Background: School physical education (PE) programs provide a prime environment for interventions that attempt to develop school-aged children's motor competence and overall physical fitness, while also stimulating competence motivation to engage in physical activity during childhood. It is generally recognized that a pedometer-based intervention…

Purpose: Given the recent push to increase children's physical activity levels through whole-of-school approaches, the relationship between physical activity and academic achievement has received much attention. Therefore, this study sought to understand the relationship between academic achievement and healthy school transformations in urban…

Background: For years researchers have been engaged in revealing the impact of the hidden curriculum in physical education (PE) on students' participation and non-participation. The hidden PE curriculum encompasses the knowledge, the relations, the assumptions, the norms and the beliefs that students unconsciously and unintentionally learn through…

Background: The Foundation Phase in Wales is a play-based curriculum for pupils aged 3-7 years old. Children learn through more holistic areas of learning in place of traditional subjects. As such, the subject of physical education in its traditional form no longer exists for pupils under the age of 7 in Wales. In light of the role of physical…

Background: Population health concerns related to physical inactivity and obesity appear in policy documents, government campaigns and popular media across western societies. Children and young people have been targeted for physical activity promotion and schools have been positioned as sites for intervention. In particular, Physical Education and…

Background: Due to migration processes, cultural diversity and strangeness are becoming characteristics of modern society. The competence to handle this heterogeneity--the so-called intercultural competence--is a key competence for all children and youths. Sports and physical education (PE) are often considered as a particular field for enhancing…

Background: The absence of Physical Education (PE) from the South African school curriculum before its reintroduction in recent years contributed to health concerns regarding the low physical activity (PA) levels of children and adolescents in South Africa. Purpose: This study evaluated the effects of a once-a-week enhanced quality PE programme on…

Background: Cooperative Learning has been recently defined as a true pedagogical model. Moreover, in a recent review Casey and Goodyear reported that it can help physical education promote the four basic learning outcomes: physical, cognitive, social and affective. Purpose: The main goal was to investigate the impact of a sustained Cooperative…

Background: There is growing evidence indicating that physical education and sport (PES) are environments that, when appropriately structured, can promote positive youth developmental outcomes. In recent years, a number of researchers working in PES have designed programs and interventions aimed at helping teachers and coaches teach life skills…

Background: Fundamental motor skill proficiency is essential for engagement in sports and physical play and in the development of a healthy lifestyle. Children with motor delays (with and without disabilities) lack the motor skills necessary to participate in games and physical activity, and tend to spend more time as onlookers than do their…

Background: Preschool children who are at risk have been shown to demonstrate developmental delays in their fundamental motor skills. The body of research on motor skill development of children indicates that these children, when provided with motor skill instruction, significantly improved their locomotor and object control (OC) skill…

Background: Lack of content knowledge (CK) is problematic in teaching in classroom subject areas and in physical education. There is a dearth of data-based research on interventions aimed at helping teachers acquire CK and, in turn, on the effects of CK on student learning. Aim: To investigate the effect of professional development, in the form of…

Background: Much research and practice in the field of physical activity and physical education for girls has been trapped in a reproductive cycle of telling the "same old story" as if it is news over and over again, since at least the 1980s. A thread running through this narrative is that despite all of this research and related…

Background: Adventure education is an instructional model where students participate in adventurous activities to acquire physical, cognitive, and affective skills. It also has strong connections with cooperative learning. Parkour is a fast-growing sport practiced by thousands of youngsters all over the world. The media does not portray it as an…

Background: "Teaching games for understanding" (TGfU) is a tactical-game approach to teaching, in which participants are learning via the processes intrinsic to the games themselves. Purpose: The aim of the study was to examine the effectiveness of a tactical-game model in promoting metacognitive behaviour in elementary-school students.…