Adventure bodily practices in Spanish physical education: a study with focus on the methodologies and evaluation processes

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Since the 1990s, Spanish Physical Education registers the teaching of adventure bodily practices at school. There, they were initially called Physical Adventure Activities in Nature and, after 20 years of debate, they became defined as Physical Activities in the Natural Environment.
OBJECTIVE: This text presents the methodologies and evaluation processes most used in physical education classes at the primary and secondary levels in an extract from the Spanish context when the content is the Adventure Bodily Practices.
METHODS: For that, we used articles found in a specialized data base - the Outdoorpeactivies, and field records conducted during class follow-up.
RESULTS: The results indicate that the most frequent methodologies are the ‘3 dimensions of content’ (conceptual, procedural and attitudinal) and the ‘technicist’. While the most frequent evaluation is given by the participation of the student in the activity and also by observation cards.
CONCLUSION: About EF teaching methodology, the texts alternate predominantly between technical proposals and those based on the 3 dimensions of the content. Some cases indicate the use of adapted materials and / or the acquisition of technical gestures from one Adventure Bodily Practice as a tool for the appropriation of technical gestures from another. In the evaluations, the data obtained indicate an underestimation of this stage of the teaching-learning process, with ‘participation’ a widely used and valued criterion.