Background/Purpose: Enhanced MVPA time in PE classes is expected to improve students' fitness level. The study was to compare MVPA time in PE classes and fitness outcomes among eighth graders between a PE4life Academy middle school (School 1), which was characterized with high MVPA time in PE classes, and a middle school (School 2) with a traditional PE program.
Method: Twenty lessons in each school were observed with SOFIT (McKenzie et al., 1991) for eighth graders during an academic year, and health-related fitness tests were conducted for 101 students (51 girls) at School 1 and 89 students (53 girls) at School 2 at the end of the academic year. One-way MANOVAs were run to identify differences in MVPA time percentage in PE classes and fitness outcomes between the two schools. The two schools were similar in family income, race composition, and PE class time, and they were geographically close to each other.
Analysis/Results: School 1 spent significantly larger percentage of class time in MVPA than did School 2 (68.61±4.20 vs. 46.09±9.77), and students in School 1 demonstrated much better performance than School 2 in PACER for girls (31.51±14.54 vs. 23.56±13.95) and boys (52.03±22.10 vs. 29.27±20.36) and in pushup for boys (17.25±9.12 vs. 11.54±6.92). All the differences were significant at p < .001 level with effect sizes ranging from .074 to .702.
Conclusions: The PE4life academy PE program is superior to traditional PE program, and enhanced MVPA time in PE classes has more positive impact on students' cardiorespiratory fitness and muscular strength and endurance.
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