Physical Education Curriculum Interventions: A Review of Research Patterns and Intervention Efficacy

The purposes of this literature review were (a) to describe the patterns of the existing research on physical education (PE) curriculum interventions, and (b) to determine the efficacy of these interventions. We followed a pre-established literature review protocol to search, identify, screen, and analyze the scholarship related to PE curriculum interventions. The year range of the review was between 1995 and October, 2021. This process yielded 48 articles that met the inclusion criteria, which were synthesized to address the research purposes. We calculated Cohen's d to quantify the intervention effect sizes on several commonly studied outcomes including physical activity (PA), body composition, physical fitness, motor skill competence, knowledge and cognition, and well-being and social competence. The review revealed an increasing trend for research on PE curriculum interventions between 2009 and 2021 (n = 36) compared to the decade before (n = 12). A majority of these PE interventions involved a control group (n = 41); were conducted in North America (n = 23) and Europe (n = 15); and most were published in health (n = 19) and kinesiology journals (n = 18). The intervention effects on all outcomes combined were small to medium (d = 0.24). Effect sizes for the individual outcome variables of interest were reported separately. The findings with regard to the patterns and intervention efficacy may be useful to guide the design, execution, and evaluation of future PE curriculum interventions.