Social representations of entrants into the Physical Education Teaching Course: Teachers or sportspeople?

This article reports the research conducted for the Master's thesis in Higher Education, with the aim of analyzing the interests and representations of the entrants in the 2018-2019 preparatory course that influenced their choice of the Physical Education Teaching Course in the Universidad Nacional de La Matanza. A sample of 635 applicants was analyzed. The study was descriptive, using a mixed methodology, and quantitative and qualitative methods. A self-administered questionnaire was applied. The results refer to the profile of the applicants: with an average age of 19 years old, 62.8% were men and 37.2% were women, 93.7% were from Greater Buenos Aires, and 62% had finished school in public institutions. With regard to their choice of course of study, 40.5% informed that they had chosen it because they had always liked sports and 15% because they liked teaching. School is regarded as the place where they would like to work best; however, non-formal environments related to sport stand out with 56.1%, against formal environments (42%). This article intends to enable the academic community and university authorities to diagnose the situation in order to generate lines of action to evaluate and design strategies that favor equitable access to knowledge for future entrants.