The Founder of Tabere Straja – FODORAN MARIUS DAN – Doctoral thesis

FODORAN  MARIUS DAN

DOCTORAL THESIS

"THE CONCEPTUAL AND PRACTICAL OPTIMIZATION OF THE METHODOLOGY FOR TEACHING ALPINE SKIING TO OLDER PRESCHOOL CHILDREN"

ACADEMIC SUPERVISOR:

PROF. UNIV. DR. NEAMȚU MIRCEA

Bucharest

2019

INTRODUCTION

The place and importance of the topic in the Science of Sport and Physical Education

Skiing, worldwide, has reached an absolutely impressive level of popularity today, being, according to mountain resort statistics, the most popular winter sport, thanks to the unique sensations and experiences it offers its practitioners. The possibility of free expression and of interaction with nature helps improve both physical and mental health, which is why it is one of the main activities during winter holidays for the population of Romania as well.

The national ski schools with an international tradition invest a great deal of resources in research and in developing methodical systems in line with new materials and equipment. One example is the French Ski School, which in 2017 developed a new methodical system and introduced different teaching approaches in learning and two tests for ski instructors, Eurosecurity and Eurotest, which give them the right to reach level I and, implicitly, the right to practice freely. The teaching methodology is the main "weapon" used by ski instructors to learn, improve and refine technique, in the shortest possible time and safely, in line with current requirements.

From this point of view, we want the research to be an invitation to ski instructors to study and make use of it in the lessons held on the slopes of our country.

The relevance of the topic

Today we can no longer speak only of skiing, but of snow-gliding sports as leisure activities, thanks to the multitude of equipment and the many possibilities for practicing them. The new elements that appear are welcome in the world of snow sports, while also bringing great challenges to the instructors who teach these sports.

From the daring feats of some skiers and with the support of the major sports equipment manufacturers, other variants of skiing have also emerged: off-piste skiing, freestyle skiing, acrobatic skiing, ski touring, monoskiing, big foot skiing and others.

The ski schools in the mountain resorts offer the possibility of practicing skiing in an organized setting, giving importance to the relationship between sport and tourism.

The number of people learning to ski in Romania in an organized way has grown in recent years, according to ski resort statistics. At the same time, the number of instructors who successfully integrate into the labor market, in the new ski schools, has also grown.

The motivation for choosing the topic

I chose the topic titled "The conceptual and practical optimization of the methodology for teaching alpine skiing to older preschool children" first of all because I am the founder of a private ski and snowboard school with 45 instructors. The majority of clients are between 5 and 7 years old, and the lack of an up-to-date teaching methodology adapted to this age leads to the formation of incorrect habits. I organize ski and nutrition camps for preschoolers at the Straja mountain resort with over 500 participants each year, having at my disposal a private beginners' slope and a conveyor belt.

From the instructor's point of view, teaching alpine skiing is a task that involves great responsibility because of the risks of accidents that exist at all levels of training. Preschoolers can quickly lose interest in lessons, and motivation can be achieved with the help of games and stories that can keep them captivated on the slope for up to three hours per session.

In this work I wish to emphasize the importance of developing a methodology for teaching skiing through games to children aged 5 to 7. The idea I started from is that correct early learning and training, adapted to the new conditions, would increase the quality of the technique of Romania's skiers.

The importance of the topic is given by the need to optimize, conceptually and practically, the methodology for teaching skiing in Romania, something demanded by the current requirements of Romanian recreational and competitive skiers and by the new equipment and uphill ski lift installations.

Through this research I wish to improve my scientific and practical competence in the direction of leading lessons for preschoolers and to share these innovations with the instructors I lead.

Taking into account the experience of the world's oldest ski schools and of the specialists in Romania, combined with my own experience gained as a competitive skier, ski instructor, performance coach, graduate of the eurotest and the eurosecurity course at the "Ecole Nationale de Ski et d'Alpinisme" (the French School of Skiing and Mountaineering), student at the National University of Physical Education and Sport Bucharest (U.N.E.F.S.) and founder and director of the Straja Ski and Snowboard School, we wish to develop a methodical guide adapted to modern working materials, to the level of development of mountain tourism and to the motor abilities of tourists.

  The overall purpose of the research project is to improve the teaching of skiing at the older preschool age and to help Romania's private ski schools guide their activity by an up-to-date methodical guide. We carry out extensive documentation of the teaching methodologies used by the world's major ski schools, with the desire to find the most modern and effective learning methods.

We wish to emphasize the correct informing of ski instructors, so that teaching is no longer done "by ear", while in the world's major ski schools scientific methodical systems are applied.

By publishing this work we wish to meet the needs of Romania's ski instructors with a modern methodical system for preschoolers, appropriate to Romanian realities and adapted to the new equipment, working materials and transport installations. This methodical line will not be conceived as a conglomerate of heterogeneous elements borrowed from different countries, but will be based on the French and Romanian methodical systems. In this context, it implies adopting a selective and critical attitude towards existing information, bringing innovation and borrowing ideas from other sports.

We wish to emphasize the importance of an optimal adaptation of the set of intervention procedures in learning the basic technique, woven together with movement games that consolidate and refine what has been learned. The idea we started from is that early and correct training, adapted to the new conditions, would increase the quality of the technique of Romania's skiers, thus reducing the number of accidents on the slopes.