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The promotion of 21st century key skills is crucial to build 21st century citizenship. The purpose of this research was to examine teachers' and students' views on the use of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach in Physical Education regarding the development of 21st century skills and the syllabus covered in lessons. In-depth open-ended interviews were carried out with 25 participants, who shared their understandings based on their experiences when using CLIL. The findings give an in-depth insight into what 21st century skills are more used and the extent to which they are developed. While creativity and collaboration were promoted thanks to CLIL, interest and engagement depended on each student, and self-reflection was barely fostered. In addition, the lessons developed both linguistic and Physical Education knowledge, including body language, a specific content of the subject that has often been neglected. Some practical implications are inferred, highlighting the need to promote high-quality CLIL teacher training in order to ensure that CLIL is adequately applied and students can develop all the 21st century skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language in CLIL is dependent on the subject that embraces it, as it is the case of Physical Education. The present descriptive exploratory case study examines how content and language are integrated into Physical Education lessons with CLIL in secondary education. It applies the Cognitive Discourse Function construct as a heuristic to analyse 19 lessons. The results show that all the acts of thinking are used, but not equally. The specific unit and the approach used by the teacher seem to affect the prevalence of each category and the students' engagement when verbalising their acts of thinking. In addition, a number of features (i.e., the role of questions, simple language, explicit language teaching, multimodality, translanguaging) were identified in order to integrate content, language and literacy. These findings can thus inform researchers, teachers and teacher training programmes to understand how integration takes place and promotes deep learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education should encourage active citizenship through a critical and transformative lens to promote a more just, equal, and inclusive society. This article presents a self-study that examines my teaching practice as a novice teacher educator. It describes my first experience using debates to discuss gender inequalities through critical pedagogy. With this study I aimed to answer: (1) What can I learn from my first attempt to use debates that focus on gender issues in teacher education to improve my teaching practices based on critical pedagogy? and (2) How can participation in debates frame pre-service teachers personal and professional views on gender issues? Data collection methods included the teacher diary, students' surveys, exit slips and a group interview. Data analysis encompassed both more traditional techniques (i.e., data analysis spiral method) and more complex and relational methods (i.e., thinking with theory). Findings are presented through a visual network showing the connections among three categories: tensions to improve, positive lens, and awareness of gender issues. This article, therefore, makes public the knowledge built and created through my experience so that it can inform my (and potentially others') future practice. Findings show that debates offer a variety of benefits for teacher education in terms of both pedagogical insights and raising awareness about critical issues. However, debates are not magic formulas, and they may not serve nor impact all pre-service teachers in the same way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aimed to examine the acute changes in dynamic balance Postural Control experienced by children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) who undertook a 6-month extracurricular Service-Learning Physical Education (PE) program. The study used a quasi-experimental design with 23 participants divided into an experimental group and a control group. Limits of Stability protocol was used to measure the children's postural control. The results showed that the experimental group achieved statistically significant improvements. To conclude, this study provides substantial input about how extracurricular PE activities aimed at developing the general motor proficiency of ASD children can improve their dynamic balance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]