Percepções sobre o Estatuto Socioprofissional dos Professores de Educação Física em Portugal

Abstract

Despite some worth mentioning initiatives, Physical Education teaching in Portugal was late unveiled and recognised by others than the ones directly involved in it. In fact, during most of the 20th century, both the subject and the teachers were clearly considered to have a peripheral statute, particularly when compared to their professional peers. Considering the changes of the last decades, we found pertinent to analyse how the Physical Education teachers perspective the statute that is attributed to them by teachers of other subjects, and also by their students, school staff and general community. For the purpose of this analysis, we used a qualitative methodology focusing our study in a group of fifteen teachers with varied degrees in Physical Education, and graduated by some of the most renowned colleges in Portugal since the 1940s until the end of the 20th century. We concluded that there is some indefinition regarding what the other teachers thought about the statute of Physical Education teachers. Some of the teachers, namely those graduated by colleges “ ISEF (College for Physical Education)-, insight that their fellow teachers and general community do not recognise their true value and treat them as the "poor relatives" of education, therefore relegating them to a "second line" of educators. Nevertheless, there are those others who percept and recognise their value and treat them as equal. More consensual, however, seem to be their perceptions about the understanding that students and school staff have, for our study demonstrated that the Physical Education teachers feel that those ascribe them a statute identical to the teachers of other subjects.