Physical Education: Knowledge, Movement, and Human Relationship

Posted on Nov 3, 2024 in Social sciences

ITEM 1: Physical Activity and Mood

Physical activity strongly influences mood.

Physical Education

Physical Education is a comprehensive training system that aims to harmonize the spirit and body, particularly in response to development and care within the space-time binomial (Vicente Carrizosa 1992).

Physical activity has always existed, with scientific theories emerging in the 1970s and 1980s.

Physical Education: Knowledge Object

A key part of constructing scientific disciplines is defining “concepts” or “basic predicates” and “protocol criteria” (Artigas, 1989).
The object determines the subject of science. Everything that seems to be part of the knowledge of “Physical Education”, either before or after sport and other physical activities, is the “object” of study.
The most studied variables in Physical Education are: education and human movement.

Two trends describe the understanding of “Physical Education” (Cecchini, 1996):

From the perspective of human movement and human movement science.
From an educational perspective as the science of Physical Education.

In that sense, the theory of Physical Education would be the pedagogical theory of physical activity.
Consequently, we can classify work in the field of Physical Education theory into three groups based on their object of study: human movement, the value of physical education, and the human relationship in physical education.

Human Movement

Human movement is a substantial quality of being alive that has taken on a special dimension beyond the purely biological and functional.
Human movement is a source of: knowledge and communication, feelings and experiences, aesthetic sense, health, recreation, and phylogenetic (long-term development of a species) and ontogenetic (one generation) development factors.
Human movement as an object of knowledge can be studied from three different approaches:
- Multidisciplinary knowledge: Viewed from different disciplines such as chemistry, psychology, etc.
- Interdisciplinary knowledge: Combines all the views of all disciplines.
- Structural knowledge: Structure of human movement as a system with interacting parts and a common purpose.

Relationship Between Physical Education and Human Movement

Grupe (1976) stated that Physical Education should be considered a subject and title within educational sciences, based on two principles:
- Humans are corporal beings in the world.
- Play belongs to the original forms of human existence.
According to López (1984), Physical Education is the education of a human considered as a unit, focusing on the socio-affective, psychomotor, and cognitive aspects, using movement in its different forms (task, game, sport, life in nature) for continuing education.
The systematic approach to Physical Education (Lagardera Otero, 1989) considers it as a paradigm for intelligent growth as a person, establishing it as part of pedagogy.
The specific nature of Physical Education’s pedagogical action on the intelligent system is that it is institutionalized through motor skills.
For Cecchini (1996), Physical Education is the education of a human being conversing, communicating, and physically engaging with the world. It is a systematic education driven by dialogue and characterized by:
- Intentional education.
- Structured around a person’s ability to perform physically in their environment.
- Motor action at the heart of the physical education process.
Predraz Vicente (1988) defines the object of knowledge of Physical Education as “those phenomena that, while identifiable by their educational variables, belong to motor activity.”
Finally, Lagardera Otero (1992) summarizes that the epistemological diversity of Physical Education is characterized by: “The being and their ability to learn through experiences in context.”
As a pedagogical discipline, it offers students the opportunity to experience their own reality in a flow of emotions and sensations that stimulate their adaptive, projective, and interpretive capacities.
However, it is necessary that the “physical educator” not only utilizes scientific knowledge but also acts as a promoter of “Theory and Practice”, being both “teacher and researcher.”

Theory of Knowledge

The part of philosophy that deals with research and systematic exposition of the description, possibility, foundation, and limits of knowledge is called “theory of knowledge” or “epistemology”.

Root Causes of Human Knowledge

Psychic: To satisfy the desire for knowledge and overcome ignorance.
Biological: To discover what is useful for existence and what is not, and to preserve life or well-being.
Metaphysical: The relationship between “being” and “thought”.

This leads to the following theses:

Dogmatic: Supports the possibility of attaining truth.
Skeptical: Refuses the possibility of certain knowledge.
Critical: Human knowledge is based on agnosticism, reducing knowledge to the relative and phenomenological.

Not all knowledge is scientific. “Ordinary” knowledge can be differentiated into three categories:

Technical Knowledge: Nonscientific expertise that characterizes the arts and professional skills. Applicable to some professional expertise in leisure physical activity, recreation, or sport.
Protoscience: Knowledge, sometimes with meticulous study and observation of facts, but without a body of theory or the specific software of the scientific method. Also present in the area surrounding Physical Education.
Pseudoscience: Beliefs or myths based on tradition, habit, and custom, without scientific analysis. Unfortunately, there is plenty of this in the preparation of athletes at all levels.

Differences Between Scientific and Ordinary Knowledge (Pedraz Vincent, 1988:48)

Ordinary Knowledge

Tends to be generalizations of experience relating to everyday life.
No specialist knowledge is assumed.
Based on induction (summaries of observed facts).
Not subject to contrasting methods and controls.
Isolated in its subject matter, loose, unsystematic, and generally inaccurate.
Essentially incorrigible, handled as if its dictates were infallible certainties.
Can be dogmatic.
Permeable to individual and collective subjectivity.

Scientific Knowledge

Goes beyond immediate, everyday experience in approaching and solving problems.
Consists of specific areas of knowledge and specialization.
Appropriate for solving problems according to a method (hypothetico-deductive) with readily apparent stages.
Solutions and the method itself are subjected to methodical contrasting.
Never isolated, but forms networks and systems within a scientific universe.
Aims at accuracy, clarity, reliability, order, and coherence.
Essentially correctable and dynamic.
Tries to be objective about the variability of the actions it manipulates, but not all.

Characteristics of Scientific Knowledge

Clear and accurate: Defines the concepts of each problem, in contrast to ordinary knowledge.
Exact: Most likely, but not always in the mathematical sense, depending on the scientific discipline.
Communicable: Uses its own language, which requires training to interpret.
True: True to scientific truth.
Valid: Meets the demands of our reason.
Verifiable: Verifiable through scientific techniques and procedures.
Systematic or methodical: Logically ordered elements in theories.
General: Understands the laws governing specific phenomena.
Predictive: Able to predict phenomena based on general laws.

Fundamental Principles of the Scientific Method (Sierra Bravo, 1986:24)

Attitude of systematic doubt.
Principle of self-criticism.
Cyclic process.
Precise definition and relevance of problems and formulating tentative hypotheses about possible solutions.
Empirical nature of the scientific method.
Coexistence of inductive and deductive methods.
Selectivity of the scientific method.
Submission to formal rules.

Theories

Sets of laws that relate to a certain order of phenomena.
Ultimate goal of the entire scientific research process.
Composed of laws, hypotheses, axioms, and deductions from them.
Serves for explanation and research.
Matches the concept of paradigm (Kuhn).

Terms of Scientific Theory

Syntactic homogeneity, determined and systematic coherence.
Universality.
Absence of contradictions.
Statements in the form of laws in the central part reserved for content (provided in the form of “if…then” statements).
Structural terms specifying the scope.

Scientific Theories

Constituted by logically ordered principles, axioms, and rules, from which theoretical concepts (themselves principles) can be obtained, and through which theoretical propositions (not axioms) can be logically deduced.

Meta-theories

Theories about theories that specify the cognitive objective to be achieved, determine the type of solutions allowed, and provide guidelines for the construction, interpretation, and criticism of theories.

Construction

Outline of a theory without a formal syntactic structure. It comments on selected aspects of reality without fulfilling the conditions of systematic coherence, absence of contradiction, and universality. Constructions can play an important heuristic role in the development of theories.

In certain fields of sport science, so-called theories are often not theories in the strict scientific sense, but rather “constructions”.

Epistemological Problems in the Formulation of Scientific Theories

Numerous problems arise from the complexity of observed reality. The main epistemological problems are:

Inaccessibility: Due to the difficulty of observing many real-world processes, a barrier is created between the scientist and the object of study. Science, in its evolution, continually approaches the seemingly unattainable limits of macrophysics and microphysics, using increasingly sophisticated and rapid procedures.
Distancing: Due to the distance between cause and effect in most human sciences. The connection between cause and effect is lacking in most sciences, and probabilistic (statistical) methods must be used for partial clarification.
Regency: Influence of internal or external factors on scientific activity. Regency can be internal (obeying logical-epistemological grounds) or external (derived from psychological or social causes).
Teleology: Reflects the methodological concerns of the doctrine that presupposes the existence of final causes to which the processes of the universe obey.

Epistemology of the Science of Physical Activity

A correct view of the epistemology of science in its entirety helps to address the epistemology of the Science of Physical Activity with an open approach, which is necessary to deal with such a complex field intertwined with the concepts and theories of so many sciences.

It may be appropriate to methodologically address:

The increased complexity when “humans” are involved.
The more complex behavior of humans, “human conduct.”
The most complex movement of humans, “human movement,” which increases in its maximum expression.