The purpose of this descriptive component of a larger, exploratory case study was to examine associations among lesson contexts, teacher behaviors, and adolescent physical activity over a year of physical education (PE) at one school. Middle school students (n = 206) and their PE teachers (n = 4) were observed twice-weekly across one academic…

This study uncovers the predictive relationship of middle school students' ability beliefs (self-efficacy and expectancy-related beliefs) and incentives (outcome expectancy, importance, interest, and usefulness) to intention, cardiovascular fitness, and teacher-rated effort in physical education. Participants (N = 252; 118 boys, 134 girls)…

One of the most critical public concerns in the United States is the rapid increase in childhood obesity, partly due to the social and environmental changes (e.g., excessive TV and computer use, pressures of standardized testing, etc.) in the past few decades, which has resulted in less physical activity in school children's daily routines.…

Numerous scholars have stressed the importance of personal and social responsibility in physical activity settings; however, there is a lack of instrumentation to study the implementation of responsibility-based teaching strategies. The development, content validity, and initial inter-rater reliability testing of the Tool for Assessing…

The National Center of Education Statistics' Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999 (ECLS-K) data were used to explore the curricular emphasis in schools of varying socioeconomic status in both public and private schools. Data collected between 1998 and 2003 were used in the secondary analyses of curricular emphasis in…

With an increasing amount of overweight children, especially among racial and ethnic minorities, effective population-level interventions are urgently needed (Wang et al., 2006). The purpose of this study was to provide insight into nutritional and physical activity intervention programs at a Connecticut public school in an urban setting.…

Paralympic School Day (PSD) is a disability awareness program that provides a platform for attitude change by raising awareness about disability and disability sport. The purpose of this study was to determine if PSD would have a positive impact on the attitudes of students without disabilities toward the inclusion of students with disabilities in…

The purpose of this case study was to examine the relationship between sports participation and health-related physical fitness in middle school and high school students. Health-related physical fitness was measured using the Fitnessgram test battery to assess healthy fitness zone (HFZ) achievement in five areas: body composition, muscular…

Background: Past research has revealed the positive impact that interest development can have on achievement outcomes with early-adolescents in physical education (PE). Interest is considered a psychological state of engaging and willingness to reengage in specific content that develops over time; however, little work to date has examined interest…

Teacher shortages have real impact on schools, students, and communities. A gap of one teacher in a school means diminished opportunities for students. And, like many challenges in public education, the pain of teacher shortages is not distributed equitably: The communities that suffer the most from teacher shortages are often low-income and…

This study reports adolescent expectancy-value motivation, and its relation to fitness knowledge and psychomotor skill learning in physical education. Students (N = 854) from 12 middle schools provided data on expectancy-value motivation, fitness knowledge and psychomotor skill learning. Results from dependent t-test and MANOVA indicated that 8th…

The type of learning activity offered in physical education may influence students' motivational beliefs, physical activity participation and effort/persistence in class. However, most empirical studies have focused on the individual level rather than on the learner-content interactions. Accordingly, the potential effects of learning activities on…

Background: Epidemic increases in childhood obesity and associated health risks are resulting in efforts to implement school policies related to nutrition and physical activity (NPA). With multicomponent policy efforts, challenges exist in characterizing the extent of policy change across the breadth of NPA policies. Methods: Aggregated policy…

This paper posits that Inventing Games (IG), an aspect of the games curriculum based on principles of Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU), opens up important spaces for teaching social and ethical understanding. Games have long been regarded as a site for moral development. For most teachers, however, ethical principles have been seen as…

Background: This study integrated criminological and public health perspectives to examine the influence of bullying victimization and the school environment on physical activity (PA). Methods: We used a weighted sample of 7786 US middle school students surveyed as part of the Health Behavior in School-Aged Children study to conduct a multilevel…