Health‐related Fitness in Secondary School Physical Education: a descriptive‐analytic study

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Abstract
The purpose of this study was to observe secondary school physical education lessons on a variety of activities and determine (a) the percentage of lesson time pupils were engaged in moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA), (b) the percentage of lesson time allocated by teachers for pupils to engage in fitness activity or acquire health‐related fitness knowledge, and (c) the percentage of time teachers used behaviour likely to encourage pupils to participate in health promoting physical activity. Subjects were 20 physical education teachers working in one town in south‐west England. Two lessons of each teacher's choice in which they taught any activity to Years 7, 8, or 9 were videotaped. Lessons were coded with SOFIT, an observational instrument developed to quantify factors thought to promote health‐related fitness in physical education. Data generated by SOFIT were entered into a SAS programme to produce descriptive statistics. Results indicated that pupils spent little time in MVPA likely to promote health benefits, that teachers allocated no time for pupils to engage in fitness activities or receive fitness knowledge, and that teachers spent no time directly promoting or demonstrating fitness.