Teaching Practices and Student Action in Physical Education Classes: Perspectives for Teacher Education

Abstract

This research is part of an educational framework for analyzing teaching practices. It attempts to understand teachers’ practices in physical education. For this matter, it relies on the theoretical framework of didactic joint action. Using “ordinary didactics” (Schubauer-Leoni & Leutenegger, 2002), as a method of observation, we describe the teaching practices of two non-specialized teachers during two gymnastics units in two senior classes. The subject of our research is to joint didactic action in two didactic school systems: the first one is public while the second is private. In other terms, this research attempts the analysis of what the preselected teachers and students say and do while interacting. It attempts to identify teaching conditions that enable students to teach themselves, i.e. practice autonomous learning. The results put in evidence some generic characteristics of the topo-genetic process that may favor task transformation behavior among students in the context of each school system. The results open new perspectives of physical education for teacher education.