PLuRALE - Physical LiteRAcy in Lifelong Education

The purpose of the project proposal is to support the development of horse training processes between the formal practices, non-formal and informal able to exploit the high operational effectiveness of the concept of Physical Literacy (evidenced by the rapid spread of programs based on Physical Literacy in the USA, UK and Canada) to promote and enhance - through the design, development and experimentation of dedicated methods and tools - an integral and integrated approach to the practice of lifelong motor sports and sports education, in order to foster greater prosperity and greater social sharing and participation, and thus a more cohesive, participative and inclusive society according to the Horizon 2020 guidelines.

In accordance with these guidelines, aimed at developing growth strategies in the field of education able to co-ordinate with research aimed at promoting innovation in a productive key, the proposal aims at developing an interdisciplinary framework that represents a theoretical and practical meeting place between all those who, for various reasons, are stakeholders in the motor activities and sports: athletes, families, schools, teachers, doctors, researchers, coaches, instructors, therapists, volunteers, leisure providers, young leaders.

The need for such an integrated approach is suggested by the already dramatic numbers that describe physical illiteracy: physical inactivity is the fourth leading worldwide mortality risk factor and causes 6% of all deaths. It is only overcome by blood hypertension (13%) and tobacco consumption (9%) and is at the same risk of hyperglycaemia (6%). About 3.2 million people die each year because they are not quite active (Oms, 2010). Proponent risk factors for inactivity should also be considered as a solution to the continuity between the different contexts of physical activity: according to age, in fact, the context for the practice of physical activity may be different: school, family, community, work or sport environment.

These different contexts should be articulated on a common architecture. The PLURALE Project - Physical LiteRAcy in Lifelong Education - aims to elaborate, on the basis

of good practices in the United States, Canada and UK, a common conceptual and operational framework that can embody such architecture.

In this sense, the project team includes the presence, among others, of experts coming from different contexts of the methods and the didactics of motor and sport activities:

education, performance and rehabilitation.

The difficulty of developing a functional dialogue between different scientific, professional and operational sectors adds the difficulty of reflecting the lively internal debate of a scientific sector that has been questioning for years on both epistemological and methodological and operational levels.

In order to bring this complexity back to the project while avoiding the risk of paralysis that this involves, the methodological approach is based on communities of practice (Wenger, 1998).

4 Results

The ultimate goal of communities of practice is to reach the definition of a shared and effective teaching practice, oriented to Physical Literacy. A community of practice can be defined as a social group whose goal is to produce organized and qualitatively significant knowledge around a specific theme by making it available to the group and sharing with it their knowledge, research and experience with the aim of a collective improvement of the group from a strong awareness of the knowledge possessed.

Within the sciences of the human movement, scientific communities of practice are networks of university researchers, teachers of various school orders, instructors and coaches who carry out a self-analysis of sports and physical education teaching and of community empowerment (Vanassche e Kelchtermans, 2015). Communities of practice have two main objectives: efficacy and understanding of the investigative aspects, on the one hand, rigor and relevance of the results, on the other (Vanassche e Kelchtermans, 2015).

Wenger (1998) defines in detail the peculiarities of a Community of Practice:

• engagement in an activity - that is, the realization of a joint venture, understood as such by its members and negotiated in its various aspects;

• social cohesion - that is, the existence of a mutual commitment among the members, who feel bound by a common identity within a certain social identity;

• sharing a specific culture - that is, the presence of a shared repertoire of common resources developed over time, ie languages, styles of action, sensitivity, recurring modes of action and thought.

Physical Literacy is, in this context, shared culture, the common background from which community actors move, analyzing their teaching practice and the various multidisciplinary aspects that build the learning / teaching processes of physical and sports education.

In this sense, the various Communities will work on specific aspects of Physical Literacy and their concrete realization in teaching practice, sharing goals, methodologies (deductive and inductive) and teaching proposals. To ensure elasticity, the various communities will articulate their activities on a common canvas, organized around the three key questions:

1. What is Physical Literacy in the context of reference? - Communities may, for example, be articulated by the age of the subjects to whom they are addressed, or by an activity in particular. In any case, they will have the responsibility of declining the concept of Physical Literacy with respect to the subject around which the community

is established.

2. What is the role of the different actors in contributing to the effectiveness of the community of practice? - Communities will have to indicate which part they play teachers, instructors, coaches, families, schools and other training agencies in the establishment and maintenance of the Community.

3. What resources of Physical Literacy have been particularly useful for the establishment and maintenance of the community? - Communities will populate a database of resources related to Physical Literacy which are useful in community life.

The effectiveness of the programs implemented must be assessed on the basis of effects on motor learning variables, psychological, social and biomedical variables. The monitoring will aim to control, in a structured manner and with recurrent and fixed step, the activities of communities of practice in order to:

• highlight the trend, starting with the elementary variables of the common action around which they coagulated;

• record deviations between what is being achieved and what was designed;

• Inform the actors about the criticalities they face from each other to look for the most appropriate solutions.

In this sense, the ubi consistam of the conceptual and methodological framework which is the goal of the project consists of a semantic portal dedicated to Physical Literacy, an open and upgradeable text able to respond, with different levels of detail, to single users, students, parents, instructors, athletes, therapists, schools and institutions.

5 References

Corlett, J., & Mandigo, J. (2013). A day in the life: teaching physical literacy. Physical &

Health Education Journal, 78(4), 18.

Gibbs, R. W. (2006). Embodiment and cognitive science: Cambridge University Press.

Higgs, C. (2010). Physical literacy–Two approaches, one concept. Literacy, 6(2), 127-138.

Vickerman, P., & DePauw, K. (2010). Physical literacy and individuals with a disability.

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity: Cambridge university press.

Whitehead, M. (2010). Physical literacy: Throughout the lifecourse: Routledge.

Whitehead, M. (2013). Definition of physical literacy and clarification of related issues.

ICSSPE Bulletin, 65(1.2).

Čustonja, Z., Milanović, D., & Sporiš, G. (2009). Kinesiology in the names of higher education institutions in Europe and the United States of America. Kinesiology, 41(2), 136-146.

Role of hippotherapy in rehabilitation of children with a spastic form of cerebral palsy.

Ivanova V., Lanskaya, O.V., Dytko, E.V. and Ershova, N.G.

Physiology and Sport Medicine Department, Foreign Languages Department,

Velikie Luki State Academy of Physical Education and Sport, Russia.

Abstract

Recently, there has been a significant growth of the amount of children with cerebral palsy in the world. This fact makes the problem of their complex motor rehabilitation very important. We consider hippotherapy to lead in this process.

Our hippotherapy rehabilitation study is based on the analysis of Pskov equestrian club “Rodina” infrastructure and selected literature on the topic to obtain the necessary knowledge and further embody the data in question in Velikie Luki rehabilitation center for children and adolescents with disabilities and the stables “Balandino” in Velikie Luki area.

At first a sample of a hippotherapy rehabilitation program for children with a spastic form of cerebral palsy of preschool and primary school age was created. Then the obtained knowledge and information helped successfully implement the program in Velikie Luki rehabilitation center. The sample program and implementation data increased the probability of further successful development of the rehabilitation center and made it easier for disabled children and their parents.

Key words: cerebral palsy, rehabilitation, hippotherapy, sample program, Pskov Region

1 Introduction

According to a number of researchers in the general mass of Russian children with disabilities, cerebral palsy among all nosologies is presented in more than 50% of cases. The term "cerebral palsy" brings together a number of syndromes arising from lesions of the brain and spinal cord.

There are various causes of cerebral palsy. The reasons for this violation mostly lie in the defeat of the fetus in the stages of fetal development during the influence of toxic and harmful substances such as alcohol, drugs, radiation, potent medicinal substances, and in the transferred infectious diseases of mother during pregnancy (meningitis, encephalitis, etc.), birth trauma, and genetic predisposition. The increasing number of children with spastic form of cerebral palsy makes very actual the problem of their complex locomotor rehabilitation. Among the means and methods of motor rehabilitation in recent years hippotherapy plays the leading role.

One of the most common forms of cerebral palsy is spastic diplegia, also known as

"Little's disease". This disease is characterized by dysfunction of muscles, and to a greater extent hands, contractures, deformities of the spine and joints.

Hippotherapy as therapeutic gymnastics on a horse ("hippos" means "a horse" in Greek) is a long-known effective therapeutic aid for patients with various diseases. The first attempts to apply dosed horseback riding and physical exercises on horses for the treatment and rehabilitation of some categories of disabled persons were adopted in the early 1950s in Germany, Scandinavia, and then in the UK, Canada, Switzerland, Poland and France. Horse riding in Russia for the first time for the treatment of children was applied in the hippotherapy

center "Zhivaya nit", which was opened in 1991 in Moscow. In recent years in various countries hippotherapy has been used in the system of complex rehabilitation of persons with disorders of the musculoskeletal system. On the territory of Pskov Region on the basis of the equestrian club "Rodina" for more than 10 years the treatment and rehabilitation of disabled children has been carried out.

The goal of the rehabilitation process is to move to a higher level of the patient's abilities.

Hippotherapy as one of the forms of therapeutic physical training allows to solve the following main tasks:

- to counteract the negative influence of hypokinesia caused by the disease;

- to develop physical activity of a patient;

- to contribute to the restoration of impaired functions;

- to improve or restore lost skills;

- to provide professional rehabilitation, form new or restore lost skills.

Hippotherapy as one of the technologies for working with people with disabilities is a complex multifunctional method of rehabilitation. In essence, hippotherapy is nothing more than a form of physiotherapy exercise where the horse, the riding process and the physical exercises performed by the person during riding are used as an instrument of rehabilitation. The positive effect is achieved through familiarity with the horse (a positive emotional background is created), the heat and movement of the musculature of the horse (it warms up and massages the muscles of the child), the inclusion of all muscle groups in the work. Thus, hippotherapy as a means of rehabilitation provides not only motor rehabilitation, but also social adaptation of the patient.

Aim. To experimentally validate the proposed model program of rehabilitation in Velikie Luki area.

2 Methods

Analysis of literature sources on the problem under study, questionnaire poll, survey of infrastructure facilities in Pskov Region and adjacent regions (racecourses, private stables), analysis of topical Russian rehabilitation programs with application of hippotherapy, evaluation of motor skills on Chailey scale, mathematical statistics methods.