Receipt date: 10/20/2021 / Revision date: 12/10/2021 / Acceptance date: 01/20/2022

Introduction

In this article we invite to reflect on education, teaching, school and physical education, their relationships, and meanings for the school education system in particular. The analysis is carried out understanding theory and practice in dialectical and dialogical dependence, that is, attending to the relationship between theory and praxis. The only way to overcome a practical interest in the production of knowledge is to build for the collective social project, starting from the dialectical overcoming of teaching practices but teaching for praxis and producing knowledge for praxis. In the words of Althusser (2015), practice is praxis; here it is no longer the object that is transformed by an agent and its external means, but the subject itself that is transformed in its own action, its own praxis" (p. 99). The aim is to reflect on the value of the place of the teacher in the construction of the meanings and forms of physical education in the first instance but also of the school culture, as well as of the culture of movement for the educational system and to generate a collective space for debate on the subject. 

At the same time, we propose a theoretical review of education, teaching, school, and physical education from the reconstruction of the state of the art, advancing from European perspectives of reference and progressively approaching the region to be located in the framework of the local reality in terms of the object presented: school physical education. In this way, we put education, school, and school physical education in dialogue with the teaching praxis, that is to say, with the contingency of the practice and the decisions that define its action framework, delimiting roles and senses on the conscious doing.

In summary, the work aims to generate a space for dialogue and transformation of practice where teachers are aware of their cultural and political intentionality at the time of planning their teaching. On the other hand, it is necessary to reflect on its social character, contextualized in a dynamic, mutable, and continuously changing historical-cultural and social moment. The school as an educational center and the teachers, who work in it, have historically had the mission of teaching. In this sense, it becomes necessary to think about the articulation of the various functions of this practice without forgetting its institutional and pedagogical character.

Education and school

To speak of education implies, from a critical perspective, defining aspects that transcend the use of the term itself. It implies, and therein lies the commitment to define it, to think about the ethical, political, and ideological aspects that configure it as a socially accepted and socially constructed practice. It even implies thinking about it and understanding it as a conscious and, at the same time, unconscious practice, often undefined given its simplistic allusion but loaded in any case with a unique weight that the culture itself assigns to it. 

Albornoz and Leymonié (2018, p. 17) express, "Education supposes the bet on full human beings from a personal and collective perspective and spills over into an educational practice understood as a transforming action of reality with perfective intentionality." 

In that sense and beyond the diverse historical variations, and accepting in a certain way the (un)questionable polysemy of the term, it is necessary to problematize education from the analysis of the term itself in the strict sense and essentially alluding to aspects of a hermeneutic order until reaching the diversity of the product, essentially of the political and ideological approach in which it is framed. For the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE, 2018), education is the "action of educating, the upbringing, teaching and doctrine given to children and young people or the instruction by means of the teaching action". 

This definition presents a type of education related to an ideology, in particular surely the one that crosses the dictionary of the RAE, the same alludes to an idea of education as a practice at the service of the reproduction of certain elements of doctrinal order. In this way, the question could be established as to its relation with teaching since the definition understands and makes explicit that there will exist objects of teaching that, due to their indoctrinating features in a certain time and space, would then be objects of education. That is, there would be certain things that are taught, for which the very action of teaching would imply education. The debate in this sense would involve asking ourselves whether education is always being taught, or whether, on the contrary, education would be a teaching practice necessarily charged with certain particular and/or special constitutive features. 

Darder (2017), in an attempt to contribute to the analysis of education and its historically constructed meanings, points out: 

Freire helped us understand how the hegemonic culture of schooling socializes students to accept their particular role or place within the material order —a role or place that has historically been determined by the colonizing forces of the dominant society, based on economic policy and its ordered structures of oppression... As such, schools are political sites that participate in the construction, control, and containment of cultural oppressed populations, through their legitimizing function, with respect to discourse, meaning, and subjectivity (p. 21).

It can be asked in another way in the service of what educational practice will be put into play. This debate is also political and ideological. We must, in this sense, also think that each teaching object designed for education has been configured in different historical times in order to implicitly transmit a particular educational discourse. Bruner (1997) already stated that education:

Always has a consequence on the subsequent lives of those who receive it. Everyone knows this, no one doubts it. We also know that these consequences are instrumental in the lives of individuals, and we even know that, in a less immediately personal sense, they are instrumental to the culture and its various institutions (p. 45). 

We can then avoid the disturbing need to define education as something that it is, trying to determine its essence and assuming the need to define an education for each era, or we can, in another sense, try to construct a discourse in terms of a necessary and imperative duty to be for a historical space. In order to focus this analysis, we will limit the field and refer strictly to formal education and the school in particular.  The school as we know it today, the modern school, has been the product of innumerable criticisms due to its essentially reproductive character. Its forms have been linked in every sense to the reproduction of relations aimed at maintaining structures in their original forms. Those who define what is done in schools and what it is done for will be, in this sense, those who control education. They will be then who will say which teaching object will have to circulate in this space of education, in such a way, that certain functional and fundamental structures for them are not altered. Althusser (2005), who refers to the school as one of the ideological apparatuses of the state, describes them as follows: 

If the ideological apparatuses of the state function in a predominantly hegemonic way, what unifies their unity is their very functioning, insofar as the ideology on which they function is always, in fact, unified - despite its contradictions and diversity - under the dominant ideology, which is that of the ruling class (p. 118). 

Beyond the various nuances, the meanings of education have been and are basically the same and are directly linked to the preparation that individuals receive in order to live together in a particular social space subject to certain cultural and therefore particular traits. In this way, and in relation to the above, the differences lie in whether education limits the subject to simply reproducing or whether, on the contrary, it frees him/her to reproduce, produce, and modify these cultural traits. Bruner, (1997) states that:

Schools have always been highly selective in relation to the uses of the mind they cultivate: which uses are to be considered basic, which are uniform, which are the responsibility of the school and of others, which are for girls and for working class boys, and which are for the gifted. Undoubtedly, part of that selectivity was based on notions about what society required or what the individual needed to get ahead (p. 45). 

For this author, there has been a natural link between the aims of the school, social needs, and the forms of work required for each individual. What is interesting is to ask whether these needs contemplated the growth or change of power structures or whether, on the contrary, they kept those at the bottom down and those at the top up in the search to maintain the status quo. 

In the words of Díaz-Barriga (2015), "surely it is these old concepts that allow us to once again recognize what education is about: training a human being, a citizen, a social subject and, in the case of higher education, a professional" (p. 13). Jackson (2015) defines education as:

A socially facilitated process of cultural transmission whose explicit aim is to effect lasting change for the better in the character and psychological well-being (personality) of those who receive it and, indirectly, in their wider social environment, ultimately extending to the world at large (p. 135).

The same author affirms, "That is why a good education, faithfully followed, helps us to understand" (p. 136). It is appropriate to reflect on the aims of the education system in today's society and to recognize it as a center of cultural transmission, of that knowledge considered valuable, which responds to political, theoretical, social, and linguistic meanings, and which also keeps pace with political, educational, and social changes. This is the challenge facing education in general and physical education in particular. Thus, Acosta (2018) states: 

To face the hope of education is to think seriously about what the school should do and how it should do it in order to change (pedagogical reflection dimension), but fundamentally, the school must be convinced that it can and should do it (ethical/political dimension of education) (p. 35).

It is thus expressed, on the one hand, the importance of reflecting on and in education by all the actors involved (especially teachers) in order to build a more just, democratic, and supportive society, and on the other hand, the need for research in education. And for this, training in the disciplinary field, in didactics, and pedagogy, as well as in research, is key. It is understood that collective participation is essential in order to build the culture (of that time and space) that will resinify the possibility of a dignified life for all, and it is in education that we find the right place for such an important challenge. In the same sense, Albornoz and Leymonié contribute (2018). They point out: 

We understand the role that teachers play in the transformations of the educational system to be especially relevant. Thus, training in the field of research is vital as an instrument for collective reflection and shared improvement of practices through the development of spaces for participation and action. These spaces involve training, a critical view, understanding, action, and collaboration. To know, to participate, and to transform in a permanent cycle that does not recognize a single beginning, that propitiates, with our commitment to change, other changes to come (p. 19). 

For his part, Ocaño (2021) brings to the analysis the relationship between education and academic culture since education has the challenge of socializing culturally legitimated contents and meanings, at the same time that they question and relax society. Thus, he considers it important that education recovers its social value, that it signifies the place of the student and the teacher. In this regard, he considers that:

It is necessary for the school to once again play a relevant political role in the struggle for democratization. Perhaps this struggle today involves less the formation of intelligences at the service of production, the labor market, or the economy, than the formation of conscience by offering the conditions for the emergence of a language that conceptualizes society and makes possible political subjects in the organization of dignified work (p. 32).

Likewise, it makes explicit the need to focus on the contents and their cultural significance in universal terms, but also particular to the society to which they belong, once schooling is guaranteed.

It is important to note that for this analysis we start from understanding and analyzing the concept of school in the framework of modernity, that is, the modern, mass school, and in that sense, Ocaño (2017) expresses the following: 

We can place the creation of the first schools around 3000 B.C.¹ as a consequence of the development of writing in the Sumerian culture. Since then, many school forms have been tried and tested following the social transformations in different societies. But the public, secular, free, compulsory, universal school, as we know it today, corresponds to the culture of industrial societies, it is the typical expression of modernity. We could say that today's school is the direct heir of the bourgeois public school, one of the most important modern creations - a product and at the same time a driving force of the modern condition (p. 29).

The school is constituted, in its historical development, as a valid space of circulation of certain knowledge, determined at a level of political decision, dedicated to the task of facilitating those subjects, the youngest, the adaptation in their social relations at the same time that the interpretation of a certain code of rules, uses, practices, and changing expressions that make up the culture. The school enables the subject who goes through it, who passes through it, to live in society. The school diploma is signified by granting the subject validity in terms of the incorporation of a minimum, unquestionable, and necessary cultural capital. What we cannot ensure, and the school has not been able to ensure, is that all subjects have the same possibilities of access to that capital because it is the structure itself, tinged by an unquestionable but, at the same time, imperceptible -because of its implicit character- class struggle, which conditions the subjects in terms of the appropriation of that capital. The school title hides then behind that disguise, a model of subject constructed by the dominant class that, under that cloak of genuine equality that simulates the school, describes the standards of success and failure, taking care almost without intending it, to promote the structures of inequality.  In the words of Ocaño (2020):

The same school created to ensure the transformations that led to the democratization of society according to the interests of the bourgeoisie turned out to be the ideal structure for the conservation and subsequent maintenance of the new status quo achieved. In other words, the school has been used for the transformation of society but also for the preservation of the established order (p. 20).

Thus, the concept of cultural capital (in the sense of Bourdieu, 2011) imposes itself, in the first place, as an indispensable hypothesis to account for the differences in school results that children from different social classes present with respect to school success, that is, the specific benefits that children from different classes and class fractions can obtain from the school market in relation to the distribution of cultural capital between classes and class fractions. This point of departure signifies a break with the assumptions inherent in both the common view that considers school success or failure as the result of natural aptitudes, as well as in theories of human capital. (Bourdieu, 2011). 

It is possible then to define the aims of the school by describing the meanings assigned to it, and in this framework, it seems imperative to start from the analysis of the objective and self-validating intersubjectivity of a sector, which structures the forms of the school and which, in turn, is structured by them.

Following Bourdieu (2011), at least three axes are recognized which, in their articulation and joint construction, delimit the functional role of the school. In the first place, a personal axis, essentially linked to the individual development of the subject in terms of his or her own particular abilities; an instructive one, oriented to the construction of social links that facilitate the subject's interaction in a given social and cultural space; and a third social axis, linked to understanding the relationships that the school itself establishes with the context and the way in which this context is conditioned by these influences. 

For his part, Tarabini (2020, p. 146) ratifies two of the functions of the school that are still valid today, "Since the creation of modern educational systems, they have had two major complementary functions along with that of custody: the training of new generations to exercise a profession and their preparation to develop life in society." On the other hand, Masschelein and Simons (2014) already pointed out the importance of conceiving the school in a public sense:

Reinventing the school involves finding concrete ways to provide "free time" in today's world and to bring young people together around a common "something," that is, around something that manifests itself in the world and becomes available to a new generation. In our opinion, the future of the school is a public question (or rather, with this apology we want to make it a public question) (pp. 13-14). 

It can be said, then, that the purposes of school are intimately linked to the political, ideological, and cultural ways of thinking about education -particularly formal education- at a given historical moment. Just as the need to define an education for each moment and space is assumed, we assume that there will be different ways of thinking about the aims of the school, although the basic discourse may coincide in the instructional need that is attributed to the institution itself as a preparation for the life of the new subjects. 

Sarni (2018), concerned with education and evaluation in school education systems in relation to policy, provides:

In these times, producing and circulating knowledge in and about the subject requires a careful balance, if the intention of the writer or the teacher (who is sometimes the same) is to contribute from his or her political place to that legitimate rage that has often fallen into disuse, which, according to Freire, implies the permanent search for social transformation, I add, in favor of all subjects and not just some of them: in favor of equity (p. 119).

In the same sense, and in favor of equal opportunities for subjects, regardless of their social and cultural class, Masschelein and Simons (2014) reaffirm:

We also hope to make it clear that many of the allegations against the school are motivated by an age-old fear (and even hatred) of one of its most radical but essentially defining characteristics: that school offers "free time, that it transforms knowledge and skills into "common goods" and thus has the potential to provide everyone, regardless of background, aptitude or natural talent, with the time and space to leave their known environment, to rise above themselves, and to renew the world (to change it in an unpredictable way) (p. 12).

Institutionalized teaching practices

Following Noble (2019):

In this approach, teaching is considered to be the phenomenon centered on the teacher, in particular, on his/her theories, knowledge, actions, procedures, functions, and purposes, whose search is to generate the adequate conditions for the learning of other subjects, in relation to a certain knowledge (p. 9).

It is a social practice, which as such, is explained "from the apprehension of its historicity and its production, which is referring to the possibility for the agents to restructure what is incorporated, although always limited, and to fight for the possession of the capital that is at stake" (p. 21).

In other words, depending on how each actor conceives the practice, what objectives he or she proposes, as well as how he or she perceives himself or herself and others, is the behavior he or she will develop in a specific practice, giving the practice itself the condition of social.  Thus, teaching practice is considered as a social practice, which is not limited to teaching practice, although it includes it. 

As a social practice, teaching practice, according to Steiman (2018), has the following characteristics: 

1. It is the result of the dialectical relationship between a situation and a particular context.
2. It is, like representations, the product of practical sense.
3. It is full of uncertainties and vagueness, a product of having as a principle not conscious and constant rules but practical principles subject to change.
4. It occurs to a greater or lesser extent in the framework of institutions, among which formal educational institutions stand out for their relevance. 

It can be said that pedagogical practice, understood as the relationship between teaching practice and learning practice, is part of teaching practice and that both are social practices, which merit their own reflection, in and for practice. In the following figure, they are represented for a better understanding.

 

 

Figure 1. Teachers: Social practice, teaching practice, pedagogical practice.

Note: Source: Steiman (2018, p. 27).

 

For this purpose, teaching is conceived as an intentional social practice of intervention, from understanding the "school" as a place of circulation of knowledge. In which the singular takes relevance, both in the sense of the context and the subjects who participate there, as well as the uncertainty and diversity of individualities is part of this practice. This complexity leads us to adopt the concept of broad professional, coined by Fiori and Leymonié (2020) and described as an education professional who: 

He engages in an aspect that helps him to achieve the desired coherence between theory and practice: he approaches his teaching within a framework that goes beyond his own classroom to include the rest of the school, the community, and society as a whole. This broader view enables teachers and researchers to unite experiences from their respective fields of action in the search for solutions to concrete didactic problems (p. 9).

Steiman (2018) characterizes the practice of teaching, based on a synthesis of Davini (2008), Jackson (2002), Feldman (2010), Edelstein and Coria (1995), Edelstein and Coria (2002), Davini (2015), Edelstein (2002), Litwin (1996), and Meirieu (2001), referent authors in the thematic, as follows:

1. It is an intentional activity of cultural transmission.
2. It is a contextualized practice, in relation to a particular space, as well as to a cultural context.
3. It is a regulated practice because it takes place in education systems controlled by the State.
4. They express the intertwining of different kinds of questions: epistemological, political, social, ideological, ethical. 
5. They obey a logic that defines them and gives them a singularity 
6. They suppose a type of pedagogical mediation between educational intentions, the contents that are taught, and the characteristics of the subjects. 
7. They imply some kind of rationality, a particular way of standing in front of the world. 
8. They are imbued with uncertainty, vagueness, and ambiguity and involve the apprehension of the social world. 
9. It presupposes an epistemological positioning that makes teachers structure the fields of knowledge in a particular way. 
10. They are inscribed in the type of practices that promote the human and build humanity.

 

This characterization leads him to problematize a category of analysis widely used as a synonym of teaching, the didactic transposition (Chevallard 1992). In his words, "...if we conceive teaching practices as an intentional intervention from knowledge in the world of others, it is not possible to characterize them as a mere transposition" (Steiman, 2018, p. 32).

Assuming all these characteristics of education, school, and teaching practices, in the framework of educational institutions, we refer to the analysis of the justifications of physical education teaching in and for the educational system, that is to say, as schooled practices. 

Education, school, and school physical education

Before analyzing the impact of the notions of education and school on school physical education, it is important to point out that in Uruguay physical education (equated to Gymnastics) was constituted as a compulsory discipline of the school curriculum to be at the service of citizen training, in response to the needs of the foundational state already at the end of the 19th century. This configuration changed partially, expanding its functions in the welfare state, in response to the national project of social democratization, in the first decades of the twentieth century. At present, there is a radical change in the configurations of the discipline in epistemological terms that responds to a new social model that privileges autonomy, criticality, and diversity.  In any case, the hygienist tradition installed since the end of the 19th century is still present and stresses the field, as Sarni points out (2018): 

It has commonly been tied to reductionist positions, associated with physical education, physical activity, physical exercise, a means of education of the body, education of movement or through movement, motor education, body training, gymnastics, sports (p. 27). 

Like any discipline, its history is a game between tradition and novelty, giving different answers in each period to questions such as why physical education in school, what physical education, what physical movements/body practices in them, and what does teaching in/of physical education implies?  The same author contributes by indicating:

In this sense, physical education calls upon a field of power and knowledge in which the subjects of certain societies and of certain historical times propose and signify human movements that emerge from the resolution of conflicts proper to the struggles between hegemonies and counter-hegemonies of those same times. From this counter-scene constituted by a field of struggles that are not always visible, although always political, arises as a result, for that time and for that space, the physical education that will be the main protagonist of the era (p. 28).

In this discussion, the role of the physical education professional becomes the axis of the debate from his or her participation as a political subject. This is made explicit by Corbo et al. (2020, p. 523):

The presence of Physical Education in schools dates back two centuries. From its beginnings to the present day, it has been shaped by the discussions of each era. Its constitution, its justification, and its didactic actions have varied as a consequence of the different societies. 

Based on Aisestein (2007) and Devis-Devis (2018), they point out that school physical education is the result of a particular cut, from the tensions at a given time, between the physical culture of a country and the scientific justifications that legitimize it. Thus, what is pedagogically necessary to circulate in the school is defined for that particular culture, for its particular project, which it inscribes in a specific society.

In short, in order to understand the forms and meanings that physical education assumes in the educational system, it is important to analyze the teaching of physical education in a broad sense, that is why it is important to reflect on physical education as an object for its teaching, starting from the recognition that "The history of physical education has been directly or indirectly related to movement and the body in movement as a central theme, both at the level of its discourses and its practices" (Sarni, 2018, p. 27).

Traditionally, expressions such as physical exercise, physical activity, sport, a means of educating the body, gymnastics, sport, among others, are used as synonyms to refer to physical education. This situation not only shows a reductionist view of physical education itself but also the difficulties of defining it, conceptualizing it, and establishing its object of study.

Rodriguez-Norma (2015) points out in this regard:

The disciplinary territory has been historically crossed by discourses and practices coming from different fields - pedagogical, health, sport, psychology, media, fashion, aesthetics - a matter that has been addressed by the main contemporary theorists. That is to say, derived from different logics, from divergent questions that can only be understood within the framework of the fields in which they originated. It is equivalent to saying that it is traversed by practices and theoretical traditions that may not only contradict each other but are often openly incompatible (p. 2).

It can be said that from what is considered teaching in general and in physical education in particular, both at the level of public policies developed in different periods of the country, as well as by the institutions and teachers who carry out this task, certain contents are selected for teaching, which are also named in a certain way, reflecting an indistinction between physical education, body practices, physical activity, sports, and physical exercise, among other aspects. This tension goes beyond the educational system itself, that is, it is manifested in other state and private organizations in the country.  By the way, it would be interesting to analyze if the state and the educational actors consider this discussion and also to what extent the academy contributes to this debate, from research, extension and, of course, teaching.

An attempt will be made to clarify this vagueness, starting from the theoretical position assumed, establishing some criteria presented by Sarni (2018, pp. 27-28) to characterize education in general:

1. Arises from some human activity.
2. It is a historical and social activity constructed by man in a particular framework of time and space.
3. It is inscribed in the culture of each society and each epoch.
4. It is the result of the concretization of disputes, both theoretical and practical.

Applying these criteria to physical education, it can be said that it is not possible to speak of physical education in general but rather of the meanings and forms that physical education assumes for a particular historical moment and context, based on certain political disputes about the validity of its object of study and then of certain significant movements for that space and time, which will vary the way in which this object of study is justified and constituted, as well as the didactic actions around its teaching in order to construct a singular and unique view of it, which legitimizes a certain physical education from that political discussion and the tension between the academic and professional field.

Incidentally, Devís-Devís (2018) groups the justification of physical education into two major moments, each of which represented an identity crisis for the field: 

1. Education of the physique and the development of the physical body, characterized by extrinsic justifications. For example, improvement of health, moral sense.
2. Training through the physical, characterized by intrinsic justifications. For example, the socializing function of physical education, aesthetic development, and cognitive learning.

Corbo et al. (2020, p. 524) incorporate new elements and perspectives to be considered from this crisis, which they classify into different types: 

• Elements of a purely hedonistic basis. They locate here authors such as Huizinga (1972) and Caillois (1986), who find in play the intrinsic value of the discipline.
• Elements of a culturalist base, which maintain that the school, as a representation of culture, must cut out from it certain physical practices to be studied. (Thompson, 1980), (Almond, 1987) as a way of life of humanity, which includes the idea of cultural transmission and transformation.
• Those of physical literacy, (Whitehead, 2010) which emphasize the importance of embodiment for the holistic development of the person.

Based on the contributions of Devís-Devís (2018) and Corbo et al. (2020) pointed out, and taking into account what was raised earlier by Arnold (1991), three variations (with their variations) can be recognized in that in contemporary physical education:

1. Physical education "through movement." It configures a physical education with extrinsic purposes, such as emotional, moral, for health, or the occupation of free time. 
2. Physical education "about movement." It forms a physical education with intrinsic purposes, such as theoretical knowledge, based on health or physical culture. 
3. Physical education "in movement." It defines a physical education whose practical value is assumed from the physical movement, also from an intrinsic perspective with the characteristic of allowing the subject the possibility of knowing himself and the environment and implies knowledge and understanding. 

In the words of Devís-Devís (2018):

This three-dimensional structure of Peter Arnold, in spite of its usefulness for the cultural selection of the curriculum of the subject, presents the contents in a neutral way and in a socio-cultural vacuum that may end up reproducing the status quo. For this reason, it is necessary to adapt to the current needs of a highly complex society while respecting the public service character of physical education. This means, according to several authors, such as Professor José Gimeno Sacristán (2000) or Raewyn Connell (1997), to focus on the processes of socio-cultural transformation, in particular the reconstruction of knowledge and attention to social justice (p. 127).

It becomes important to consider the inclusion of physical education in the educational system, in relation to movement, recognizing that it is not synonymous with physical activity, or physical experience, or sport, but that physical education in the educational system is a subject with its own value and teaching objects. It also becomes relevant to understand that this movement, as announced by Arnold (1991), is the nature of the subject, as well as the formation of the intelligent practitioner (not mechanical), as Velázquez-Buendía points out (2004). In the same sense, Devís-Devís (2018) proposes that this movement must be reconstructed in a complex way, in relation to other structures of action in order to connect them among their parts, and with activities of daily life.

In turn, Corbo et al. (2020, p. 526) add that it is essential to understand the movement from certain dimensions that constitute it: 

• A particular cultural dimension and marked by it. The movement that enters the school conforms to that which is found in society, representing a part of its culture. 
• A historical dimension whose meaning has varied with the society in question and responds to moral, ethical, and aesthetic variations that will have to be taken into account. It requires attention to the formation of the consumer of the movement. 
• A political dimension, perhaps the most present although the least visible, and undoubtedly the most important for the future in a world in which the movement is more than ever, underhandedly, a vehicle for social domination.

 Sarni (2018) delves into the conception of physical education at school, with the understanding that it should be different from that outside the school; that is, it is a cutout of culture, insofar as it assumes the purposes of a socializing and transforming school: 

This physical education, that of the school, is significantly different from that produced outside of it and that necessarily must be so and not otherwise because what happens and builds the school culture is not what happens and builds the academic culture. (p. 28).

If we think of the school as a space built by all and for all, we need an emancipatory social project built collectively from the tension and democratic questioning of what culture builds in order to transform it and thus cement the school culture of and for the school. This implies recognizing the school as a place of circulation of knowledge in the field of physical education, which is configured from the field of education in general and, in the best of cases, in dialogue with academia as a producer of specialized knowledge about the field. 

Likewise, it is possible to identify two places of the school in relation to knowledge. On the one hand, it decontextualizes and contextualizes for its teaching knowledge that it does not produce (didactic transposition), and on the other hand, from the encounter between students and teachers, it generates a type of collective knowledge as a result of its own teaching practices.  In the case of physical education, this dynamic is particularly relevant because the shaping of physical education knowledge did not come from its own questions but rather arose as an eventual crossing of questions from other fields. This is how Rodríguez-Norma puts it (2015): 

Physical Education will be able to find or, even more, build its space, as long as it assumes the challenge of understanding that its identity (or identities), as a process, is constituted as a social and historical practice, that is to say, political. In this sense, an analysis of languages, and of the identification of the categories that are fundamental to think ourselves, becomes essential since it is from them that discourses with the effect of truth are constituted. The innovations that are produced in the disciplinary field will be possible only from the study of the conditions of constitution of the historical discourses that shape their practices and also from the study of the ways in which practices shape discourses (p. 3). 

In synthesis, physical education is constituted according to Leymonié (2018, p. 9), "from its characteristics as an activity proper to the human being, a social and cultural construction historically situated and, as such, subject to political, theoretical, and practical disputes."

Conclusions

Education is a set of practices that are in themselves social. Everything that happens "outside" the educational institution also happens "inside" it, but education also contributes to forge in some sense the social whole. All dimensions of education are social practices historically constructed and situated in a given political, cultural, and economic context. This means that none of them has a unique, neutral, timeless, and spatial meaning, but that it is necessary to reconstruct it in a historical, theoretical, and ethical-political key. This is what happens with physical education. But on the other hand, it is not possible to approach the teaching of physical education in isolation from the rest of the educational dimensions or independently of the ethical-political and economic framework constructed over time. 

Whoever plays the role of physical education teacher, and whatever the explicit reference on the basis and treatment suggested by the educational system for school physical education, deploys his intentions in the course of some didactic configuration. Thus, it can be recognized that when analyzing the ways of approaching the teaching of the disciplines, it is essential to place in a central plane the debate on the historical and political context in which it is developed. This is the necessary epistemological task that teaching demands, through which we analyze how pedagogical decisions are constructed, what have been the historical-social determinants that have generated or facilitated their production, what are their limitations, and what kind of human being they promote. The answers to these questions will allow the teacher to develop a conscious vision of the decisions taken, which will enable him/her to validate them or to opt for the search for alternatives.

In the same sense and in relation to teaching carried out from an ethically responsible perspective, Darder (2017) states: 

All educators perpetuate political values, beliefs, myths and meanings about the world. Thus, education has to be understood as an institutional process of politicization (or depoliticization) that conditions students to ascribe to the dominant ideological norms and epistemological assumptions of the prevailing social order (p. 21).

Following the author, it is then that it makes sense to think about the relationship between education, teaching, school, and physical education, as practices that are configured in a proposal that is constructed and re-constructed in the classroom, in the encounter between students and teachers in a particular historical context and moment as teaching develops. It would be pertinent to ask the question, why educate? What education? For what society? That is to say, to make explicit the meanings and forms of education as well as, why teach? What to teach? For what society? For what physical education in school, what physical education, what physical movements/body practices in them, and what does teaching in/of physical education imply? The answers to these questions will imply making explicit the meanings and forms of teaching, and with it, the meanings and forms of education in general and physical education in particular. 

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