Long-term continuing education: an analysis of factors that potentialize the change of physical education teacher's conception ^{1 2 3}

Abstract

The article discusses the results of a study that aimed to identify factors that potentialized changes in the conception of teachers participating in a long-term continuing education project. Based on the assumptions of Cultural Critical Physical Education (P.E.), through documentary research using secondary data, we analyzed the materials produced in a three-year collaborative study (26 meetings) with the participation of 15 teachers and one teacher-mediator. Although there is no specific factor that leads to a change in conception, and consequently in the teaching practice, we conclude that the main factors that induce change were: the recognition of students' right to learn the plurality of themes in the body culture of movement and the collective construction of a curriculum proposal for P.E. at a regional level.

Keywords
teaching conception; Physical Education; collaborative study; continuing education

Resumo

O artigo discorre sobre os resultados de uma pesquisa que visou identificar fatores que potencializaram mudanças de concepção de professores participantes em um projeto de formação continuada de longa duração. Pautados nos pressupostos da Educação Física (EF) culturalista-crítica, por meio de uma pesquisa documental com a utilização de dados secundários, analisaram-se os materiais produzidos em um estudo colaborativo com duração de 3 anos (26 encontros) que contou com a participação de 15 docentes e 1 professor-mediador. Apesar de não haver um fator específico que leve à mudança da concepção e, consequentemente, da atuação docente, conclui-se que os principais fatores indutores de alteração foram: o reconhecimento do direito dos alunos de aprender a pluralidade de temas da cultura corporal de movimento e a construção coletiva de uma proposta curricular para a EF em âmbito regional.

Palavras-chave
concepção de ensino; Educação Física; estudo colaborativo; formação continuada

School Physical Education and its relation with legal frames

This article discusses the results of a study held in a 3-year in-service teacher education project which investigated how a long-term education process, guided by the assumptions of a cultural critic⁴ Physical Education can help change teachers' concept of teaching, focusing on the right to learn themes about the corporal culture of movement. We approach here a critical aspect – among other products from the broader project – that is, identifying factors that enhanced a change of conception among the program participants.

To show the relevance of this study in the area, we should situate the events that, approximately 25 years ago, made Physical Education (P.E.) become a compulsory subject in Brazilian K-12 education, in the same legal standard as other subjects with more school tradition. In this perspective, we had started from the assumption that the cultural shift⁵ in school P.E. made explicit its study object while demanding from the teachers a set of complex knowledge little disseminated in the literature until that point. Summing up, at the end of 1996, the Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educação Nacional ‒ LDBEN (Law of Lines of Direction and Bases of the Education) ‒ (Lei n.º 9.394, de 20 de dezembro de 1996, 1996), was promulgated, in which P.E. started to be considered a compulsory subject in the curriculum from Childhood Education until High School. We can see this in the excerpt: “Physical education, integrated to the pedagogical proposal of the school, is a curricular component of K-12 education, adapted to the age range and conditions of the school population, being optional in the night courses” (Artigo 26, § 3. ^o). According to the law, P.E. held the same legal national standard as the other components.

With the publication of the Parâmetros Curriculares Nacionais (National Curriculum Guideline) (Brasil, 1998), school P.E. started to have the body culture of movement as an object of study to be apprehended by students through games, sports, dances, fights, and gymnastics for the “critical exercise of citizenship and the improvement of life quality” (p. 29). This idea is quite different from the one proposed for Physical Education in Decree n.^o 69.450, from November 1, 1971 (1971), whose aim was the development of students’ physical and sporting aptitude with no systematization of the contents to be taught.

Despite the criticisms addressed to the National Curriculum Guideline (Brasil, 1998) since its begging – from those identified with the cultural criticism and those who advocated for students’ physical-sporting development as the legitimation point of Physical Education classes at school – this document inspired the creation of regional and municipal curriculum documents in the early 2000s, which also considered the body culture of movement as a central assumption for the organization of this subject in K-12 education. In the wake of regional and municipal curriculum projects after the National Curriculum Framework, despite the criticisms over its viability and pertinence since its version⁶, the Base Nacional Comum Curricular (National Curriculum Framework) (Brasil, 2017) reaffirmed P.E. as a curriculum component that systematizes the corporal practices, guaranteeing to students

the (re)construction of a set of knowledge that can broaden their awareness, the respect to their movements, and the resources to take care of themselves and others, and the development of autonomy to appropriate and use the corporal culture of movement in several human ends, favoring their confident and personal participation in society. (p. 211)

Due to the normative character of the National Curriculum Framework (Brasil, 2017) ‒ which imposed to the states and cities the realignment of their curriculum references in consonance with the postulates presented – and the more than 20 years since the promulgation of the National Curriculum Guideline (Brasil, 1998), the corporal culture of movement seems to be a study object consolidated in the educational, legal framework of Physical Education.

The scenario of school Physical Education and the training possibilities of continuing education

Considering that the pedagogical proposals should guide the educational practices (Kirk et al., 2019), school P.E. should be aligned with the national legal order presented. However, despite having conquered a legal status, it is interesting to observe the predominance in the social imaginary of the perception that P.E. “removes” the students from the classroom for leisure and time off, a moment ‘not to think’ and only ‘exercise’, ‘relax the mind’, in the face of subjects that would demand an intense intellectual effort, among other” (Sichelero & Rezer, 2013, p. 29). Generally, a good part of the school community did not show a concern with the (non) learning in the P.E. classes, while students' parents give little formative importance to the contents of this subject in school (Gil-Madrona et al., 2017). Therefore, regardless of the level of detail and imposition of state and national curriculum material, they are not strong enough to change the conception of education to transform teachers' practices. The documents – the legal bases and curriculum proposals – alone do not make teachers change conceptions. If documents were enough, we would have another scenario in school P.E. and, possibly, the social imagination.

Being official productions does not mean that they have sufficient power to allow teachers to have a different teaching practice from those that most develop – traditional practices and teachers’ drop-out–closer to the concept present in the documents. After all, even with the increase of teachers involved in the production of innovative practices in the last years, there has been a “high level of drop-out cases and low frequency of cases of pedagogical renovation” (González, 2016, p. 67)⁷. To Bracht, in an interview with Almeida & Gomes (2014), this is an enormous challenge to be overcome “because what we have today in school P.E. is a framework we have been calling pedagogical divestment…, we are still far from effectively building a new school culture for P.E.” (p. 300). As Fensterseifer (2016) states, when drawing a panorama of the situation of school P.E., the situation of teacher drop-out is certainly hegemonic so that the "decrease of the distance between the imagine P.E. and the acted P.E. continues to be one of the main challenges for the area" (Souza, 2019, p. 9).

The situation of teacher drop-out reaches all of Latin America and does not affect only P.E. teachers, as pointed out by a recent Chilean study (Gonzalez-Escobar et al., 2020). For example, Mexico gives the name professor de la pelotita (ball teacher) to teachers’ drop-out (Rozengardt, 2018). They use the terms tirar la pelota (to remove the ball) and fulbito (foosball) in Argentina. In Uruguay, pelota al médio (ball in the middle). In Spain, pachanguita (casual soccer game), pointing out that the phenomenon of teacher drop-out goes beyond Latin America (González, 2016). In the Brazilian case, there is still a strong tendency toward não aula⁸ (non-class) in the time slot of P.E. in the school curriculum, which is grounded in the belief that students do not have specific knowledge to be studied in this subject beyond the body experience of some practices –normally few sports modalities.

Indeed, teachers are neither guilty nor victims in this process, as there is a complex relation between the micro (school culture) and macrosocial elements (the most general culture) that directly interfere in the configuration of classes and how teachers guide them (González, 2016). Our main point is that when finishing their pre-service education in Physical Education Teaching degree in a Higher Education institution, the teachers receive a license from the State to teach specific subjects – the object of their training – according to the legal frameworks, aiming for students' right to learning. We understand that the panorama of non-class is partially because teachers are not offered the conditions to effectively appropriate a series of knowledge and competencies ‒ which would allow them to alter their practice according to the current legal framework in the cultural-critical perspective of Physical Education. Among the different national guidelines to conceive the classes of this curriculum component (Brasil, 1998, 2017; Decreto n.° 69.450, de 1.º de novembro de 1971, 1971) in different political moments – military dictatorship and democracy – are the teachers that, in a specific moment, in our opinion, perceived themselves in a situation in which their practice no longer worked, as if they were groundless.

Thus, beyond the investments in better work conditions, there is the need to invest in projects that consider concrete realities and value teachers’ knowledge, studying with them⁹because a change in teachers' practice is much harder to take place (Imbernón, 2010). According to Sparkes (1997), teachers have deeply rooted beliefs that shape their educational practices, as “a change in this level is extremely difficult because it challenges the essential values individuals hold about the purposes of education” (p. 252). As highlighted by Behrens (2007), “in general, teachers did believe they needed to rethink their teaching but did not know how to do so” (p. 451).

In the face of this, researchers that assume a propositional position, besides criticizing teachers' work at school, have pointed out continuing education as a possibility of change. According to Imbernón (2010), the ways of perceiving teacher education have rapidly changed in the last decades. In a review, the author identifies that in the 1980s, it was perceived as an individual assimilable product through conferences or courses. In the 1990s, it became a process to assimilate strategies, change personal issues and interpretation practices through a process to assimilate strategies, change personal questions, and interpretation practices with seminars and workshops. In the 2000s, the attention shifted to creating spaces and resources, aiming to build learning via innovative projects, exchanges, and attempts of reflexive practice. In the early 21^st century, continuing education was guided toward creating transformation projects, with community intervention and research about the practice.

In the specific case of Brazil, teachers’ continuing education started to receive more attention in the 1990s. Since this period, the Brazilian State produced laws, resolutions, networks, plans, and policies approaching and focusing on continuing professional improvement. We highlight the Item II of the Article 67 of LDBEN (Lei n.º 9.394, de 20 de dezembro de 1996, 1996); Article 5. of the Resolution n.º 3, from October 8, 1997 (1997) of the Conselho Nacional de Educação; Rede Nacional de Formação Continuada de Professores de Educação Básica (Brasil, 2006); the Plano Nacional de Educação ‒ PNE ‒ (Lei n.º 10.172, de 9 de janeiro de 2001, 2001); and Law n.º 13.005, from June 25, 2014 (2014); and the Política Nacional de Formação de Professores da Educação Básica ‒ Parfor ‒ (Decreto n.º 6.755, de 29 de janeiro de 2009, 2009); among others.

When analyzing the structure of teachers’ continuing education in Brazil, Henrique and Ferreira (2016) mentioned the existence of different models, predominantly those following a traditional format with courses, workshops, lectures, etc., which intend to answer the needs of the educational system but cannot integrate teachers’ interests in this process. Most training initiatives for P.E. teachers have the following characteristics: few meetings, disregard toward teachers’ knowledge and interest, dependency perspective, closed curriculum, little teacher autonomy, and short-duration activities (Bernardo, 2016; Molina Neto et al., 2006). According to Imbernón (2010), there is a centrality of initiatives

With a type of continuing training that, despite everything and everyone, continues in a process composed of model lessons, notions offered in courses, an orthodoxy of watching and participating in training given through courses with specialists – in which a teacher is an ignorant person who watches the sessions that “enlighten and culturalize” them professionally. It is left aside what has been defended for a while: research-action processes, attitudes, projects related to the context, teachers’ active participation, autonomy, heterodoxy, didactics, several teachers’ identities, comprehensive plans, didactic creativity, etc. (pp. 8-9)

In the attempt to advance the effective quality of continuing education, a perspective pointed out as consistent ‒ and with a reflexive potential ‒ is the idea of collaborative studies with teachers. Because of this, aiming to contribute to students’ rights to learn in P.E. classes, as proposed in the National Curriculum Framework (Brasil, 2017), this article aims to identify the factors that potentialized a change in teachers' conception after the participation in a continuing long-lasting training grounded on the assumptions of a cultural-critical Physical Education.

Methodological procedures

This study has a qualitative approach, characterized as documental research (May, 2004) using secondary data to acquire information. According to Flick (2009), this type of research allows the analysis of information from a specific reality already documented.

The documents analyzed arise from a continuing education training offered by one of the 30 Regional Coordination of Education (RCE) in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, for the teachers under its responsibility. The peculiarity and originality of this research are related to the fact that one of the authors in this article participated in the data produced as a training mediator invited by the Coordination¹⁰.

The mediation role in the events envisioned not the capacity to mobilize a group of teachers to participate in the project and to build an environment in which teachers felt at ease to express their concepts about P.E., reflecting and discussing with their colleagues the different trajectories and methodological options derived from such conceptions, with no prior moral judgment. Such demand assumed an extremely dedicated involvement and the attention of the teacher-mediator in building mutual trust among those involved.

These encounters consisted of meetings and seminars held in the RCE (in the auditorium or computer lab) and in the schools (on the courts, schoolyards, and gymnasiums) the participants worked. There were 26 study meetings, lasting approximately 4 hours, from November 2015 to August 2018, with the following topics as central themes: presentation of a study proposal and collective planning of the encounters to identify teachers’ interest¹¹; school’s social role as a republican and democratic institution; the meaning of school P.E..; what is (for what and why) teaching school P.E.; the dimension of contents: procedural, conceptual, and attitude; planning a teaching unit; didactic unit; class plan; teaching methods; types of tasks; teacher intervention; students' role; types of motor ability; evaluation; sports; fights; capoeira; motor games (popular and traditional); corporal and health practices (organic and sociocultural implications); body practices and society; expressive body practices; gymnastics (demonstration of body awareness, physical conditioning; adventure body practices; water activities; information and communication technology; construction of a curriculum proposal for P.E. in the schools of this RCE; corporal experimentation¹²; and homework¹³.

Of the total of teachers connected to the Coordination, 15 regularly participated in the study¹⁴. These participants established a group characterized by their age heterogeneity (from 41 to 58 years old), graduation period (from 1982 to 2002), time of experience as teachers (from 13 to 32 years), and previous education (undergraduate to master’s degree). Regarding their perception of their practice in school P.E., except for one teacher who believed she used innovative practices, the other members of the group believed they used traditional practices before the continuing education training¹⁵.

Among the documents proposed in the continuing training involving the 15 teachers, we used as data sources for this research: a) transcription of teachers' statements during the encounters; and b) interviews with the participants. As we analyzed the documents with secondary sources – as the CRE holds the primary information and provided them for academic investigation ‒this study is a secondary analysis of primary data.

According to Flick (2013), one characteristic of secondary analysis is that the data was not produced for the research, as is the case of continuing education promoted by the RCE. In particular, Tarrant and Hughes (2020) state that the research restrictions imposed by Covid-19 to face to face investigation “challenge the traditional approaches to qualitative research, making it an appropriate moment to reconsider the tendency of generating primary data as the form of ‘going to’ fieldwork and new studies” (p. 1).

In selecting the documents to answer the proposed objective in this article, we used content analysis based on Silverman (2009). This author points out that in this type of analysis, the researchers usually establish a set of pre0defined categories, using excerpts and parts of non-tabulated data to illustrate particular categories. In this way, we organized the information of a group of elements and systematized them into various matrices of analysis to allow the visualization and more consistent understanding of data.

Data analysis and discussion of results

From the perspective of gradation¹⁶, we believe there is no unique moment that triggers the change in teachers' conception. Therefore, different aspects can be pointed out as enhancers of understanding change. As identified by Anderson and Thiessen (2008), “change does not derive from a single action but, on the contrary, operates in various degrees and levels” (p. 146).

Therefore, a possible assumption refers to the understanding that the shift in the way to conceiving a good P.E. class does not take place in one unique point, nor is connected with normative documents. The click – used here as a metaphor to indicate a change in understanding – took different forms for each teacher, gradually, so that different events touched teachers and, thus, certain beliefs started to make sense to them. This way, there is no topic or subject that, when approached in isolation, induces a change in teachers’ practices. The click occurs when teachers perceive themselves as thinking differently from what was once familiar ‒ the result of a set of actions undertaken during time. Hence, the click moment is when the subjects perceive themselves turned and start to see their classes in a much different light, due to a collection of gradual reflections and experiences on the themes related to their pedagogical praxis- even if some themes are highlighted by educators, and they associate the click to a specific moment connected to the critical incidents produced by some experience, for example, a collaborative study.

In this case study, the participant teachers mentioned eight events that gradually allowed for the click. The three strongest ones pointed out as the main ones were the students' right to learn about the plurality of body culture of movement, the collective construction of a curriculum proposal, and the body experience with the themes studied. The five others, to a lesser degree, pointed out as secondary instances of change were the feeling of belonging to the study group as a source of empowerment and recognition, the shaking of teachers' awareness, the importance of the mediator's support in long-lasting collaborative studies, the challenge of giving a class about a recently-studied theme, and the study of specific topics in the continuing education training. Given the space limitations of this text, we analyze and discuss the two first factors.

Students' right to learn the plurality of themes from the body culture of movement

The central moment pointed out by the teachers, which allowed a change in the form of understanding school P.E., was the study of students' right to learn the plurality of themes in the body culture of movement as an end for this curriculum component in the school. According to Behrens (2007), “the involvement and commitment with students’ learning can be key for the success of teachers’ continuing education” (p. 452).

In a way, this subject makes sense to teachers, as can be seen in the following lines, transcribed from the interviews with teachers¹⁷: “To study about the meaning, the specificity, I think it was the term we used, it was really important. I think that was key” (Paula); “That thing about students' right to learn really hit me, I can say it moved me"

(Bruna);

I started to see the training in another way, in the sense of thinking differently, when we discussed that the student has the right to see this or that…There I started to reflect. This made me leave my comfort zone of working only with what I already know and go beyond

(Claudia);

To me, the main issue was to reflect on the right students have to learn about P.E. as a subject in school. Now I understand I must develop all themes. It's the students’ right. From then on, this has struck me and touched me

(Vitor);

That question about students’ right to learn that we've studied, that students have the right to learn something, really bothered me" I've learned in this training that, in P.E., we can work with things that students will never forget, and this is their right.

(Oscar);

What really hit me was the issue of students' right to learn. When this topic was raised, I thought: my son was my student in Year 7. Who knows if I didn’t teach my own son more things other than only handball, volleyball, and basketball, bringing more things to him. This really hit me! (Saulo)

As teachers do not recognize the approach of themes related to the body culture of movement aiming P.E. in school, the students' right to learn is restricted. Thus, when teachers understand that the students have this right, the development of themes related to this perspective starts to be considered. Bagnara and Fensterseifer (2016) defend that the role of P.E. in school is a central question to be dealt with in pre-service and in-service teacher training.

After this topic was studied in the continuing training, the teachers perceived a professional commitment related to the license granted by the State, connected to their professional practice in school, something along the lines of what Anderson and Thiessen (2008) call an “increase of common responsibility” (p. 148) to call attention to the political character of schools. After all, we must always be aware that the State grants a license to the teacher, according to the national norms, so that they can develop their work and guarantee students' right to learn what the legal framework establishes. As Fensterseifer (2016) argues, “we cannot do just 'anything' at school. The license we have means assuming the responsibility with the curriculum component for which we are hired and are qualified” (p. 9). Thus, when teachers do anything or act from a traditional perspective, they are not attending to students' rights regarding the subject knowledge. As stated by Rozengardt (2014),

Physical Education constitutes a knowledge area, and its contents have cultural relevance and social validity, constituting part of the meaningful values of culture. The knowledge and students' availability are part of their rights as citizens. (pp. 73-74)

When the students’ right to learning started to make sense to the students participating in the continuing training analyzed, they perceived that acting traditionally in school P.E. does not allow students' prerogative to have contact with the diversity of body practices in the area. In other words, approaching only some sports in class does not guarantee students' contact with other historical body manifestations, such as fights, games, gymnastics, rhythmic and expressive activities, body knowledge (Brasil, 1998), water activities, dances, adventure body practices, (Brasil, 2017), among others. For this reason, we can perceive that, in the early 2020s, it is not acceptable to deny students the opportunity of having contact with the plurality of body practices proposed more than 20 years ago in the National Common Curriculum Guideline (Brasil, 1998) and consolidated in the National Curriculum Framework (Brasil, 2017).

This understanding started in the fourth study meeting, when the participants discussed what (for what and why) to teach in school P.E. The reflection about this issue was new to the teachers, as reported by Claudia at the end of this meeting: “This is incredible! Twenty years in school, in Physical Education, and I’ve never realized that. I’ve never seen anyone talking about this”.

Since then, the understanding of students’ right to learn the plurality of the corporal culture of movements started to show itself and interfere in the discussions and positions of many teachers. In the following meetings, when studying specific themes of contents little seen in school physical education and their difficulty in approaching them, the teachers frequently talked about the need to implement them due to students' rights, as highlighted by Paula in the 17^th study meeting; “You know, I also don’t have this easiness to work with dance, but remember: the students have this right!”.

From this understanding, the insight into students' right to learn started to establish teachers' knowledge map. Notably, it has impacted the constitution of curriculum knowledge (Tardif, 2014). This fact allowed the study group to answer questions connected to the meaning of P.E. in school interfaced with the ability to sustain the pertinence of themes in the classes of this subject, an action related to the structuring question of what to teach (González & Bracht, 2012).

This event dialogues with the previous conceptions about the meaning of P.E. At the beginning of the continuing training, the teachers had great difficulty positioning themselves regarding the specificity of P.E. in school. Since the fourth study meeting, a significant part of the group started to overcome this previous difficulty, even if all participants had not fully abandoned those meanings.

The pertinence of teachers’ reflection and discussion on students' right to learn is evidence of an essential element that the organizers of continuing training should consider. Thus, when defending students’ right to learn (Brasil, 2017), we can think that, when participating in continuing training, the teachers have the right to contact the themes, contents, and methodologies that allow conceptual changes. Particularly in the case of P.E. teacher training, the study on students' right to learn the plurality of themes connected to the body culture of movement, aiming the curriculum component in school, a topic to be highlighted due to its potential to generate change, as took place in the continuing training analyzed.

This change is articulated with the idea of planning as, when collectively constructing the curriculum proposal for the schools encompassed in this RCE, teachers contemplated all the themes studies in the continuing education project. This action indicates a clear intention to attend to students' learning rights.

The collective construction of a curriculum proposal

Teachers pointed out the collective construction of a curriculum proposal for Physical Education in the schools of the RCE as an element of impact highlighted in the change of conception. We present some excerpts in this sense, transcribed from interviews conducted with the teachers: “It was striking to me when we started to make that structure, to guide what to work in each year, the number of classes. Ow! I think that was fantastic” (Sandra); “I really liked to build that framework, the curriculum proposal. For me that cleared up things, it was much easier to work” (Nice); “What also stood out was when you started to present the ideas of subject distribution during the school year. That percentage task was very interesting" (Saulo);

Here, in the end, we have this North because the anguish was like: in Math, they know what to work. In Portuguese, they know… And now, with this curriculum proposal we made, our RCE will know. Though some teachers who didn't participate don't know how this construction was

(João);

It took so many years to make a work that today indicates to us what we start in Year 6 and go until the Senior Year in High School, and we didn't have this. The definition of what to teach each year will be very good because now I understand it's not enough to have some loose work. Just like Mathematics, and Portuguese, they know what they will teach from the beginning to the end of the year, and what the contents of Years 7 and 8 will be. Now we’ve defined and created a little booklet, by everyone who participated

(Oscar);

In my opinion, another highlight was the issue of curriculum organization. Because in the other subjects, we get a book, and there is the content structure: in Year 5, it's like this. In Year 6, too, everything is organized. We had a little bit in the Lições do Rio Grande, but there was not much and we had trouble understanding why it wasn’t something as didactic

(Bruna)

The need pointed out by the teachers to have a curriculum proposal for school P.E., known by teachers, is historical. According to Maldonado et al. (2018), “one of the most important points in the difficulties that the school P.E. teachers have always was related to the possibility of systematizing the themes and contents they intend to develop during the year or schooling cycle" (p. 86). According to Rufino et al. (2017), the difficulty of structuring a curriculum regarding what should be approached in each school year is highly problematic in P.E. Therefore, the definition given by teachers on what is essential to be approached in classes should receive more attention in the studies in the field of education (Gariglio, 2013). After all,

there still lingers a theoretical-practical distance embodied in the incompatibility between the logic of building pedagogical proposals from an academic space and the possibilities of retranslating them for the environment of pedagogical practice in school, given the complexity and singularity of this intervention space.

(Gariglio, 2013, p. 245)

As the curriculum proposal was made collectively, teachers participated effectively in its creation, showing their opinions and contributing to the construction of the document. As Bracht[18] defends, a continuing training needs to "consider teachers in the intervention as intellectuals, who produce knowledge; they need to be understood as partners in the training process and not as someone to whom we will talk from the knowledge produced in the academy” (Almeida & Gomes, 2014, p. 284). Thereby, continuing training comes closer to enhancing autonomy "in which teachers go from being spectators to become author, co-responsible for the training process. In this case, training is not done for teachers but with them constantly sharing experiences and investigating their practice” (Luiz et al., 2014, p. 80).

This action was essential for the document to make sense to the teachers. We must stop considering teachers only as appliers of other people's ideas – university professors and staff from the Ministry of Education– who are often far from school and/or outside teachers’ work (Tardif, 2014). As Fensterseifer (2018) states, “we, teachers, are terrible appliers of other people’s projects. Any ‘revolutionary’ idea should have the participation in the production, or critical participation, from the ‘soldiers’ who will be in the ‘battlefield front’” (p. 168).

When allowing teachers to participate in the definition of what (themes and contents) and when (in what school year) to teach or approach in the P.E. classes, continuing education had the merit to consider a historical claim of teachers, as in the lines previously highlighted. This shows signs of having advanced in the task of integrating their needs with institutional interests, something that "still seems to be a great challenge for the policies of teacher training" (Henrique & Ferreira, 2016, p. 13).

Effectively participating in the collective construction of a curriculum proposal for P.E. in the schools they work in, after the collaborative study of several themes over a long period, allowed teachers to go from applying ideas from other people to building a curriculum structure that made sense to them. Thus, participants reached something uncommon, though necessary, in an educational training that approaches teachers’ practice. After all, the pedagogical practice in school P.E., “much more than a simple ‘application’ of proposals, is its appropriation due to the peculiar characteristics of each context” (Bracht, 2019, p. 183).

This data indicates the need for P.E. continuing education training to consider teachers’ actual participation in the definition of curriculum proposals, with appropriate time dedicated to this theme in the planning of courses. Otherwise, we will continue with a scenario in which guideline documents have problems guaranteeing their materialization in the pedagogical practice. Continuing education can generate change in P.E. teachers' practice (Bracht, 2019).

Final remarks

When trying to identify the factors that boosted teachers' conception change after participating in a continuing long-term education based on the assumptions of a cultural-critic Physical education, we understand that there is no isolated instant that turned the switch when teachers started to understand the curriculum component in another way. From the idea of gradation, it was possible to see that many factors influenced the establishment of new types of knowledge, mainly: students' right to learn about the plurality of themes related to the body culture of movement and the collective construction of a curriculum proposal for a regional P.E. Hence, the change established itself gradually from different pathways for each teacher, different events touched the teacher, and, in this way, certain understandings start to make sense to them.

The eight factors mentioned in the data analysis allowed self-proclaimed traditional teachers to move from one place – conceptually speaking – to another, which they were not before the continuing training. In this process, some moved more than others. Anyhow, the factors establish themselves as evidence to engage possibilities of changing teachers’ concept of teaching and, in some cases, their practice. When analyzing in this text the students' right to learning and the collective construction of a curriculum proposal for P.E., as factors that influenced the constitution of new types of knowledge, we especially presented two elements with a more significant potential to overcome gaps in continuing education in the area.

There were undoubtedly several mishaps in this continuing education project, such as drop-out – 36 teachers participated in at least one training meeting, but less than half continued –; inconsistent participation (some teachers were not frequent in the study meetings)¹⁹; teachers' anguish when in contact with themes they did not approach in their classes; difficulties in studying alone; obstacles to advancing the discussions, such as the arrival of teachers only after some meetings; and the mediator's frequent doubts about guiding the study meetings, among others. These difficulties were not mentioned in this text because they were not directly connected to the objective proposed here.

In this sense, aware of the uncertainty of teachers’ knowledge mobilization – as a study limit – in a future investigation, we intend to follow the classes of participant teachers to see if the change in the teaching concept will not be lost in time. In other words, we will try to identify if the understanding established during a collaborative study of Physical Education as grounded on students' right to appropriate themes connected to the body culture of movement will result in attuned actions, even after some years and the end of the study group.

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  References correction and bibliographic normalization services: Andréa de Freitas Ianni [e-mail]
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  English version: Viviane Ramos [e-mail]
• 4
  The term cultural-critical encompasses the critical strands of the Physical Education Renovation Movement (critical-overcoming and critical-emancipatory), which emerged in the curriculum scenario in the area between the late 1980s and the early 1990s. This term, mentioned in Gonçalves’s (2020) work, highlights the cultural character of human movement from the criticism to the strands of school P.E. that delineate the ends of the subject to the development of physical aptitude. As Pich (2005) stresses, the culturalism proposal attempts to reconcile the body and the movement as a communication of men with the world. For a deeper study of the critical strands of Brazilian P.E., we recommend the works by Bracht (1999), Almeida et al. (2015), and Bracht & Almeida (2019).
• 5
  Cultural shift (Virada cultural in Portuguese) is a term given to the epistemological change that occurred in the mid-1990s in Brazilian school P.E. (González & Fraga, 2012), which is supported in the assumption that the bodily movement could not be analyzed or understood only through the mechanics of physical activity, in a central perspective of students' physical-sport development, as it carries senses and cultural meanings of a society in a particular time (Bagnara & Fensterseifer, 2019). According to Fensterseifer & Pich (2014), the cultural shift movement made the cultural dimension visible in the scenario of school P.E., whose influence is in debt with anthropological studies, giving significant didactic-pedagogical-curriculum contributions in this specific field.
• 6
  The National Curriculum Framework (Brasil, 2017) had three versions and was conceived amidst the political context pre and post-impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff.
• 7
  Bracht (2011) and González (2016) classify the types of P.E. teacher practices into three categories: traditional practices, work drop-out, and innovative practices. Traditional practices correspond to the work focused on teaching the technical gestures of sports, generally approaching a few modalities (indoor soccer, volleyball, basketball, and handball). Teachers' drop-out (or pedagogical divestment) is when one cannot identify an intention to teach and, consequently, there is no concern with students' learning. Teachers who implement innovative practices try to teach students considering the plurality of themes under the perspective of body culture of movement, approaching specific contents in the area, according to the current legal documents.
• 8
  González and Fensterseifer (2014) establish that " there is a class when occurs an intentional intervention by the teacher to allow the learning of a specific content and/or develop a particular ability, considered school's responsibility, and in which there is an effort to develop all students belonging to the administrative group defined as a class that, on its turn, articulates with a didactic sequence within a project, what demands specific procedures and is enacted in a certain time" (pp. 64–65).
• 9
  Molina Neto and Molina (2009) highlight the term 'with' to express the idea of researching and learning with teachers. Wittizorecki and Molina Neto (2015) reinforce this idea of “studying with teachers" instead of "researching the teachers". About this, Tardif (2014) defends a "research not about teaching and teachers, but for teaching and with teachers" (p. 239).
• 10
  This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul - UFRGS, under the number 88852218.7.0000.5347.
• 11
  According to Behrens (2007), teachers' continuing training proposals must be built with them rather than for them.
• 12
  The corporal experience of subjects studied occurred in most study encounters.
• 13
  The homework consisted of an action teachers had to develop with one class in the school and a class plan about what was studied in the meeting. The time for the task was until the subsequent encounter, in which the events in the class were collectively discussed in the study group.
• 14
  By regular, we mean teachers who attended at least 18 meetings out of the 26 held, approximately 70% of the total.
• 15
  The notes on how to act in school P.E. were made by the teachers themselves, who, during the encounters, identified themselves in this way.
• 16
  The word derives from gradual, which means “happening or changing slowly over a long period or distance”.
• 17
  The names are fictitious.
• 18
  In an interview to Almeida & Gomes (2014).
• 19
  In general lines, it is important to highlight that the non-participation in continuing training programs is related to the precarious scenario of teachers' work in Brazil and the lack of policies for permanent training that support teachers' presence in long-term training projects.

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1

Responsible editor: Carmen Lúcia Soares https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4347-1924

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  22 May 2023
• Date of issue
  2023

History

• Received
  29 Oct 2021
• Reviewed
  29 Oct 2021
• Accepted
  02 Feb 2022