Financial barriers often restrict sport participation among children from low-income families. Schools are thought to offer equitable access to programming, including school sport participation. However, pay-to-play school sport models can inhibit participation among students from low-income households. Recognizing the potential benefits of school sport and realizing the financial barriers to participation, the purpose of this study was to understand the extent to which school sport promotes educational experiences and holistic well-being of Canadian youth from low-income families. A case study was conducted with stakeholders who were supported by funding from a non-profit organization to help cover the costs of school sport registration fees. Data were collected from in-depth interviews with low-income students and their parents, teacher-coaches and school administrators. Three overarching themes were representative of the experiences of school sport participation among low-income students: (1) healthy student-athletes, (2) developing student-athletes in school, for life, and (3) supporting student-athletes as a community. The participants perceived that school sport participation offered holistic health benefits, and developed skills and behaviours that support positive educational experiences and foster life skills. Further, our results highlighted the importance of the school community in supporting low-income students to participate in school sport teams and the need to reframe school sport to better support low-income families.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused drastic changes in education, which had to adapt to changing scenarios (online, face-to-face, hybrid teaching). Within physical education (PE), strategies such as 'do not use or share equipment' were proposed to avoid infections. These strategies fit with an emerging pedagogical model called the Self-made Material Model (SMM), which involves students creating their own PE equipment. The objectives of the present study were: (a) to analyse PE teachers' beliefs about the use of self-made material in their classes, (b) to evaluate teachers' perceptions of the impact of the use of self-made material in PE lessons during the pandemic and (c) to examine gender/age differences. A quantitative, snowball research design was followed. The ( Méndez-Giménez and Fernández-Río, 2011) comprising two scales (41 items) was adapted: scale and scale. In total, 1093 in-service teachers (443 women, 40.5%;  = 41.39, SD = 9.54) from 13 Ibero-American countries participated. Descriptive statistics were calculated, Student's test was conducted for comparisons by gender and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was run for comparisons by age ranges. Overall, the scores were high, emphasising the potential to promote recycling and students' creativity and respect for the material. Women scored higher in items such as promoting interdisciplinarity, equality, attention to disability and education in values. In total, 833 (76.21%) teachers used self-made material during the pandemic and reported high levels of satisfaction, expectations of use, usefulness and profitability. No gender differences were found. In the COVID-19 era, the SMM is playing a relevant role as a meaningful framework and a helpful teaching methodology in different educational scenarios.

The coronavirus 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic has given rise to significant global challenges across education, and specifically in the physical education teacher education (PETE) community. Students attending teacher education programmes during the Covid-19 pandemic have experienced an abrupt and unprecedented pedagogical transition from a face-to-face capacity to remote teaching, learning, and assessment environments. Crucially, student teachers' school placement experiences faced increased challenges and practical implications from additional environmental and social changes. In the context of continued global and national challenges for initial teacher education (ITE) programmes, the present qualitative study, using a representative sample of 24 student physical education (PE) teachers from a PETE programme, investigates the perceived implications of the Covid-19 pandemic on student teachers' practice and wellbeing during their final 2020/2021 academic year. Results indicate that student teachers maintain that exercise, connections with the university and school placement communities, alongside personal and professional organisation skills serve as resilience resources protecting their wellbeing. Conversely, student teachers express that school placement isolation, restricted PE delivery, increased workload, low teacher efficacy, and the responsibility to implement Covid-19 behaviour regulations presented as challenges that negatively affect their wellbeing. The paper concludes with practices that may further support PETE and ITE programmes and their student teachers to maintain a stable level of wellbeing throughout their careers.

This study examined secondary (high) school teachers' experiences of online delivery of health and physical education (HPE) during Covid-19 suppression measures in one Australian state in 2020. Research has noted the use of blended learning and flipped classrooms in HPE, yet little is known about the delivery of fully online school HPE. Semi-structured interviews occurred with eight high school HPE specialist teachers, providing qualitative data for analysis. The analysis of teachers' experiences indicated that in most cases HPE did not happen; rather, physical activity provision was initiated, or HPE was marginalised to a movement break between subjects with perceived higher status and priority. Additionally, teachers found that providing HPE online was challenging, and struggled to connect with, engage and provide equitable opportunities for their students online. The results showed that the move to online provision of HPE resulted in diminished educative purpose.

Meaningful Physical Education (PE) is a pedagogical approach to PE instruction designed with the aim of helping teachers explicitly prioritise meaningful experiences for students. The purpose of the current study was to conduct a small-scale implementation of a preliminary version of Meaningful PE with a sample of five primary classroom teachers in Ireland to receive their feedback on the approach and their experiences of implementing it in their classrooms. Qualitative data were collected across an eight-week implementation period. An actor-oriented analysis was used to focus specifically on teachers' decisions concerning both and to implement the approach, as well as the reasons they implemented Meaningful PE the way they did. Results show teachers were generally supportive of Meaningful PE as they attempted to implement several components of the approach in their classrooms. Teachers' implementation was highly related to their positive interpretations of the approach, in relation to both their perceptions of beneficial student outcomes and in drawing connections between the approach and prior experiences of and beliefs about teaching. This study adds further support to prior small-scale studies where implementation of Meaningful PE has been assessed and provides insight into how the approach might be introduced to and implemented more broadly by teachers in the future.

Acquiring scientific knowledge about physical activity is necessary for students to become physically literate for life, and cognitive engagement and cognitive levels of tasks are two components that often determine the effectiveness of knowledge acquisition. This study sought to determine the extent to which students' cognitive engagement in descriptive, relational and reasoning learning tasks contributed to their acquisition of knowledge and the extent to which cognitive engagement on lower-level tasks contributed to higher-level tasks (e.g. descriptive to relational to reasoning). The performance of students in descriptive, relational and reasoning tasks and knowledge acquisition was measured in 992 middle school students in active physical education lessons. The results revealed that students' performance in relational (regression coefficient 0.09, p < 0.01) and reasoning (regression coefficient = 0.06, p < 0.01) tasks directly contributed to their acquisition of knowledge (R = 0.14). The performance of students in descriptive tasks indirectly contributed to knowledge acquisition through influencing their performance in relational and reasoning tasks (indirect effect = 0.09, p < 0.01).

In physical education, it has become necessary for children to learn kinesiological knowledge for understanding the benefits of physical activity and developing a physically active lifestyle. This study was conducted to determine the extent to which cognitive assignments about healthful living and fitness contributed to knowledge growth on cardiorespiratory fitness and health. Fourth grade students ( = 616) from 15 randomly sampled urban elementary schools completed 34 cognitive assignments related to the cardiorespiratory physical activities they were engaged in across 10 lessons. Performance on the assignments were analyzed in relation to their knowledge gain measured using a standardized knowledge test. A multivariate discriminant analysis revealed that the cognitive assignments contributed to knowledge gain but the contribution varied assignment by assignment. A multiple regression analysis indicated that students' assignment performance by lesson contributed positively to their knowledge growth scores. A content analysis based on the constructivist learning framework showed that observing-reasoning assignments contributed the most to knowledge growth. Analytical and analytical-application assignments contributed less than the constructivist theories would predict.