Motor activities teaching and complexity: A reversal of the classical description of the mechanisms of perception and action

n the last decade we saw a heated debate on the implementation of complex learning theories in Physical Education. In the educational field there has been the difficulty to apply in the teaching practice a conception of the knowledge and learning which, on a theoretical level, has recognized the role of the body in movement, while it struggles, on the operative level, to define methodologies and tools usable in everyday’s activities. The constructivist hypothesis in Physical Education has faced serious difficulties in educationally interpreting the nature of the motor experience. This paper focuses on the concept of action and on the reversal of the process of perception-action operated by the phenomenological tradition (Merleau-Ponty), which has been confirmed in more or less recent neuroscientific evidences (Berthoz, Decety, Jeannerod). In this perspective, the subject builds his world according to his