The Impact of an Obstacle Course Sport Education Season on Students' Aerobic Fitness Levels

A time-honored goal of physical education has been to improve children’s fitness and health (Silverman, 2005; Thomas, Lee, & Thomas, 2003), particularly given increasing evidence that physical activity is associated with shortand long-term health benefits in youth (Biddle, Gorely, & Stensel, 2004; Trost & Pate, 1999). Indeed, the National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE, 2004) listed two of its national standards as “participates regularly in physical activity,” and “achieves and maintains a health-enhancing level of physical fitness. ” Nonetheless, although the evidence suggests teachers can do fitness to children through lessons centering on specific fitness outcomes (e.g., Scruggs, Beveridge, & Watson, 2003), the foregrounding of specific fitness objectives presents a double-edged sword. For example, consider the year-long study of fourth-grade children whose physical education curriculum allocated 20% of its time to a required running component (Xiang, McBride, & Bruene, 2004, 2006). While the students’ run performance improved over time, by the end of the year their levels of intention for future participation in running had declined. Further, students’ work-avoidance goal increased as they related to the 1-mile (1.6 km) run. The challenge of teaching fitness and physical activity to children is further compounded when their conceptions of fitness are examined. Many equated fitness with appearance (i.e., “fitness” = looking good = being thin), and others had vague notions about the relationship between exercise and health (Placek et al., 2001). In response to these two challenges (i.e., a lack of attraction to specific fitness topics and a misinterpretation of fitness concepts), a number of programs have been developed to promote physical activity and fitness with fun activities, while helping children understand fitness is not just sit-ups, push-ups, and running the mile. The most global of these programs is Physical Best (NASPE, 2005), with a stated challenge to “educate, challenge, and encourage all children to develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes for a healthy and fit life” (p. 355). In particular, Physical Best aims to move students from dependence to independence for their fitness and health by promoting regular, enjoyable physical activity. In the last decade, research identified a number of curriculum models that facilitated student engagement in student-centered learning tasks. These included cooperative learning, tactical games, and Sport Education (Dyson, Griffin, & Hastie, 2004). With regard to Sport Education (SE), Siedentop, Hastie, and van der Mars (2004, p. 2) suggested it was “not just about mainstream sports,” and that seasons of weight training or aerobics fit comfortably within a more expanded notion of sport. Nonetheless, Wallhead and O’Sullivan (2005, p. 196) noted that “research examining the efficacy of SE on indices of student fitness is virtually non-existent. ” Further, research from Australia reported that only 50% of elementary teachers and 47% of secondary teachers believed fitness outcomes were achieved more successfully under SE than previous approaches (Alexander & Luckman, 2001). Given the need to find ways to help children achieve fitness goals and that students tend to work harder and treat lessons more seriously in the SE curriculum model (see Alexander, Taggart, & Medland, 1993; Carlson & Hastie, 1997), the purpose of this study was to investigate The Impact of an Obstacle Course Sport Education Season on Students’ Aerobic Fitness Levels