PE for what ? A project to make teachers aware of the importance of societal transfer

One important role of the school is to prepare the youth to become actors of their life and enlightened citizens. PE is supposed to contribute to such project by equipping youths with knowledge and experiences that they should be able to transfer from the gym to their personal life. Such philosophy is central in the TPSR Model (Hellison, 1995). It lays on an authentic instruction (Newmann & Wehlage, 1993) emphasizing the connectedness of the teaching to the world. Cloes (2017) proposed the concept of societal transfer defined as anything the PE course brings to students that they will be able to use in their daily lives, throughout their lives. Activities proposed during PE lessons are a tool of development and not an end (Siedentop, 2009; Pühse et al., 2010). The diversity of what PE teachers can bring to their students is so great that a categorization could help them to guide their action. In this presentation, we will explain first how we developed such resource. Secondly, we will present what we have done with secondary school PE teachers and PE students in order to draw their attention to what they could implement in their lessons to enlarge the potential transfers between the gym and the life beyond the latter. Using literature, we identified 7 dimensions of societal transfer (Autonomous active lifestyle; Transversal aspects; Health and safety; Psychological aspects; Social aspects; Knowledge of the human body; Motor and sport culture). Eight seminars were organized to share the model with 63 teachers and 15 PE students. They comprised several learning activities (definition, good practices, brainstorming, opinion on the concept, final feedback). Data confirmed the usefulness of the societal transfer dimensions. Subjects considered that the seminar helped them to discover the concept and motivated them to apply the principles in their teaching practice.