Background/Purpose K-12 Physical education in China endured a dramatic change in the last decade. It is in a critical transition from a sport-focused to a health-promotion programming. The purpose of this study was to determine the role of research evidence in the reform.
Method A quasi meta-analysis was conducted on 14,652 research articles published during 2001-2010 in China, which included (a) article selection, (b) content analyses, and (c) statistical analyses.
Analysis/Results A total of 1951 (13.3%) articles were identified as relevant to K-12 physical education. Nearly 50% were published during 2002-2005 when the reform began and took hold. Among the 1951 articles, 33.8% were theoretical articulation articles (no data-based evidence), 30.1% were on higher education including teacher education, 18.2% were on organizational issues, and the remaining 17.9% were on pedagogical issues. Statistically significant differences were observed clearly among the distributions (p<.05). A contingency table analysis revealed that the reform had a much stronger connection to theory articles than to others (proportion of agreement > .55). The results indicated that data-based evidence was not widely used in the reform.
Conclusions The result echoes the findings in the U.S. Eyler et al. (2010) reported that among the 781 physical education bills introduced in state legislatures during 2001-2007, 272 contained at least one element of evidence; only 43 of them were enacted in comparison with 119 without evidence. Our finding calls for additional effort to implement evidence-based policy making and practice in physical education.
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