This academic review critically examines the theoretical and empirical bases of claims made for the educational benefits of physical education and school sport (PESS). An historical overview of the development of PESS points to the origins of claims made in four broad domains: physical, social, affective and cognitive. Analysis of the evidence suggests that PESS has the potential to make contributions to young people’s development in each of these domains. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, there is suggestive evidence of a distinctive role for PESS in the acquisition and development of children’s movement skills and physical competence. It can be argued that these are necessary, if not deterministic conditions of engagement in lifelong physical activity. In the social domain, there is sufficient evidence to support claims of positive benefits for young people. Importantly, benefits are mediated by environmental and contextual factors such as leadership, the involvement of young people in decision‐making, an emphasis on social relationships, and an explicit focus on learning processes. In the affective domain, too, engagement in physical activity has been positively associated with numerous dimensions of psychological and emotional development, yet the mechanisms through which these benefits occur are less clear. Likewise, the mechanisms by which PESS might contribute to cognitive and academic developments are barely understood. There is, however, some persuasive evidence to suggest that physical activity can improve children’s concentration and arousal, which might indirectly benefit academic performance. In can be concluded that many of the educational benefits claimed for PESS are highly dependent on contextual and pedagogic variables, which leads us to question any simple equations of participation and beneficial outcomes for young people. In the final section, therefore, the review raises questions about whether PESS should be held accountable for claims made for educational benefits, and about the implications of accountability.

Objective To summarise the current evidence on the effects of physical activity (PA) interventions on cognitive and academic performance in children, and formulate research priorities and recommendations. Design Systematic review (following PRISMA guidelines) with a methodological quality assessment and an international expert panel. We based the evaluation of the consistency of the scientific evidence on the findings reported in studies rated as of high methodological quality. Data sources PubMed, PsycINFO, Cochrane Central, Web of Science, ERIC, and SPORTDiscus. Eligibility criteria for selecting studies PA-intervention studies in children with at least one cognitive or academic performance assessment. Results Eleven (19%) of 58 included intervention studies received a high-quality rating for methodological quality: four assessed effects of PA interventions on cognitive performance, six assessed effects on academic performance, and one on both. All high-quality studies contrasted the effects of additional/adapted PA activities with regular curriculum activities. For cognitive performance 10 of 21 (48%) constructs analysed showed statistically significant beneficial intervention effects of PA, while for academic performance, 15 of 25 (60%) analyses found a significant beneficial effect of PA. Across all five studies assessing PA effects on mathematics, beneficial effects were reported in six out of seven (86%) outcomes. Experts put forward 46 research questions. The most pressing research priority cluster concerned the causality of the relationship between PA and cognitive/academic performance. The remaining clusters pertained to PA characteristics, moderators and mechanisms governing the ‘PA–performance’ relationship and miscellaneous topics. Conclusion There is currently inconclusive evidence for the beneficial effects of PA interventions on cognitive and overall academic performance in children. We conclude that there is strong evidence for beneficial effects of PA on maths performance. The expert panel confirmed that more ‘high-quality’ research is warranted. By prioritising the most important research questions and formulating recommendations we aim to guide researchers in generating high-quality evidence. Our recommendations focus on adequate control groups and sample size, the use of valid and reliable measurement instruments for physical activity and cognitive performance, measurement of compliance and data analysis. PROSPERO registration number CRD42017082505.

Despite the fact that physical activity is universally acknowledged to be an important part of healthy functioning and well-being, the full scope of its value is rarely appreciated. This article introduces a novel framework for understanding the relationships between physical activity (and specifically sport-related forms of physical activity) and different aspects of human development. It proposes that the outcomes of physical activity can be framed as differential ‘capitals’ that represent investments in domain-specific assets: Emotional, Financial, Individual, Intellectual, Physical, and Social. These investments, especially when made early in the life course, can yield significant rewards, both at that time and for years to come. The paper presents a new model—the Human Capital Model—that makes sense of these effects, outlines the different capitals, and briefly articulates the conditions necessary for the realization of Human Capital growth through physical activity.

This article uses a purposive sample of 43 Secondary school (pupils aged 11-18) teachers to explore perceptions of including children with Special Educational Needs and/or disabilities in mainstream secondary Physical Education. Findings suggest that teachers’ conceptions of inclusion are based primarily around the level of participation children with Special Educational Needs and/or disabilities could achieve and that this could be affected by the activity area, level of support and training opportunities avail able to them. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of this research for teachers’ professional development and school organization and specific implications for the future practice of PE teachers and Teacher trainers are suggested.

During debugging, a developer must repeatedly and manually reproduce faulty behavior in order to inspect different facets of the program's execution. Existing tools for reproducing such behaviors prevent the use of debugging aids such as breakpoints and logging, and are not designed for interactive, random-access exploration of recorded behavior. This paper presents Timelapse, a tool for quickly recording, reproducing, and debugging interactive behaviors in web applications. Developers can use Timelapse to browse, visualize, and seek within recorded program executions while simultaneously using familiar debugging tools such as breakpoints and logging. Testers and end-users can use Timelapse to demonstrate failures in situ and share recorded behaviors with developers, improving bug report quality by obviating the need for detailed reproduction steps. Timelapse is built on Dolos, a novel record/replay infrastructure that ensures deterministic execution by capturing and reusing program inputs both from the user and from external sources such as the network. Dolos introduces negligible overhead and does not interfere with breakpoints and logging. In a small user evaluation, participants used Timelapse to accelerate existing reproduction activities, but were not significantly faster or more successful in completing the larger tasks at hand. Together, the Dolos infrastructure and Timelapse developer tool support systematic bug reporting and debugging practices.