"Por que e como ensinar a Capoeira na Educação Física Escolar? Uma proposta cultural integrando corpo, lúdico e lazer no Ensino Fundamental II

Abstract

This dissertation presents the results of a qualitative study developed through the project Capoeira at School for Youth (PCEJ), carried out with 9th-grade students in a public school in Manaus, Brazil. The study aimed to analyze the process of designing and implementing a pedagogical proposal for capoeira, grounded in the cultural framework of Physical Education, as well as the meanings attributed by middle school students to the formative experiences lived throughout the project. The research was guided by critical and post-critical theoretical references in Physical Education, especially the works of Daolio (1995), Neira (2018), Falcão (1994), Mello (2002), and Freire (2011). Over the course of 13 sessions, students engaged in integrated experiences involving the body, identity, Afro-Brazilian culture, leisure, musicality, dance, and resistance. Data production occurred through systematic observations recorded in a field diary and dialogical group conversations with the participants. The results indicated that when capoeira is integrated into school through a critical, dialogical, and culturally situated approach, it contributes to strengthening ethnic-racial belonging, developing body awareness, valuing diversity, and restoring pleasure and meaning to the experiences of body culture in the school environment. Students’ testimonies revealed experiences of recognition, expression, and transformation, which reframed the presence of Physical Education within the curriculum. As an educational resource, a Pedagogical Workbook was developed, containing lesson plans, theoretical foundation, didactic planning, activity suggestions, and assessment strategies. The material is intended to support teachers in implementing capoeira in public schools as an Afro-Brazilian expression of body culture—historical and alive—that teaches, resists, and emancipates.