Teaching physical education through projects and its applicability in the education of young people and adults in prison in Brazil

This article brings reflections on the teaching of Physical Education through projects and its applicability in the Education of Young People and Adults in prison, given that Brazil has the third largest prison population in the world, made up mostly of poor, black and brown people, people who live in peripheral regions and in the LBTQIA+ group. It aims to identify how this pedagogical approach oriented towards the Physical Education discipline can contribute, develop and enrich the acquisition of knowledge of Young Adult Education (EJA) students, within the scope of the Brazilian prison system. The methodology used was bibliographical research, carried out from November 2023 to January 2024. The research was based on references from books, articles, monographs, dissertations and theses and on authors such as Foucault (1987), Arroyo (2006), Mazur (2015), Onofre (2016), Miranda (2016), Mattar (2017), Costa (2020), among others, which guided the theoretical framework of the topic under debate. From the perspective of what the National Curricular Parameters (PCNs) recommend, it is expected that the student coming from EJA can have autonomy and benefit from a set of knowledge acquired at school, recognized as necessary for insertion into the world of work and preparation for the exercise of citizenship, even in places with unfavorable conditions. In view of this, using active methodologies that include the teaching of Physical Education through projects, will enable the adoption of practices that will allow the student to better participate in the learning process, delegating to the EJA student the possibility of building their unique knowledge base. As a pedagogical resource that meets the Basic Education Curriculum Guidelines, project-based teaching is an active methodology that proposes practical activity as a tool and aims to acquire knowledge, skills and values, under the guidance of the Physical Education teacher. The results indicate that Physical Education learning based on project-based instructional activities can engage incarcerated EJA students to become protagonists in the process of building their own knowledge, which is the key element for exercising citizenship, as well as , of their desired resocialization.