The COVID-19 pandemic has altered the educational landscape worldwide. One year after the disease outbreak, blended learning, which combines distance and face-to-face learning, became an alternative to fully online learning to address the demands of ensuring students’ health and education. Physical education teachers faced an additional challenge, given the experiential nature of their subject, but research on teachers’ perspectives is scarce. This study aims to explore high school physical education teachers’ perceptions of the potential, advantages, and disadvantages of the blended learning model of instruction. An online survey was used to register the views of 174 Spanish high school physical education teachers (120 men and 54 women). The main findings revealed that physical education teachers considered that blended learning, compared with full face-to-face learning, implied a work overload, worsened social relationships, and did not help to increase students’ motivation. Likewise, most teachers considered the physical activity performed by students during the blended learning period as being lower than usual. Furthermore, teachers reported that the students from lower-income families were the ones that experienced a lack of technological means the most. These results may guide both present and future policies and procedures for blended physical education. More research is needed to analyze the usefulness of blended learning in high school physical education.

Smartphone applications (apps) are thought to be an adequate instructional strategy not only to improve the quality of the teaching in physical education (PE), but also to effectively promote leisure-time physical activity (PA) of adolescent students in this context. Although the use of smartphone apps has been generalized in PE, little is known about the curricular approach of smartphone apps to be implemented by teacher to teach specific curricular contents in PE lessons. Therefore, the aim of this research was threefold: a) to conduct a systematic search for smartphone apps focused on PA and sport; b) to assess the features, content and quality of every included smartphone app; and c) to analyze the relationships between every selected app and the secondary PE curriculum. Systematic searches were completed on Google Play Store from January 2021 to March 2021. Apps were included when they met: main goal focused on PA and sport; permitted use by underage; they are free; user scores of at least 4. The app selection process was carried out by several reviewers and concordance measures were estimated. Additionally, an app quality assessment was independently conducted by three reviewers. A total of 18 apps focused on PA were included. Particularly, eight apps were suitable for fitness, health and quality of life curricular content; two for sports content; four for body expression content; and four apps for outdoor PA content. The mean quality score was 4.00. Apps could be helpful for teachers to implement the secondary PE curriculum and effectively promote PA among adolescent students.

Physical fitness, intelligence and academic achievement are being studied from a multidisciplinary perspective. In this line, studies to advance our understanding of intelligence and academic achievement could be relevant for designing school-based programs. Our study analyzed the relationship between components of physical fitness including cardiorespiratory fitness, muscular strength and flexibility and general intelligence and academic achievement in adolescents. We recruited 403 adolescents (53.6% boys) with a mean age of 13.7 ± 1.2 years from a secondary school in Spain with a medium socioeconomic status, during the 2015/2016 school year. Cardiorespiratory fitness was assessed by the 20-m shuttle run, muscular strength with the standing long jump test and flexibility with the sit-and-reach test. General intelligence was measured by both the D48 and the Raven tests. School grades were used to determine academic achievement. Linear regression analyses showed that cardiorespiratory fitness was positively associated with intelligence in both the D48 (all β ≥ 0.184, p ≤ 0.016) and the Raven tests (all β ≥ 0.183, p ≤ 0.024). Muscular strength, flexibility and overall fitness were not associated with intelligence (all β ≤ 0.122, p ≥ 0.139). Cardiorespiratory fitness, muscular strength and flexibility were positively associated with academic achievement (all β ≥ 0.089, p ≤ 0.038), except muscular strength, which was not significantly associated with Spanish language or mathematics, (all β ≤ 0.050, p ≥ 0.200). Overall, cardiorespiratory fitness was positively associated with intelligence and academic achievement.

La etapa de Educación Infantil está directamente relacionada con el desarrollo personal y es crucial en el proceso de crecimiento personal. Las experiencias de aprendizaje no pueden ser desgajadas en áreas diferenciadas de desarrollo cognitivo, social, emocional y físico, sino que se encuentran integradas y son dependientes. Este equilibrio se puede lograr a través del juego creativo e interactivo, que soporta y proporciona andamiaje a todas las áreas de desarrollo y de contenido curricular. Desde esta perspectiva, el presente trabajo realiza una puesta en común entre legislación y conocimiento científico en relación al juego y la actividad física en Educación Infantil finalizando con una propuesta de aplicación práctica. Los objetivos de la investigación son: (I) Revisar el conocimiento científico y legislación en relación a la utilización metodológica del juego en educación infantil, (II) revisar el conocimiento científico y legislación en relación a la actividad física en Educación Infantil y (III) realizar una propuesta de aplicación práctica. Se concluye que el juego y actividad física son dos variables fundamentales para lograr una metodología globalizadora, significativa y motivante que aporte calidad al proceso formativo del alumnado en la etapa de educación infantil que puede complementarse con la utilización de recursos digitales y tecnológicos para el aprendizaje. A su vez, se presentan unas líneas generales de intervención, por áreas y bloques de contenidos, al objeto de mejorar la calidad del proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje. The stage of Early Childhood Education is directly related to personal development and is crucial in the process of personal growth. Learning experiences cannot be split into differentiated areas of cognitive, social, emotional and physical development, however they are integrated and dependent. This balance can be achieved by means of creative and interactive play, which supports and provides scaffolding to all areas of curriculum development and content. From this perspective, the present work brings together legislation and scientific knowledge in relation to play and physical activity in Early Childhood Education, ending with a practical application proposal. The research objectives are: (I) Review scientific knowledge and legislation regarding the methodological use of play in early childhood education; (II) Reviewing scientific knowledge and legislation in relation to physical activity in early childhood education; and (III) Making a practical implementation proposal. It is concluded that play and physical activity are two fundamental variables to achieve a globalizing, meaningful and motivating methodology which provides quality to the students’ formative process in childhood education stage which can be complemented with the use of digital and learning technological resources. At the same time, general lines of intervention are provided, in areas and blocks of contents, in order to improve the quality of the teaching-learning process.

The purposes of this study were to examine how fitness at the baseline could predict both academic achievement and academic achievement changes one school year in advance. A total of 194 adolescents (mean age: 14.15 ± 0.97 years old, 112 boys) who attended secondary school participated in our study. Cardiorespiratory fitness was measured with the 20 m endurance shuttle-run test. We also assessed the lower-limbs muscular strength with the standing long jump test and flexibility with the sit-and-reach test. The academic achievement was assessed by school grades. We performed linear regression analyses. Additionally, we examined the relationship between fitness and changes in the academic performance following the same statistical methodology. Cardiorespiratory fitness was positively associated with mathematics one school year in advance (p = 0.025). Cardiorespiratory fitness was also positively associated with changes in Spanish language (p = 0.005), mathematics (p = 0.023), and the grade point average (p = 0.006). Muscular strength was also positively associated with changes in Spanish language (p = 0.040) and mathematics (p = 0.010), while flexibility was associated with changes in Spanish language (p = 0.039) and the grade point average (0.027). Our results suggest that cardiorespiratory fitness was positively associated with academic achievement in adolescents.

Mobile applications are integrated into students’ lives and, therefore, their use for educational purposes can become a resource to improve the learning-teaching process. Simultaneously, the use of applications can help increase the level of motivation in the integration of physical activity into their day-to-day life and extracurricular time. The objective of the didactic experience was to analyze the effect of the use of the Endomondo application in Physical Education subject. In the didactic experience, with a quasiexperimental design without pretest, 138 students in the third and fourth years of Compulsory Secondary Education (64 girls and 74 boys; 15.4±0.5 years) agreed to participate voluntarily in this research. It was implemented in a secondary high school in the southern of Spain, with a medium socio-culture index and integrated into the curriculum of the subject of Physical Education. The students carried out collective challenges by group-class as well as individually. The results showed that a majority of the students participated (81.7%), with family involvement, in addition to the generic achievement of the collective (83.3%) and individual challenges (84.4%). The use of new technologies can be an educational resource that helps increase the amount of time adolescents dedicate to physical activity.