Analysis of an Ontological Plan for Physical and Sports Education in the Italian Cultural Reality: A Preliminary Survey

An applied and hermeneutic “material ontology” proper to the humanities and social sciences was focused on in this paper, starting from the general philosophical definition of ontology as a general view of reality. The importance of ontologies is recognized in several fields of disciplinary research, including educational and training contexts, such as those specific to physical and sports education. The “vision” of this study conceives the ontological tool as a formal description of a domain of knowledge based on direct lived and concrete experience in the specific physical education field. To disregard the community of practice is to lose all the reflexive intentionality typical of the narrative proper to education learning and the training processes towards which the school community is directed. The narrative of this work is related to a reconceptualization of reality starting from the interpretations that the teaching community attributes to some key terms of physical education. Logical, abstract, and conceptual rigor is not the only way scientific thinking is expressed; experience feeds on analogical relationships, and the recombination of implicit meanings is another means to favor cultural acquisition. Based on awareness and emotions, the human relationships put into play by a competent teacher represent the elements through which physical education’s contents and operational approaches acquire a precise semantic value. Some scientific paradigms that have changed the vision of reality have been semantically juxtaposed with the experience of the community of practice and historical analysis, creating the indispensable premise for a preliminary survey based on a qualitative study to define the cultural identity of physical and sports education in Italian reality.