The Effect of the Amendments of the Public Education Act on the School Activity of Physical Education Teachers

As a result of the legal regulations in the period after the 1989-1990 transition, teachers working in public education, in our case physical education teachers, were engaged in several activities which were not directly related to the competence of in-school educational work. Consequently, there has been a shift in their scope of activities. The author of this paper is interested in the experience of physical education teachers during the period. The objective of the paper is to reveal what effects such a comprehensive and permanent change had on the teaching of physical education in schools, and on the life of physical education teachers. In order to investigate the subject of research the analysis of legislative documents, in-depth interviews and the survey method were applied. The results show that in the period after the 1989-1990 transition, the work of teachers was not only hindered by the structural changes in accordance with educational legislation and the permanent amendment of documents, but the lack of consistency in pedagogical work as well. For the teachers taking part in the preparation of curricula, the extension of their activities resulted in a double workload. The decision that marks were replaced with textual evaluation in grade 1 of primary schools was not received positively on the part of physical education teachers. Based on the results it can be concluded that the efficient work of physical education teachers would be greatly assisted by more predictable legislation, which would ensure the possibility of planning in advance. Olympism, Olympic culture, sports education, pedagogy of sport