Leveraging cooperation between students in physical education (PE) : Presenting first results and potential guidelines for teachers’activity.

Abstract

The rapid rise of information media is responsible for an evolution shift that does not seem to be mirrored in the modalities of school education. In this "unchanging class in a changing world", interactions between students, even in PE, are frequently thought of as parasitic. However, cooperative models seem to give promising results on motivation and learning according scientific literature. Even in PE, it seems that teachers don’t use them frequently to design group work during lessons. The apparent resistance of teachers could come from the multiplicity of forms of grouping in PE classes. At this level, one of the characteristics of PE teaching is that it is based on forms of student groups; whether or not it is explicitly sought, the teacher constantly makes his students work and play with others in a gym workshop or in a team. PE is based on constant student’s interactions. It would be interesting to verify the reality of an insufficient use of cooperative work in the Swiss context and, if so, to better understand what in the teacher’s activity could explain it. The theoretical and methodological framework of the study is the Clinic of activity (Cultural Historical Activity Theory- CHAT), more precisely the Leontiev's model (1984) that allows to identify "meaning" (motives) and efficiency (operations) in the activity of workers (here, PE teachers).