Educação física na educação de jovens e adultos: a concepção dos estudantes de um município do interior da bahia

The Youth and Adults Education (EJA) is a modality of basic education for people who did not have access or could not continue their studies in the proper age. Therefore, investigating Physical Education in this area is important to understand the relevance of including it in EJA, in order to contribute to the development of these individuals. The objective of this study was to analyze the understanding of Physical Education by students of the second segment of EJA from a public school in Teixeira de Freitas-Bahia. This is a qualitative research, with a descriptive nature and as a technique for interpreting the data it was used the content analysis. After this analysis, it was raised the following categories: “Comprehension of physical education”; “Knowledge about physical education”; “Experience with a licensed teacher”, “Obligatoriness of physical education in EJA.” The results have shown that in the first category, 28% of the students considered that physical education is beneficial for health, 21% reported the importance in the relation of body/mind and 20% understood it only as sports; in the second category, 37% showed knowledge about sports, specifically soccer, which leads us to reflect on this highly regarded sport in the country and in our daily lives; in the third category 82% of the students had contact with the subject of physical education; and in the last category 76% would like to have it as mandatory in EJA for both physical and cognitive exercise, however, 3% said they would not like it for gender issues and for the devaluation of physical education at school. Given the emerging results, it is necessary to elucidate the importance of managers and teachers having a deeper look at the students in this school context and together with the public authorities, take measures, whether in small daily actions or by public policies in order to provide better learning conditions in EJA. Keywords: Youth and Adults Education/EJA. Students. Physical Education.