COOPERATIVE PHYSICAL EDUCATION AND SOCIALISATION IN PRIMARY SCHOOL

Foreword. Samuel Gento Authors of this article try to emphasize the potential value of social skills of motor play. The research objective focused on the existence of effects of motor play intervention in children‟s socialisation: in brief, it was a “sociomotor” programme. The authors avoided the educational model inspired by “institutional sport” and adopted one of cooperation among peers. In addition, they sought to directly involve parents, in order to broaden the intention of integration to the families. It was thought that the proposal playful public space, institutionally defined, could mediate, reassure and therefore support mutual understanding and relationship among very different people. Authors abstract The aim of the present work is to highlight the value of Physical Education, usually overlooked in the Italian school curricula, in relation to his educational significance, both in cognitive and socio-relational aspects. To achieve this goal, we developed a research project that tried to demonstrate rigorously a number of aspects, we believe of particular interest in education, in some ways identified by us, after two decades of teaching, training and research experiences. Specifically, we are going to talk about the socialization of children in classes at the beginning of primary school. Even making our task more difficult, but at the same time more convincing (especially if successful), we made a choice "uncomfortable". In fact, we wanted to operate in an area of "frontier": the socio-cultural context in which takes place the school we work in, in fact, is in the suburbs of Bologna. This area has a very high rate of immigration : the percentage of foreigners ranged from 50 to 70% approximately. We believe, moreover, that motor play can also facilitate a "good climate" of teaching/learning being joyful and proactive, rather than competitive and "squeezed" on the dimensions of self- assertion, efficiency, self-control, important aspects but not the only ones to be pursued, especially at the beginning of students “school life”. Our work tried to emphasize the potential value of social skills of motor play. The research objective focused on the existence of effects of motor play intervention in children socialisation; in brief, it was a “sociomotor” program. From a pedagogical and didactical point of view, our choice was as follows: we have avoided the educational model inspired by “institutional sport”, to adopt one of cooperation among peers. In addition, we sought to involve directly parents in some playing time, in order to broaden the intention of integration to the families. This is justified considering both the age of children (6 years old), in which the role of families still hold a fundamental weight, and the social context, characterized by considerable fragmentation of the origin. It was thought that the proposal playful public space institutionally defined, could mediate and reassuring, therefore support, meeting among very different people.