Specific caring for overweight students in physical education : Implementation of teaching strategies identified during an interdisciplinary meeting

Literature shows that the number of overweight/obese youth grows irreparably since several decades. Their increasing presence in PE classes implies that PE teachers need to adapt their lessons, which seems not to be an easy challenge. It appeared that they lack of knowledge about the specific topic of obesity while professionals working with the people affected by weight problems are not aware about the characteristics of the teaching context. This paper is a part of a bigger study aiming to provide lines of action to the PE teachers. Based on the recommendations suggested through a half day meeting gathering physical educators and specialists of obesity, six PE teachers – five females, one male, all volunteers – agreed to implement freely teaching strategies in order to deal with their overweight/obese students. During three months, they had to fulfill a diary. At the half of this period, they were interviewed in order to explain how they were coping. At the end of this period, they attended to a track report meeting in order to share their experiences with the specialists. All teachers underlined that writing in the diary was a hard task (lack of time, difficulty to recall all events or to identify interesting information). However, the analysis of the diaries, interviews, and last interdisciplinary meeting showed that PE teachers implemented six main categories of actions: ‘Adapted endurance activities’; ‘Guidance of the adolescents to out-of-school sports activities’; ‘Contact with physicians and medical certificates’; ‘Contact with the psycho-medico-social centers of the schools’; ‘Nutrition aspects’; ‘Activities that enhance the student’. A large inter individual variability has been identified. Reported actions are divided in ‘little’ interactive decisions relying on opportunities, and projects that need a real involvement of the teacher. All actions were not effective but exchange between the subjects was hailed by each of them.