Body Education in Primary School: Analysis and Determinations

Social inclusion is widely recognized as a priority to be achieved at the international level; many institutions attribute a fundamental role in this direction to sport. Sporting activity, conceived and organised in its educational value, is generally considered an opportunity for pupils to develop their physical body (Landry & Driscoll, 2012), psychological and sociorelational, as well as increasing functional independence and the inclusion process (Valentini & Marinelli, 2021). The recent legislative innovation, introduced by Law n.234 of 2021, which provides for the use of specialist teachers to teach motor education in primary school, has awakened the debate that had already started on the occasion of the bill n.992 of 2018 which already provided for the introduction of the specialist teacher of motor education in primary school to guarantee “a real and qualifi ed teaching to children through suitable and targeted interventions from the point of view of motor development, but not only, also to produce effects on learning, prevention and socialisation”. Consequently, it is necessary to recall the assumption of a procedural habitus able to identify the most suitable didactic and methodological strategies to promote inclusion processes with the adoption of a physical and sporting practice that is “for everyone” and “of everyone” to facilitate access and physical practice in formal education for all students. Embracing the importance and the necessity of this qualitative approach to motor education, a research was conducted during the academic year 2022-2023 to answer the following question: is it possible to promote a process of sports literacy in children aged between 9 and 11 years? Through what actions is it possible to promote sports skills in students attending the fi fth grade of primary school? The intent is to pay attention also to the quantitative approach in response to the defi ciencies that the current generations are highlighting at the psycho-physical level and, after presenting a screening on a sample, to defi ne some possible integrated strategies, both qualitative and quantitative, to respond to the emerging problems of well-being concerning the developmental age. The design work responds to the backward design model (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005; 2007), which allows an analysis of the task aimed at clarifying what goals to pursue and how to give evidence of their achievement; makes it possible to clarify which teaching and learning objectives to pursue; it enables greater consistency between desired outcomes, key performance, and learning and teaching experiences. It has been decided to promote learning that derives from experience, with an orientation of relevance, since it develops in the person the awareness about his prerogatives, the personal project, and the path taken. The sample was composed of 449 Italian children, aged 9 to 11 years (Male=225; Female=224). The percentage distribution of students compared to the Motorfi t Lombardia 81 reference tables, showed the following results: 66% and 57% of participants were insuffi cient- poor respectively in the aerobic endurance test (Cooper 12m) and anaerobic endurance test (10x5 shuttle), only 27% in the fi rst test, and 34% in the second test, were good or excellent, the rest of the sample is suffi cient. Even in the explosive force of the lower limbs, 61% of the participants are insuffi cient-poor and 28% good-excellent, the rest of the sample is suffi cient. Better results, however, in tests of upper limb strength (60% good-excellent) and abdominal strength (57% good-excellent). The trend remains similar even when comparing sex, males versus females, where there are poor values both in aerobic resistance (64% vs 52%) and in anaerobic resistance (68% vs 63%) and in standing long jump (51% vs 59%). An experimental plan that offers some advantages over the single-group plan is the two-group plan where two samples of pupils are randomly chosen, for example, two classes, one of which is offered the teaching of a subject by an ordinary method and the other the teaching of the same subject by an experimental method. Random choice gives a certain degree of confi dence that the two groups are homogeneous. The two changes in the knowledge and skills acquired are monitored through two tests for each group: the initial test, which detects the starting level of the learners and the fi nal test, which detects the level of knowledge and skills reached overall by the learners. The participants came from Comprehensive Institutes of the province of Turin and the province of Palermo equally distributed. The sample was composed by 323 children aged from 9 to 11 years, of which 125 males and 198 females. The tools we used in the research are: Test Eurofi t (Council of Europe, 1988); Test anamnestic; Test Motorfi t Lombardia (2006); Physical Activity Questionnaire for Children – PAQ-C (Gobbi et al, 2012).The fi rst modality, which can respond to the integration between quality and quantity, in educational proposals, can be traced back to the strategy defi ned as enriched education (Pesce et al. 2016, p.3), whether motor, physical, or sporting. Under this umbrella, there is an activity that integrates more or less complex motor tasks within the deliberate game (Pesce et al., 2015). In this combination of demanding aerobic physical exercise and playful activity, motivational solicitation, physical commitment and cognitive enrichment are realised. A second more interdisciplinary modality could be represented by the “physically active lesson” (Cereda, 2017) characterised by the transfer of bodily and motor action in the teaching of other school disciplines (Norris et al, 2015) with the great advantage of guaranteeing, among other things, the minimal daily physical activity indicated by international organisations in 30 – 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity (WHO 2010). A third modality to which we must commit ourselves is the creation of an educational network between families, school, and the sports world so that, in each environment, moderate to vigorous motor activity is promoted on every possible occasion: lessons at school, training in sport, family activities on the weekend when the child was the protagonist and brought home the exercises to do. From a statistical analysis, conducted with the software SPSS.23 (univariate ANOVA), it was possible to compare some differences between the experimental group and the control group in all the tests carried out. Participants in the experimental group were signifi cantly (p< 0.05) more performing, signifi cantly (p< 0.05) more active than the PAQ-C. It follows that 82 physical education cannot only protect the qualitative aspect but, through fun, engaging, motivating strategies, it must also guarantee the quantitative aspect, referring to the request for an adequate psycho- physical commitment, with an intensity that is not excessive but not insuffi cient either. Practising motor-physical-sports activity in the playful and educational dimension must also include the stimulation of aerobic activity, physical effort and movement in the school environment, to encourage children to move to combat sedentariness and improve the quality of life.