The subject of Physical education plays an important role in the educational process by promoting a healthy lifestyle and preventing the consequences of a sedentary lifestyle. By encouraging regular physical activity during childhood, the foundations for a healthy and well-being in adulthood are built. The subject of Physical education has specific characteristics that involve daily inclusion of various challenges. Branch schools face certain limitations in this regard, such as limited space, smaller number of students and inadequate equipment. Despite numerous obstacles, additional sports activities are made available to students, such as a minute for health, active breaks, sports content in morning care and extended stay programs. When implementing sports activities, teachers need to carefully plan lessons and ensure a safe learning environment for students, despite the many challenges they face on a daily basis in their work.
The results showed that teachers in branch schools most commonly face three challenges on the subject of Physical education. These are inadequate spatial conditions (37 %), lack of equipment (39 %) and a small number of students (8 %). As a result, sports classes are most often conducted on the playground (94 %) and gymnasiums (80 %), followed by classrooms (32 %) or other places (22 %), such as outdoor areas (65 %), school hallways (17 %), cultural centers (12 %) and the dining hall (6 %). Due to the lack of specific working conditions, some teachers are forced to omit certain content from the curriculum. The most common excluded topics are gymnastics alphabet (25 %), athletics alphabet (13 %), ball games (3 %) and swimming alphabet (4 %). 55 % of the respondents implement all the curriculum content, which can be attributed to favorable working conditions in the subject of Physical education in branch schools. Teachers pay more attention to ball games (51 %), natural movement forms (21 %), gymnastics alphabet (14 %), athletics alphabet (9 %) and dance (5 %). When implementing the content, they also focus on ensuring a safe learning environment, where they ensure smooth learning processes in less suitable spaces by using mats (43 %), rearranging spaces (39 %) and adapting instructional materials (32 %). The study found out that teaching Physical education in branch schools brings several advantages, such as smaller class sizes (86 %), proximity to nature (78 %), more repetitions of specific exercises (61 %) and easier differentiation and individualization (33 %). Teachers in branch schools provide quality sports instruction and they also incorporate sports content through the rest of the curriculum. 91 % of the respondents conduct sports activities in extended stay programs, 34 % in morning care, 65 % organize active breaks, 57 % implement a minute for health and 36 % incorporate sports content in other ways. These include interdisciplinary integration (44 %), teaching with movement integration (38 %) and the Fit Pedagogy (12 %) and Upright Posture (6 %) programs.
Through our master's thesis, we have found that the conditions in branch schools varies widely. Some branch schools still lack their own gymnasiums, while other branch schools runs smoothly in well-equipped gymnasiums. This can be attributed to the collaboration between branch schools, parent-teacher associations, local residents, the local community and the municipality. Teachers face numerous challenges and therefore need to be resourceful and well-prepared in their work. Despite the many obstacles, they ensure a high-quality and safe learning environment for students, and sports activities extend beyond regular classes, positively impacting their development and promoting physical activity later in life.
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