through simulations is of fundamental importance for the scientific community to, possibly, suggest co practicable solutions. If the bill approves in the version analysed in this study, it will open a very advanced system compared to the average of the European ones; therefore, a full involvement of the scientific community is essential to help the changing process at the highest levels.