Representações Sociais de acadêmicos de Licenciatura em Educação Física sobre Esporte

Abstract

This study aimed to analyze the social representations of sport by students in the physical education teaching undergraduate course and was organized in six chapters. The first presents an integrative review of social representations and sports, comprising thirty articles. The methodological strategies employed appear in the second chapter. A pilot study was developed in the third chapter, seeking an initial approximation to the research object (sports) and the subjects (physical education teaching undergraduate students). The initial phase of the study was developed and a reduced sample was analyzed, that is, 52 participants. However, some results were similar to those found later on, in the deepening phase. After finishing the pilot study, we carried out a new data collection, which originated chapters five and six. This phase included 134 students. Chapter four enabled us to know the students better, their motivations for the sports practice, and the reasons why they did not do sports. In chapter five, we analyzed the organizational structure of the social representation of sports. We identified that regardless of the year of study and the fact that the student did sports or not, the term “health” was the most stable component of the central core, while “competition” and “football” were consistent in the first periphery. Finally, chapter six analyzed the students’ definitions of sports and identified two main sub-bodies. In addition, we could notice the movement influenced by the years of study and closeness to graduation that starts with broader and flexible definitions and follows toward more accurate and rigid definitions. This study started from the hypothesis that the objectified image that students have of sport is the same, but the information they have about it is anchored in several elements, and the years of study in the undergraduate course are more influential than the fact that they do sports or not. We concluded that our hypothesis was confirmed.