Notes for a reflection on training and knowledge production processes in Physical Education

Abstract

This paper analyzes the processes of institutionalization, training, and knowledge production in Physical Education in Argentina, considering its expansion as a field of knowledge, school discipline, and professional domain. It reconstructs the ways in which, throughout the twentieth century, different actors attempted to confer legitimacy on Physical Education by appealing to medical, pedagogical, psychological, and social science knowledge, in articulation with the State’s capacity to regulate and consecrate disciplinary approaches. The paper examines the institutional configuration of teacher education from the first courses promoted by Romero Brest, the consolidation of the INEF, the expansion of non-university teacher training institutions, and the growth of university degrees since the 1990s, especially through complementary bachelor programs. It also analyzes the recent development of research practices and scientific dissemination spaces, their institutional concentration, and the impact of the National Research Incentives Program and the entry into the national scientific system. The argument sustains that these processes generated new opportunities, but also new internal segmentations and disputes regarding what counts as legitimate knowledge. Finally, the paper discusses as a central open question the tension between university scientific production and its meaningful appropriation by school teachers.