Analyzing criteria for training sport and recreation professionals in the Colombian Caribbean

Abstract

Some authors argue that sports professions are experiencing a proliferation of practices and discourses that end up exhausting their identity, definition, specificity or limits in a wide range of interpretations. For this reason, it is important for the Universidad de Córdoba to identify the objectives and criteria for the training of professionals in these fields in the Colombian Caribbean. The objective of this article was to analyze the problem of the great diversity of degrees related to sport, recreation, physical activity and physical education, as well as the lack of regulation of the derived professions and the lack of recognition in the labor market. For this purpose, a qualitative study based on grounded theory was designed. To collect the information, the program educational projects of nine higher education institutions were analyzed and the people who designed them were interviewed. The results show that the objectives and criteria of the programs can be grouped into three categories: (1) pedagogical training, (2) social training, and (3) disciplinary training. The pedagogical training is axiological and contextual, and from it derives a tendency towards the articulation between teaching and research in order to produce knowledge. Social training is oriented towards social transformation from the fields of sport, recreation, physical activity and physical education, without neglecting specific training in each of these disciplines. Finally, disciplinary training focuses on three areas: disciplinary fundamentals, health promotion, and human motor skills training.