Competencies of primary teachers for teaching gymnastic contents in the first triad of elementary school

Sport is important for health, for both, adults and children. Children are receptive to habits and patterns, first from their family and then from the environment. It is therefore important that we, as responsible adults, show them the positive aspects of sports activities in the first years of school. However, to be able to appropriately introduce different physical/sports activities, teachers must have appropriate competences. Some sports elements also require specific pedagogical approaches, and each teacher must be familiar with the curriculum for sports education and implement it in their teaching hours. Gymnastics is one of the sports content that requires a lot of special knowledge. Also, gymnastics in the first three years is crucial for children as it involves many movement patterns that are important for the child's development. Children learn gymnastics through methodical procedures, which the teacher must be well aware of, as not knowing them can lead to incorrect performance and, in severe cases, even injury. Most gymnastic elements require from a teacher, in addition to knowledge of methodical procedures, a good knowledge of providing assistance and protection. The questionnaire will try to find out for which gymnastics content the class teachers feel most qualified for, where they feel the most fear, and how are they familiar with assistance. The conducted research will, with its findings, contribute to the awareness of the importance of knowledge of gymnastics content, proper implementation of methodical procedures, and ensuring the proper assistance. The basic idea of the research was to find out how the teachers evaluate their competence for teaching gymnastics, which are the areas for which the teachers feel more qualified for and which are the ones for which they feel less competent. The survey was conducted on a sample of 57 classroom teachers from 24 elementary schools across Slovenia, who taught in the 2017/2018 school year in the first three years of primary school. All of the teachers surveyed have taught Sports at the time of the research or in the past. Research data was obtained through an online questionnaire. The theoretical part of the master thesis covers a comprehensive overview of the subject Sport, the fields of gymnastics and quality indicators for teaching. Teachers to work properly and successfully need appropriate competencies. We presented different views on competences and their development in general. We hypothesized that teachers do not pay enough attention to develop their competences in the field of gymnastics, or that they were under-educated in this field and do not feel sufficiently qualified for the work itself. Surveyed teachers were on average 41.3 years old with an average working age of 17.2 years. Most of the respondents believe that sport is good for their health and they are raising awareness of it among their students. The teachers rate their competence for teaching the subject Sport pretty high (average grade 3.85). The results of the survey showed that, when teaching gymnastics, teachers prefer to teach narrow-surface exercises and rhythmic gymnastics. In methodical procedures knowledge, the highest score was attributed to the teaching of balance exercises on a narrower surface. This content was also awarded with the highest score for knowledge of proper assistance