Out-of-School Sports Participation Is Positively Associated with Physical Literacy, but What about Physical Education? A Cross-Sectional Gender-Stratified Analysis during the COVID-19 Pandemic among High-School Adolescents

Sunda, Mirela; Gilic, Barbara; Sekulic, Damir; Matic, Radenko; Drid, Patrik; Alexe, Dan Iulian; Cucui, Gheorghe Gabriel; Lupu, Gabriel Stanica

doi:10.3390/children9050753

Open AccessArticle

Out-of-School Sports Participation Is Positively Associated with Physical Literacy, but What about Physical Education? A Cross-Sectional Gender-Stratified Analysis during the COVID-19 Pandemic among High-School Adolescents

by

Mirela Sunda

¹

,

Barbara Gilic

^1,2

,

Damir Sekulic

²

,

Radenko Matic

³

,

Patrik Drid

³

,

Dan Iulian Alexe

^4,*

,

Gheorghe Gabriel Cucui

^5,*

and

Gabriel Stanica Lupu

⁴

¹

Faculty of Kinesiology, University of Zagreb, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia

²

Faculty of Kinesiology, University of Split, 21000 Split, Croatia

³

Faculty of Sport and Physical Education, University of Novi Sad, 21000 Novi Sad, Serbia

⁴

Department of Physical and Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Movement, Sports and Health, Sciences, “Vasile Alecsandri” University of Bacau, 600001 Bacau, Romania

⁵

Department of Physical Education and Sports, Faculty of Humanities, “Valahia” University of Targoviste, 130070 Targoviste, Romania

^*

Authors to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Children 2022, 9(5), 753; https://doi.org/10.3390/children9050753

Submission received: 20 April 2022 / Revised: 9 May 2022 / Accepted: 18 May 2022 / Published: 20 May 2022

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Physical Education, Physical Activity, and Health Education in Children and Adolescents)

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Abstract

Physical literacy (PL) is one of the main concepts related to lifelong physical activity (PA) and physical fitness (PF), but there is a lack of information on factors that might be associated with PL in adolescents from southeastern Europe. This study aimed to evaluate the associations between PF, participation and achievement in physical education (PE), out-of-school participation in sports, and PL in high school adolescents from Croatia. Participants were 298 high school students aged 14–18 years (191 females). Variables included school age, PE grade, sports participation, anthropometric indices, four PF tests, and PL (evidenced by CAPL-2-knowledge and understanding questionnaire (CAPL-2-KU) and PLAYself questionnaire). Gender-stratified analyses of differences were conducted using the t-test for independent samples or the Mann-Whitney test. Associations between variables were calculated with Pearson’s product moment correlation or Spearman’s rank order correlation. PF was positively correlated CAPL-2-KU in both genders. PE grade was significantly associated with PLAYself score (Pearson’s correlation = 0.36 and 0.38, p < 0.001 for boys and girls, respectively) but not with the CAPL-2-KU score. School age was not correlated with PL among boys, but there was a significant but negligible correlation between CAPL-2-KU and school age in girls (<2% of the common variance). Adolescents involved in sports had better PL and PF compared with adolescents not involved in sports. In conclusion, participation in out-of-school sports offers a good base for developing PL. Although this study took part over the COVID-19 pandemic period when the regular PE curriculum was significantly altered, the poor associations between school age and PL could lead to the assumption that the current PE curriculum does not allow for improvement of PL in later high school age, which warrants further investigation.

Keywords: puberty; cognitive domain; affective domain; fitness status

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MDPI and ACS Style

Sunda, M.; Gilic, B.; Sekulic, D.; Matic, R.; Drid, P.; Alexe, D.I.; Cucui, G.G.; Lupu, G.S. Out-of-School Sports Participation Is Positively Associated with Physical Literacy, but What about Physical Education? A Cross-Sectional Gender-Stratified Analysis during the COVID-19 Pandemic among High-School Adolescents. Children 2022, 9, 753. https://doi.org/10.3390/children9050753

AMA Style

Sunda M, Gilic B, Sekulic D, Matic R, Drid P, Alexe DI, Cucui GG, Lupu GS. Out-of-School Sports Participation Is Positively Associated with Physical Literacy, but What about Physical Education? A Cross-Sectional Gender-Stratified Analysis during the COVID-19 Pandemic among High-School Adolescents. Children. 2022; 9(5):753. https://doi.org/10.3390/children9050753

Chicago/Turabian Style

Sunda, Mirela, Barbara Gilic, Damir Sekulic, Radenko Matic, Patrik Drid, Dan Iulian Alexe, Gheorghe Gabriel Cucui, and Gabriel Stanica Lupu. 2022. "Out-of-School Sports Participation Is Positively Associated with Physical Literacy, but What about Physical Education? A Cross-Sectional Gender-Stratified Analysis during the COVID-19 Pandemic among High-School Adolescents" Children 9, no. 5: 753. https://doi.org/10.3390/children9050753

APA Style

Sunda, M., Gilic, B., Sekulic, D., Matic, R., Drid, P., Alexe, D. I., Cucui, G. G., & Lupu, G. S. (2022). Out-of-School Sports Participation Is Positively Associated with Physical Literacy, but What about Physical Education? A Cross-Sectional Gender-Stratified Analysis during the COVID-19 Pandemic among High-School Adolescents. Children, 9(5), 753. https://doi.org/10.3390/children9050753

Note that from the first issue of 2016, this journal uses article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.

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Out-of-School Sports Participation Is Positively Associated with Physical Literacy, but What about Physical Education? A Cross-Sectional Gender-Stratified Analysis during the COVID-19 Pandemic among High-School Adolescents

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