The disciplinary movement in North American physical education: contributions and limits to the structuring of the scientific field

Abstract

Abstract This article summarizes aspects of the process of disciplining physical education (PE) in the United States, to provide elements for thinking about relationships between science and education in markedly reflexive parameters. In this way, we seek to restore some of the founding elements of the disciplinary movement of North American PE, as well as to identify its contributions and limits to the structuring of the area as a scientific field. In methodological terms, the study was configured as theoretical-bibliographic and exploratory. Based on this design, articles and book chapters from national and international literature concerning the epistemological debate on PE were initially mobilized and, later, the information was analyzed based on Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical framework. In conclusion, it is emphasized that the disciplinary movement in North American PE has brought significant advances and contributions to place PE in the hierarchy of science and, at the same time, justify its existence in higher education. However, despite these productive aspects, the PE disciplinary movement could not contain the side effects of the proposed organizational dynamics, especially concerning the fragmentation of PE in different subareas that not only communicate little but also compete for the definition in the field. In any case, the disciplinary movement, recognizing in human movement the common connector of the different research fronts in the area, not only induced but made credible the process of organizing PE as an autonomous science.