Discourses about the Director of Physical Education in the Southamerican Technical Institute of the YMCA

Abstract

This research aims at investigating the main discourses around the training of the “physical education directors” during the foundational process of the Southamerican Technical Institute of the Young Men Christian Association (YMCA) created in 1922. This text is part of a wider research about the discourses of physical education teacher education in Uruguay. Our interest in this study arouse because of the impact that this training has had in our country, mainly in the first two decades of its existence, when there was no other training programme with these characteristics. The theoretical and methodological perspective chosen is based on the analysis of discourse of Pêcheux (1990) and the contributions by Foucault (1991) in relation to the constitution of the modern episteme. This study takes as the main sources of information the syllabus of this training programme, as well as the foundational documents of the Institute. The main findings that stand out are, on the one hand, the great influence that the Northamerican Christian Association had on this training and, on the other hand, this training has some appearances of a normalist discourse with components of a technicist discourse and a bit of professionalism.