School Physical Education: Understandings of Elementary School Students about the Place of the Body

Abstract

This study aimed to analyze how students in the Final Years of Elementary School comprehend the place of the body in school, from the experience of school Physical Education mediated by digital Technologies, in the period of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study is justified by the need to look at the body in the returning of face-to-face classes. This is a research with a qualitative and descriptive approach, carried out in two schools of the municipal education network in a municipality in Vale do Taquari/RS. The participants were 16 students from the final years of Elementary School, eight from a 6th grade class and eight from a 9th grade class, and two Physical Education teachers. The information was produced through observations of classes recorded in a field diary, discussion groups with students and semi-structured interviews with teachers. The analysis methodology used was Discursive Textual Analysis. In both classes, there was an understanding that the essence of Physical Education is to move and, for this reason, they don`t claim the use of digital technologies in face-to-face classes. In addition, it is observed that school Physical Education is a place where students feel themselves a body and live with the bodies of the colleagues. Finally, it is concluded that digital technologies were fundamental for the continuity of teaching in the period of the COVID-19 pandemic, but, in the returning to face-to-face classes, students want to know the world through their own bodies with teachers and classmates.