The voice of future Primary Education teachers about their previous experiences in Physical Education: From the contexts of participation to those of exclusion

Abstract

This paper is focused on the analysis of the previous experience of future generalist Primary Education teachers in the Physical Education (PE) subject coursed throughout their compulsory schooling. Its interest is that these experiences are the lens or filter through which students make sense of their university learning, so it is necessary to give them a voice in order to help them in the reflecting and rethinking process about these pedagogical practices as a way to transform them. The study was conducted from a qualitative content analysis of the narratives of 155 students who were studying the core subject of Teaching PE in the Degree of Primary Education in two Spanish universities. The main study findings show that there is a negative evolution in the previous PE experiences, since in Primary Education are visible contexts in which pleasurable, playful and participatory experiences predominate, while in Secondary Education prevail team sports as well as the selective formation of teams, the competitiveness and the performance test, therefore generating contexts of exclusion and rejection of the subject.