Discourse on curriculum development in physical education, recent development in Europe

The curricular revisions are currently being in process in several countries in the European Union. The process of planning, projecting and designing national curriculum has always encountered various problems concerning also physical education. Although the subject has always played a very specific role in education and although it has been a compulsory subject in primary and lower secondary education throughout the countries in Europe, its position cannot be described as equivalent in comparison to other subjects. One possible concept how to achieve a quality physical education equal to other subjects is to standardize physical education in curricular documents, which could stress the importance of the subject (Krick, 2006). However, to accomplish this task is more difficult than someone would think. The paper tries to identify the principal problems of physical education curriculum development and presents a short introduction to planning and designing physical education aims, outcomes and standards in chosen countries. Methodology is based on Comparative physical education and Sport. We describe the recent development of physical education concepts and curricula in the Czech Republic, German speaking countries, Slovakia and the USA. As a method of our research we have chosen the qualitative analysis of texts. Svaricek and Sedova (2007) describe particular steps of this method. We also use information gained from members of professional groups developing the national curriculum in the selected countries.