Sport Education: physical education for the new millennium?

The purpose of this review was to establish what is currently known about the effect of the Sport Education (SE) curriculum model (Siedentop, 1994a) on various indices of student learning in physical education. A total of 62 peer-reviewed journal articles pertaining to the SE model were collected and separated into two broad categories of theoretical/application articles (n = 34) and data-based empirical studies (n = 28). This review of the 28 empirical SE studies highlights the effectiveness of the model in facilitating student engagement within student-centered learning tasks of the curriculum. Evidence suggests that SE, with its emphasis on persistent team membership, promotes personal and social development in the form of student responsibility, cooperation and trust skills. Student leadership within the model has been identified as potentially problematic for effective content development and the promotion of equitable participation. Further research is required to examine the dynamics of peer interaction and subsequent content learning and performance that occurs during student-led tasks of the curriculum. Contemporary theorization on the model proposes that SE has the potential to promote more positive cultural dimensions of sport and physical activity and offer a challenge to the exclusionary discourses of much of institutionalized sport. Further empirical evidence is required to validate this claim.