A narrative systematic review was conducted to describe the available evidence from physical activity (PA) interventions that targeted girls aged 5–18 years and to determine their effectiveness and key characteristics of success. Systematic literature searches were conducted using four databases: PubMed, Web of Science, PsychInfo and SPORTDiscus and by examining the reference lists of included articles and published relevant reviews, to identify studies published in English from 2000 to July 2010. Randomized controlled trials or quasi-experimental designs with pre-test and post-test behavioral outcome data (objective or self-report measure) were included. Methodological quality was assessed using a checklist and conclusions were made concerning effectiveness. A total of 29 articles were reviewed, describing the evaluation of 21 interventions. Ten studies reported a favorable intervention effect upon PA outcomes, seven of which were rated as having a high methodological quality. Multi-component school-based interventions that also offer a physical education that address the unique needs of girls seemed to be the most effective. Although family support is revealed as ineffective, peer strategies showed promising evidence. The review finishes highlighting possible intervention strategies and reporting areas where further investigation is required.

For years, universities worldwide have offered English-medium degrees as a way to attract international students and staff, enhance their institutional profile and promote multilingualism. In Europe and the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), English-medium instruction (EMI) is more recent, but the dimension and speed of its implementation has outpaced language policies, methodological considerations and empirical research. In view of this, this paper focuses on an empirical study examining the effect that the teaching of a Business Administration degree in English as a foreign language may have on Spanish students’ academic performance (as measured through coursework and final grades), when compared to their counterparts’ learning in Spanish. Students’ grades are analysed in three different disciplinary subjects and treated statistically. Findings show that both cohorts obtain similar results, suggesting that the language of instruction does not seem to compromise students’ learning of academic content. Differences, however, are found regarding learners’ performance in the three disciplinary subjects under scrutiny, with history yielding slightly higher results than accounting and finance. This finding runs counter to the general belief that the more verbal subjects, like history, would have a ‘limiting’ effect on EMI students’ final performance and, moreover, raises questions concerning disciplinary differences and assessment.

Social media can become a site of public pedagogy (Rich, E., & Miah, A. (2014). Understanding digital health as public pedagogy: A critical framework. Societies, 4(2), 296–315. doi:10.3390/soc4020296) through which young people learn about health and fitness. Photo and video-sharing social networks are emerging as sites of media practices through which images of the perfect fit body circulate, popularly known as ‘fitspiration’ media. Our research examines how girls and young women negotiate contemporary discourses around body, health and fitness circulating through Instagram and the subjectivities such technology enables. We draw on participatory and collaborative research with young women from three Spanish Secondary schools who each engaged with exercise-related content on Instagram and who self-defined as physically active. Focus groups and semi-structured interviews explored participants’ uses, meanings and influences of this digital content over their embodiment and subjectivities. Through the concept of ‘postfeminist biopedagogy’, we articulate the learning processes that girls experience as they engage with media about ‘fit’ female bodies on Instagram. This involves a series of pedagogical micro practices through which girls learn about the health and fitness subject and which bring together a postfeminist sensibility (Gill, R. (2007). Postfeminist media culture: Elements of a sensibility. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 10(2), 147–166. doi:10.1177/1367549407075898), neoliberal notions of the self and discourses of health consumption. A postfeminist biopedagogy (Wright, J. (2009). Biopower, biopedagogies and the obesity epidemic. In J. Wright, & V. Harwood (Eds.), Biopolitics and the ‘obesity epidemic’: Governing bodies (pp. 1–14). New York, NY: Routledge) instructs and regulates girls’ bodies and health subjectivities through a language of choice, empowerment and health although, at the same time, framing exercise as disciplined work to achieve the normative body. Although participants criticized such representation of the perfect body, they considered these normative pressures as necessary to ‘successful’ identities in postfeminist times. Our analysis reveals how some young women learn about exercise as ‘aesthetic labour’ through the biopedagogies circulating on Instagram, with continual work upon the body associated with performing subjectivities which are confident, happy and powerful. We conclude by exploring the implications of our findings for Physical and Health Education and young women’s wellbeing.