Health as a theme in school Physical Education: dialogue with the critical friend in a self-study

Abstract

In Brazil, health is considered a citizen's right and although we have a National Health System, the quality of this care is impaired by social inequality. Since its origin in schools, the teaching of Physical Education has been defended for its importance in improving the health of the population, sometimes understood in a reductionist way. In the last decades, authors based on Paulo Freire's work have adopted a critical perspective of Physical Education and argued about the importance of expanding the conception of health, based on collective health. Thiago is a teacher who has built his pedagogical practice anchored on this conception and, due to the small number of inquiries produced on the theme, he chose to investigate his own practice, adopting the Self-study of Teacher Education Practice methodology, with the purpose of analyzing the practice developed and implemented to deal with the theme Collective Health with his high school students. The set of information included the recording of Thiago's classes and the dialogue with his critical friend, developed through virtual documents that helped him produce a thematic analysis. The results of this study highlight the influence of context on the students' understanding of the theme, the limits of the teacher as a knowledge mediator, the importance of self-study in the development and awareness of the teacher, and the benefit of the critical friend in the analytical reflections of a pedagogical practice.