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The COVID-19 pandemic is having profound effects on college students, and those with mental health conditions are more vulnerable to the impact of this stress. Objective: To study the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on college students’ mental health. Participants: Participants (n=489) were mostly female, undergraduate, and aged 18–25. Methods: Participants completed an online survey assessing symptoms of mental health problems including hopelessness, loneliness, sadness, anxiety, sadness, and anger. Results: Approximately 81.6 % self-reported at least one negative mental health symptom. Students reported increased feelings of hopelessness (+7.8%), loneliness (+6.7%), sadness (+8.8%), depression (+2.6%), anxiety (+5.2%), and anger (+14.6%) during the pandemic than before. LGBTQ students and Black students had significantly more mental health symptoms during the pandemic than straight and White students. Conclusions: Results of this study highlight the negative impact of the pandemic and resultant changes on college students’ mental health.

In this paper, we reflect on SHAPE America's K-12 National Standards and its connection to physical literacy. We argue physical educators in the United States have primarily engaged with the term physical literacy without engaging with the theoretical and pedagogical depth of the concept. Despite this, SHAPE America does explicitly endorse an adapted version of Whitehead's definition of the physical literacy concept. In drawing on feminist intersectional thought, we make an argument that SHAPE America's adoption of physical literacy has produced an era of 'disorientation' in United States physical education. Within this disorientation, much of the advancements made in theory, pedagogy, sociocultural issues, as well as curriculum have been lost. We conclude by calling for a revamping of the standards that are not bound to a single concept, model or theoretical paradigm.

In this critical reflection, we consider physical education policy research in the United States (U.S.) using a sociocritical lens. Our aim is to extend the discussion and critiques of physical education policy research by exploring how it is conducted in the U.S. Instead of asking 'What is physical education policy research?', we are more concerned with the complex, imbalanced, and unpredictable affects of physical education policy research in the U.S. Thus, we ask questions like, 'How is physical education policy research working in different contexts?', 'What counts as policy research?' and 'Who is doing policy research?' We examine how physical education policy research is being taken up across the U.S. and the orientation–or direction–those studies take. As such, we conclude by considering what directions, people, and elements are not included in the current orientation.

Purpose: We aimed to identify, categorize, and analyze published peer-reviewed research on teaching in physical education between July 1994 and December 2015.Methods: An exhaustive search was conducted on three databases (Education Resources Information Center, PE Index, and Web of Science), which produced 18,966 abstracts that were reduced to 1,023 articles that met the inclusion criteria through a review of abstracts and titles, and the second review of full papers. Articles were coded independently for numerous aspects of the research method by three coders, with multiple checks for interobserver agreement, all of which were above .85 interobserver agreement.Results: There was a great increase in the number of articles, methodological diversity, and research focus compared with a previous analysis. Research was published in 183 journals and by researchers in 45 different countries. Challenges in maintaining quality over quantity and the growth of the field are discussed.Conclusion: Research on teaching in physical education has grown greatly, and the field has matured.

Background: LGBTQ scholarship in physical education has a history tracing back to 1982. Recently, however, there has been a ‘rising tide’ in LGBTQ studies in physical education. Despite this recent...

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the special issue on equity and diversity in health, physical activity, and education. We (Dillon and Sara) start the introduction by explaining our relati...

Purpose: To explore teachers’ perceptions of incorporating digital technologies in physical education (PE) and how they influenced pedagogical practices. Method: Data were collected using qualitative methods (interviews, observations, and artifacts) and were analyzed using a grounded theory approach. Results: Teachers integrated wearable digital technologies in ways they thought would augment their PE programs, not replace them. It also was found that teachers’ ideologies of PE shaped the way they implemented wearable digital technologies. Finally, the material circumstances of schools affected the ways in which wearable digital technologies could be implemented in PE. Conclusion: Teachers were willing to integrate wearable digital technologies if they augmented (and did not replace) their preferred purpose of PE. Given this, ideologies of teachers influenced the role that technologies played in teaching and learning in PE.

This paper draws on two separate research projects, one with Black and Latinx youth in the United States and another with LGBTQ+ youth in New Zealand, to explore the affective experiences of young people with the FitnessGram® assessment. We specifically use affect theory through poetic inquiry to entangle interview data from young participants about their experiences with FitnessGram®. We then (re)present the data through poetic forms. We argue the turn to affect and poetic inquiry allows us, as researchers, to respond to dominant discourses around FitnessGram® (and young bodies) in critical and creative ways. And, we embrace the experimental, open-ended potential of poetic (re)presentation to bring awareness to the youths’ experiences and to encourage others (researchers, educators, practitioners, policymakers) to engage differently as well. We hope, through such aesthetic forms, we can start to value the affects of FitnessGram® on youth and think divergently about this popular practice.

Education has the ability to both reproduce and transform broader social structures. Yet, teachers’ responsibilities are constantly increasing whilst budgets, resources, and staffing are depleted. We argue that we are living in a time of great uncertainty and precarity. As physical educators, we should make attempts to be socially conscious of this precarity and provide equitable environments for all students. This article (the second installment of a two-part series) is an attempt to make an important step in enacting a socially just and informed physical education program. In so doing, we highlight specific ways that teachers and teacher educators can prepare for and teach about precarity in physical education. By providing resources, readings, and examples from practice, we provide a framework that promotes ethics of value, care, and zeal for others.

Background: Physical education has historically been a repressive place for queer persons. Since physical education spaces are predominantly heteronormative, research on sexual identity management has shown lesbian teachers often try to ‘pass’ as straight or distance themselves from their sexualities. There has been no research to date that examines the experiences of queer male physical educators.Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to use Deleuzo-Guattarian theory to reflect on my affective experiences as a queer male physical educator. A secondary goal is to transcend binary theorising that has shaped previous research in the field.Design and Analysis: This paper uses autoethnographic examination to analyse experiences as a queer male physical educator. Data consists of narratives from my first year as a physical educator. These narratives are analysed using Deleuzo-Guattarian theory to map their affective implications.Conclusion: I conclude the paper by reflecting on and recommending several ...

The purpose of this paper was to explore the role of queer men’s desire in physical education. The author used interview data from an ethnography with queer youth to explore the relationship between desire, affect, and physical education. Drawing on new materialist theory, the author asserts that queer desire is not ‘pre-existing’ and therefore outside of physical education, but rather the field plays an active role in the production and shaping of homoerotic desire. By contending that physical education plays an active role in producing desire, the author asserts that the field of physical education affects queer men’s potential. Alternatively, the author also claims that since queer desire is produced within physical education, the productive potential of queer desire can reciprocally affect the field and its practices.

In this paper, we reflect on models-based practices in physical education using a sociocritical lens. Drawing links between neoliberal moves in education, and critical approaches to the body and physicality, we take a view that models are useful tools that are worth integrating into physical education, but we are apprehensive to suggest they should redefine the purpose of physical education. In arguing this, we attempt to understand the particular effects of certain models on practice and students. We draw on the theoretical concepts of Deleuze, in particular his notion of ‘striated’ space to analyze SPARK-PE, HOPE, and Sport Education. We assert that some models can be useful tools for thinking about instruction, but models-based-practices are no substitute for a thoughtful and thorough physical education program.

A Thousand Plateaus is not recognized as a classic text within leisure studies. Yet we hope that our rationale for reviewing this text, as a classic, is soon made apparent. Within this review we pr...

The Health and Physical Education curriculum in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) provides a unique contribution to the discussion of global re-design of Physical Education. In 1999, the subjects of “health education” and “physical education” were combined into one academic subject (HPE) in the national curriculum (MOE 1999a). One purpose of the NZ “re-design” of the HPE curriculum was to challenge the “traditional fitness, team sport, and biomedical focus” that dominated HPE practices. In particular, the work of Culpan (1998) helped to shift the emphasis of HPE onto the well-being of the students, of other people, and society more broadly. This chapter presents a HPE curriculum aligned to a socio-critical and socio-historical approach to education. The distinctive strengths of our curriculum include its interdisciplinary nature, the community-based approach it takes, and the social justice efforts it privileges. We conclude that NZ provides a dynamic example of HPE reform and re-design in-process and offers an important example to an international audience.

Fitness testing is arguably the most contested PE-for-health practice, especially in countries such as England, Australia and the United States of America. The testing of children within PE can be traced back to at least the early twentieth century, but common approaches to teaching in, though and about fitness testing continue to be debated. Such debates, for example, relate to educative purpose (i.e. the tendency to focus on fitness testing in isolation as opposed to being embedded within a broader fitness education unit, the placing of students 'on display' (i.e. so that it is very clear who the higher and lower performers are), and the presentation and use of test results. One way to respond to the debates related to fitness testing is to expand how we think fitness testing. That is to say, instead of focusing on 'what the body is' (e.g. underweight, flexible, strong) we can focus on 'what the body can do' (i.e. culturally, psychologically socially and physically). Doing so aligns more closely with contemporary and multi-dimensional understandings of health, and opens up opportunities for more inclusive and educative fitness testing, and PE-for- health practices more broadly.