Teaching and Assessment of physical fitness in Secondary Education: A proposal based on the Sport Education Model

Innovation in Physical Education (PE) implies to search different ways to improve the quality of the educational process. The Sport Education Model (SEM) is a pedagogical approach that allows students to get involve in sport learnings at the same time that they participate autonomously in cooperative teams. Despite of the multiple contents that have been taught in PE through the characteristics of the SEM, to date there is no experiences that have applied this model in the teaching and the assessment of physical fitness. Therefore, this work presents an action research experience that involved 67 students from first grade of Secondary Education (36 males and 31 females) with a mean age of 12.46 years old (SD = 0.66) concerning the adaptation and implementation of the MED in the teaching of test to assess physical fitness in Secondary Education Students (11-16 years). In order to evaluate its application, a qualitative design was used. Interviews, a field diary and students' perceptions were analyzed. It was observed that students were physically active most of the time, they performed all the test and assessed positively their involvement in the cooperative teams. Therefore, it is suggested that some features of the SEM (e.g., cooperative teams, duty roles, organization in phases, data collection) can be an adequate to teach this content and that it could contribute to develop some key competences.