The body and movement at the center of school experience. Some reflections on the introduction of physical education in primary school

The idea that the cognitive experience of the world originates in the body and that the transformative potential of existence is contained within it is assumed to be fundamental. The global involvement of the Self, even in its bodily dimensions, in the knowledge processes represents an educational requirement that can no longer be evaded and that calls the school to respond in an incisive way on the reformulation of teaching practices. Despite the numerous advances made in this direction, many questions still remain open, especially in relation to the ways in which they can give space to the different languages of human communication and build learning settings that involve pupils from every point of view. Starting from the theoretical framework outlined, we intend to reflect on the recent introduction of the teaching of physical education in primary school, placing in the foreground the specific areas of teaching and the repercussions on the side of teachers’education, but above all the dialectic between performative and educational aspects.