Name: BRUNA SAURIN SILVA
Publication date: 10/04/2026
Examining board:
Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| ANA CAROLINA CAPELLINI RIGONI | Examinador Interno |
| HELENA ALTMANN | Examinador Externo |
| JACKIE BETH SHILCUTT | Examinador Externo |
| MARIANA ZUANETI MARTINS | Presidente |
| MATEUS CAMARGO PEREIRA | Examinador Externo |
Summary: This thesis investigates the possibilities and challenges of implementing the Activist Approach (AA) in Physical Education (PE) lessons in the early years of elementary school in a Brazilian public school. Although previous studies have already highlighted the approach’s potential to enhance students’ engagement, motivation, and learning, especially in secondary education, there is still a lack of research exploring its implementation in classes with children. Accordingly, drawing on participatory action research, this study was conducted over a 12-month period in a 4th-grade elementary class consisting of 20 students aged between 9 and 12 years. A PE teacher and two critical friends also took part through a community of practice. Data construction involved field observations, working sessions with the students, focus groups, analysis of artifacts produced by the students, as well as analysis of meetings held with the community of practice and the critical friend sessions. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to make sense of the data. Structured in article format, the thesis brings together three interdependent studies. The first introduces the AA to the Brazilian context as a possible articulation between sport pedagogy, critical approaches to PE, and social justice. The second focuses on the process of implementing the AA in dialogue with the concept of teaching to transgress, showing how the co-construction of lessons made it possible to challenge the violence and exclusions experienced in everyday lessons. The third examines the challenges of considering student voice within the AA. Drawing on student voice and social justice scholarship, and connecting these with Freirean assumptions, we sought to understand how listening became a condition for sustaining participatory and critical processes in lessons.
Keywords: school PE, student voice, gender, social justice
