What Do We Know About the Development of Personal and Social Skills within the Sport Education Model: A Systematic Review.

The purpose of the present study was to conduct a review of the research on the Sport Education (SE) studies that have examined the development of students' personal and social skills. Research articles selected were found through Web of Science, SCOPUS, Academic Search Complete, ERIC, SPORTDiscus with Full Text, Education Source, PsycINFO and PsycARTICLES databases. The keywords "Sport Education" and "physical education" were used in different combinations. The articles were included for analysis if the following criteria were met: (i) were published in peer-reviewed international journals indexed in JCR (Journal Citation Reports) or SJR (Scientific Journal Rankings); (ii) were available in full-text; (iii) examined personal and social variables included or measured as main outcomes within the SE model. The quality of the selected studies was scored using a quality assessment list. Fifty-one studies were included. Results showed that, considering the development of social and personal competencies, the majority of SE research took place in Spain and USA in a co-educational PE context (high school). Enjoyment/satisfaction, enthusiasm and engagement were the predominant outcome measures, using a non-experimental design and multiple qualitative tools in more than half of the studies. Few studies established the fidelity of the model implementation. There is a need for future research to consider other samples, contexts, cultures and types of sports seeking to reinforce the positive impact of SE on the personal and social competencies. Longer units with a good planning, mixed and quantitative methodological designs and the report of the model fidelity would be also particularly important for future investigations.