Walk more towards active leisure, tourism, culture, and education

Abstract

Background: This article addresses the following question: why don't primary and secondary school students perform urban walks or hikes during cultural and tourist visits of the cities they live in, when engaging in physical activity (PA)? The aim is to demonstrate that exploring cities on foot is a different, important, and necessary way to perform PA, that leads to improving social relations and exposing individuals to culture; in particular, teachers would be trained for this. Methods: qualitative methodology based on exploratory observation; state-of-the-art literature review; design of a didactic proposal in the form of an UrbanWalk. Results: existence of publications on related activities in many countries including Spain; development and implementation of the Urban Walk; opinions of its future teachers and their knowledge of the possibilities and advantages of this proposal and its relationship with different knowledge subjects. Conclusions: the Urban Walk facilitates future teacher knowledge of cities and provides a new approach to PA; physical-cultural activities that complement the proposal need to be designed.