Top 10 Reasons for Quality Physical Education

JOPERD • Volume 77 No. 6 • August 2006 W hen the clock struck midnight on December 31, 2000, we moved into the 21st century. Noted historian Roberta Park (1989) has suggested that the turn of the century marked the beginning of the second century for the profession of physical education. She also noted that it was time for physical education to move on from its status as a “second-class” profession to “fi rst class” status, or as she put it, to “become the renaissance profession of the new millennium” (p. 1). During the 20th century, medicine emerged as the renaissance profession because of the development of a sound scientifi c base. Substantial scientifi c evidence supports the role of physical activity in disease prevention and healthy lifestyle promotion, and quality physical education represents our best opportunity to provide all children with physical activity experiences that promote physical activity now and for a lifetime. The characteristics of quality physical education have been identifi ed by the National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE, 2004a). They appear in table 1. The prevalence of daily physical education in America is low (Grunbaum et al., 2004) therefore, providing daily opportunities to learn in physical education is not always feasible. Advocating for a daily physical education policy is a complex, costly, and political process, but such advocacy has had success recently at the elementary level and middle school level (e.g., in North Carolina). A starting point for many schools is to obtain funding for qualifi ed physical education specialists. Physical education specialists delivering meaningful content and appropriate instruction must become the norm in the educational system in order to provide children with positive physical activity experiences that will lead them to maintain physical activity throughout their lifetime. In order to achieve “fi rst class” status for their profession, physical education professionals must do a better job of documenting and studying the evidence of the link between quality physical education and present and future physical activity participation. To date, research has demonstrated that programs exhibiting the characteristics of quality physical education lead to increased physical activity levels (Dale, Corbin, & Dale, 2000; McKenzie et al., 2004; Pate et al., 2005; Sallis et al., 1997), improved self-concept (Goni & Zulaika, 2000), increased self-effi cacy (Dishman et al., 2004), improved motor skills (Emmanouel, Zervas, & Vagenas, 1992), increased enjoyment (Dishman et al., 2005), increased motivation (Prusak, Treasure, Darst, & Pangrazi, 2004), reduced sedentary behaviors following graduation from high school (Dale & Corbin, 2000), and increased physical activity over the long-term in women (Trudeau, Laurencelle, Trembley, Rajic, & Shephard, 1998). In addition to the existing research (Trudeau & Shephard, 2005), large-scale interventions with signifi cant physical education components are being conducted (e.g., the Trial of Activity for Adolescent Girls and Lifestyle Education for Activity Program) and will provide insights into physical education’s impact on youth physical activity (Pate et al., 2005). The scientifi c evidence supporting physical activity’s role in health and well-being has been extensively documented, and there is little question that physical education plays an important role in public health because it reaches most children (Pate, Corbin, Simons-Morton, & Ross, 1987; Sallis & McKenzie, 1991). Moreover, because physical activity has been engineered out of most aspects of daily life, the relative contribution of physical education to daily physical activity becomes signifi cant. The NASPE (2004a) defi nition of a physically educated person, which should result from a quality physical education program, explicitly identifi es the importance of physical activity in the Top 10 Reasons for Quality Physical Education