Physical Education at School: Acrobatic Gymnastics in a Socioconstructive Perspective

Abstract

The emerging methodologies of physical education at school advocate that the content covered in class should refer to the historical knowledge produced by the body movement culture. However, gymnastic modalities remain relegated to the background. Among the possibilities for action, the Acrobatic Gymnastics is highlighted: a sport that favors the development of strength, balance and trust among the participants, allowing the diversity of knowledge brought by students to be explored at school. The aim of this study is to understand the acceptance of the acrobatics in the socioconstructivist perspective in physical education classes at school for students 13 to 14 years old. Characterized as descriptive, the sample consisted of 35 adolescents of both genders, between 13 and 14 years old, from a municipal school of Maringá, PR, Brazil. Data were obtained through questionnaires administered before and after the intervention. As a result, it was found that 100% of students had never experienced acrobatic gymnastics in the school environment, 71.5% of them had no knowledge about this modality. It was noticed that, after the intervention, 85.8% of students gained a formed concept about the gymnastics, 100% of the teenagers supported the methodology used for the preparation of classes and 97.1% of the sample endorsed the gymnastics as a means of intervention during physical education at school. We conclude that the acrobatics on the basis of socioconstructivist theory, can break the exclusively technical approach, allowing improvement in cognitive, motor, affective and social development of students in the age group corresponding to the adolescence.