Physical Activity, Lesson Context and Teacher Behavior in Large Physical Education Classes

Abstract

With the advent of national and international concern about children’s decreasing activity levels, a number of interventions have been put in place that aim to promote cardiovascular health. These include national trials such as CATCH (Perry, Sellers, & Johnson, 1997) and SPARK (Sallis, McKenzie, Alcaraz, Kolody, Faucette, & Hovell, 1997). At a more programmatic level, there has been increasing attention towards the expansion of school physical education, dissuading children from pursuing sedentary activities, providing suitable role models for physical activity, and making activity-promoting changes in the environment (Council on Sports Medicine and Fitness, 2006).