Abstract :
[en] The current society needs to fight against the growing of sedentary lifestyles among the population all around the world. The school environment is identified as a pillar of the multisectorial approach that should be implemented to avoid that children who born today do not live less longer than their parents. The presentation will focus on four topics: (1) The role of school in physical activity (PA) promotion; (2) The dimensions of PA at school; (3) The action that physical education (PE) teacher can play; (4) The role of PE teacher educators in the improvement of the PE adaptation to the current needs. For one child, there are several opportunities to be physically active at school but the part of the school in youth PA is not well documented. Since recently, the only strong evidence of the effectiveness of interventions aiming to promote PA in youth was identified in adolescents when school and family/community environments are combined. However, some reviews have now revealed that school-based PA interventions can be effective for improvements in BMI, motor performance, physical activity, knowledge …
In order to design one PA promotion project at school, five dimensions should be considered: (1) Physical education; (2) Sport at school (links to the community); (3) Active transportation; (4) Life environment (recesses, spaces); (5) Physical activity in the classroom. All these dimensions should be supported by a strong school policy that considers PA as a key aspect for the youth development. It means that packages of school-based strategies need to be developed. Nevertheless, PE seems to be a central aspect emphasizing the key role of the PE teachers who should become the PA promoters in every school.
Unfortunately, since few decades, PE is facing a worldwide crisis raising questions about its quality and focusing on the teaching process, the inadequate school-community co-ordination, the focus on competition performance sport and the lack of interest on basic human movement and needs. Three concepts are now influencing some changes: (1) The physical literacy; (2) The accountability, and; (3) The Quality Physical Education (QPE). This means that, in PE, a special emphasis should now be set on the acquisition by the youth of knowledge, skills and attitude that will make them physically educated persons for their whole life, with the purpose to reach concrete improvements and to respect students’ needs and motivational characteristics. PE teachers have to show what they are doing in the promotion of an active lifestyle, using sports like a tool for general aims and not as a final objective. On the field, this means that new contents and teaching strategies have to be developed. The involvement of the students and the implementation of their learning into the real life should become a priority. Collaboration with other actors of the educational community (other teachers, parents) or the local community (sport clubs, sport administrations, private sector …) should be developed. PE teachers have to take these new roles. To achieve such change, they need to be supported by the PE teacher educators who have to emphasize the new educating strategies, develop concrete material and resources, contribute to create communities of practice, provide evidence based data supporting the effectiveness of the new approaches.
The presentation will propose systematic ‘give and go’ between theory and practice in order to connect researchers and physical education teachers, underlining that PE can only grow with such collaboration and development of a networking.
