Abstract:

The Romanian education system is trying to adapt to and be in line with the trends from the European education process. This is the reason why,for most school subjects from the secondary school curriculum,several aspects have been revised in the last few years, such as the number of hours allocated, the share they have within school activities, their objectives or their contents.

On the other hand, in the last few years, a long-term vision, regarding the content of PE as a school subject, has been pursued, so that it could have a rational path for all levels of Romanian education (primary, secondary and high school education).

In this context, a significant revisal of the PE curriculum at the level of secondary school education has taken place. This curricular approach has brought to the fore more conceptual issues regarding the content of the curriculum and the assessment process.

The new curriculum for PE for primary school has been implemented beginning with the school year 2017 – 2018. The replacement of the previous curriculum will take place gradually, during the next four years, by implementing the new curriculum beginning with the 5th grade, annually, until all grades will follow the guidelines of the new curriculum.

In the present paper, we intend to present an innovative idea proposed by the current school curriculum for Physical Education, namely the addition of a theoretical component to the previously existent practical one. This vision is completely new in the Romanian education system.

The implementation of this theoretical component is achieved by means of the 5th grade PE textbook. Three textbooks for the 5th grade have been drawn up and their use has been determined by the management of the county boards of education.

We would like to mention the fact that, from the viewpoint of improving the educational management at the level of PE as a school subject, this theoretical component can have a beneficial contribution to achieving the aims of Physical Education and to improving pupils’ success in this school subject. Consequently, we have performed a SWOT analysis concerning the implementation of this theoretical component into the practical activity.

In order to perform the SWOT analysis, we discussed with domain-specialists who work in the pre-university system, we studied the educational aims from the current curriculum and we compared the content of PE to that of the other vocational subjects from the school curriculum.

We have identified a number of six strengths, three weaknesses, three aspects regarding the opportunity to implement the theoretical component into the pupils’ educational process and only one threat to the efficiency of the educational process.

The main conclusion which may be drawn after this SWOT analysis is that, adding an innovative theoretical component (a textbook) will have a positive effect on the practical activity performed with pupils and will contribute to the educational aims stated in the domain-specific curriculum. Also, it could have an important contribution to broadening pupils’ general knowledge horizon and to increasing the level of interdisciplinarity and culture.

Keywords:

Secondary school, physical education, handbook, curriculum, innovative, Theoretical component.