Professores de educação física na educação infantil: dificuldades, dilemas e possibilidades

Abstract

After several years of coaching and observing Kindergarten Physical Education (PE) teachers, I was led to question how these professionals perceive their teaching practice in the area which became the object of the present study. Although Physical Education is a compulsory component of the Basic Education curriculum, it is not mandatory to have a PE teacher in the Preschool, which starts arguments regarding initial training, legal, social and conceptual aspects on the matter. The specific objectives of this study are as follows: to investigate and get acquainted with the difficulties that these professionals face during their practice in Preschool Education; to understand the dilemma which pervades their initial training; to investigate possibilities to the PE teaching practice in Preschool in city public schools in the town of Praia Grande, São Paulo. The research, of qualitative approach in its essence, had the participation of twenty-three, from the total of forty-four PE teachers, who work in city public schools in Praia Grande (São Paulo state), dealing with 4-5 year-old children, who attended Preschool in 2013. After collecting data through questionnaires, two teachers were selected to be further interviewed in order to could acquire more information. The research was divided into five phases: the research before the research itself; bibliographic research; applying and analyzing the questionnaire; interviews and data analysis, in which the hermeneuticdialectical approach was used, supported by the content analysis technique to deal with the data from the research. Data analysis enabled the perception that, even though undergraduate programs on Physical Education do not train their students to become Preschool PE teachers, most of these teachers find ways to overcome this difficulty through experience, research, exchanging information with their peers and getting support from the technical team. The greatest difficulties faced by PE teachers in order to perform their classes in this segment include coping with initial training, which does not focus on Preschool, the absence of areas in the schools to give their classes and lack of knowledge about children. However, even having to deal with working conditions which are not always favorable, Physical Education teachers state that working on this segment is quite pleasurable.