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Background: Traditionally, Physical Education (PE) has adopted a multiskills approach, where children generally engage in decontextualised practice of sport techniques to develop specific movement skills and facilitate sports participation. This approach has been critiqued for having a weak conceptual and philosophical justification, and a lack of empirical proof of its educational value. The SAMPLE-PE research project set out to challenge this by creating two PE curricula distinguished by contrasting theories of motor learning: information processing theory and ecological dynamics. While both approaches have shown promise in enhancing children's movement skills, to date, there has been little consideration of their impact on the motivational climate of primary PE lessons. This study explored to what extent traditional PE, ecological dynamics, and information processing theorybased approaches create empowering and disempowering motivational climates when viewed through a self-determination and achievement goal theory lens. Method: Forty-four PE lessons were video recorded and coded by two trained researchers using the Multidimensional Motivational Climate Observation System. ANOVA, MANOVA and Bonferroni post-hoc tests were run to explore differences in data on motivational climate under the three different pedagogical approaches. Results: The group taught with concepts from ecological dynamics (referred to as Ecological) displayed a significantly lower disempowering motivational climate in comparison to the group taught with a basis in information processing theory (referred to as IPT) and the traditional PE groups. The ecological group revealed significantly more autonomy support than the traditional PE and the IPT group. The IPT group methods provided significantly more structure than traditional PE and the ecological group. Conclusion: The findings of this study have shown how the approach taken in delivering PE in primary schools may differentially affect motivational climates. Results imply that underpinning PE with theories of motor learning provides differing, viable and beneficial alternatives to create positive learning environments, compared to traditional PE practices.

This study evaluated the effectiveness of an 8-week gymnastics curriculum on children's movement competence and their physical self-concept. There were 113 children (46% girls, 49% intervention) with a mean age of 9.4 years (SD = 1.8) that participated. Intervention children underwent 8 weeks of gymnastics and the comparison group continued with their standard curriculum. Age was a significant co-variate, a separate analysis was conducted on the lower (grades 2 and 4) and upper (grade 6) groups. The lower age group showed significant improvement in favor of the gymnastic group in fundamental movement skills. The upper age group showed a significant improvement for the control group in general body coordination and fundamental movement skills. For all grades, the physical self-concept showed a significant main effect in favor of the gymnastics group. The gymnastics intervention was found to be of particular benefit for developing children's movement competence and physical self-concept in younger children.

Purpose: Following increased interest in physical literacy (PL), development of appropriate tools for assessment has become an important next step for its operationalization. To forward the development of such tools, the objective of this study was to build the foundations of the Évaluation de la Littératie Physique (ELIP), designed to help reduce existing tensions in approaches to PL assessment that may be resulting in a low uptake into applied settings. Methods: We followed two steps: (1) the development of the first version of ELIP by deploying a Delphi method (n = 30); and (2) the modification of items through cognitive interviews with emerging adults (n = 32). Results: The expert consensus highlighted four dimensions of PL to be assessed--physical; affective; cognitive; and social--with new perspectives, including a preference for broad motor tests over fitness. Conclusion: Results offer new insights into the assessment of emerging adults' PL, but ELIP still requires further work concerning validity, reliability, and sensitivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the authors highlight an issue in science education facing many university and college science departments: hiring faculty who can bring to the department specialized expertise in science education. To begin to address this issue, a collaborative team of tenure-track faculty--all of whom are primarily trained in science and have pursued additional professional development to become education specialists within their discipline--have contributed their collective wisdom on this topic. The aim of this article is to share a variety of perspectives on the goals for hiring and retaining Science Faculty with Education Specialties (SFES), the potential roles of the appointed SFES, and to provide a document to foster and guide conversations among faculty who are considering hiring a science educator for their science department. The authors of this article represent seven universities and occupy different points along the career trajectory as SFES. In particular, the authors of this article have been informed by conversations around these questions in two key venues. First, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) held a Workshop for Discipline-based Science Education Research in December 2005 (NAS, 2006). This meeting brought together administrators who have pioneered the hiring of these positions at their universities and colleges, along with junior faculty who have been recently hired as "science educators" within science departments. In addition, the California State University (CSU), which is the largest university in the country and serves more than 400,000 students on 23 campuses, held a System-wide Colloquium on Science Education in May 2006 to explore a variety of topics, one of which was how to better engage the scientific disciplines in K-16+ science education reform efforts (CSU, 2006). What emerged at this Colloquium on Science Education was the conclusion that the integration of specialists in science education within science departments was a key, yet underdeveloped, approach to that goal. The following questions are addressed: (1) What do "SFES" look like?; (2) How are these positions similar to and different from other tenure-track faculty positions in science departments--with respect to research, teaching, or service?; (3) Why create these positions within science departments?; (4) What are common myths associated with the hiring of new faculty in these positions?; (5) What conversations should take place before a department decides to hire an SFES?; and (6) How can individual faculty members support the integration of an SFES in their department? (Contains 1 table.)