Percepción del profesorado sobre la contribución, dificultades e importancia de la Educación Física en el enfoque por competencias

Since its introduction by OECD in 1997, the relevance of the concept of competence has been increasing within European education systems. The Spanish Education System has conferred competences a curricular key role in the last two education acts (LOE, 2006 and LOMCE, 2013). The implementation of a competence-based curricular approach involves bureaucratic changes, but above all methodological changes, whose main agent are teachers. After a decade of implementation, only a few studies have focused on the evaluation of this educational reform from teachers’ point of view. The aim of this study is to provide a national survey on Physical Education (PE) teachers’ perception of the competence-based curricular approach. A questionnaire was designed and validated to determine PE teachers’ perception of the contribution of PE to each key competence; teachers’ difficulties; and the suitability of the established PE curriculum to be carried out within the competence-based approach. A sample of 470 inservice PE teachers was obtained by using a random stratified sampling technique. Teachers showed a high perception of the potential contribution of PE to the development of the key competences, especially to those related to social and attitudinal aspects. Though, teachers believe that PE contents established in LOE are not suitable. Male, young, and public school teachers generally perceive a higher contribution of PE to the key competences than their fellow female, older, and private school teachers. Perceived difficulties in tasks development varied depending on educational stage and teachers’ experience.