This text is part of the special public school notebook
The University of Sherbrooke (UdeS) focuses on sustainable development to improve the training of students teaching physical education and health.
It is about promoting the profession while encouraging students to take a greater interest in their well-being and different social realities.
The initiative is still in its infancy, but its goal is to leverage some of the United Nations (UN) 17 Sustainable Development Goals to better equip faculty. “This gives additional meaning to the work they do,” explains Jean-François Desbiens, vice-dean for training at the Faculty of Physical Activity Sciences (FASAP) at UdeS.
UdeS doctoral student in physical activity sciences Marie-Christine Morin shares her opinion: “I think it can motivate people to give meaning to physical activity, a meaning different from that of simply developing skills. motors. » His research focuses on the integration of sustainable development into physical education lessons to raise awareness and encourage students to adopt an active lifestyle.
Declining interest
Physical education teachers are “lacking consideration within the school context itself. Very often, their colleagues consider that it is not a real subject. And some parents feel that it’s a waste of time,” says Mr. Desbiens. This kind of discourse influences the reasons why students like or dislike physical education.
Added to this is the growing screen time which encourages a sedentary lifestyle among primary and secondary school students. In addition, the vice-dean for training emphasizes that studies show a more marked loss of interest in physical education classes among girls as they progress through their school career. They tend, in fact, to like it less because of bad experiences they have had.
All these factors pushed FASAP to think about pairing physical education classes with sustainable development issues.
From initiative to implementation
“I am working on a strategic plan in which the dimension of sustainable development will be formally included,” says Jean-François Desbiens. He hopes that the concept will be included in the program so that teachers will offer activities along these lines in their courses.
This could involve, for example, workshops allowing future teachers to design sessions where girls would not feel disadvantaged, where students would calculate the energy intake of their meals, where biodiversity would be at the heart of teaching.
No poverty, zero hunger, gender equality, good health and well-being: these are some of the UN goals that can be taught in physical education classes. Some of these questions are all the more relevant as the deprivation index varies from one public school to another.
“By varying practices, by having a more global vision, we can perhaps find a greater proportion of people who join,” explains M.me Morin. According to her experience as a lecturer, university students are receptive to the idea of sustainable development being integrated into their learning.
For his part, Mr. Desbiens believes that interdisciplinarity in schools can help physical education teachers carry out their mission. “Teachers must work less in isolation and work more as a teaching team,” he explains. This would allow complex problems to be considered from various points of view. “They are not just sports technicians, they are above all educators who are responsible for transmitting a culture, values, etc. “, he says.
Mr. Desbiens adds that young people like collective projects on sustainable development to extend to different courses because it gives meaning to what they are learning.
A long-term vision
Marie-Christine Morin assures that the pairing of sustainable development and physical education classes “requires a lot of information,” but she is convinced that the school environment is not short of solutions.
This UdeS initiative is an opportunity to rekindle students’ passion for physical education and health courses.
The project is currently growing within the walls of FASAP, but it could expand through the Physical and Health Education Network (REPS) to which several Quebec universities already belong. “It is not excluded that the question of sustainable development, under the impetus of the REPS, is one of the things that we will pool,” concludes Mr. Desbiens.
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