The Complexities of Staying Active Beyond the School Setting and Session - New Horizons

Murray, A., Cowley, J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8009-6900, Murray, Pamela ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8009-6900, Howells, K. and Johnston, B. (2026) The Complexities of Staying Active Beyond the School Setting and Session - New Horizons. In: Harmonizing Voices: Building Cultures of Belonging and Excellence, 6 - 9 January 2026, Nashville Tennessee. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

Child obesity, acknowledged as a stigmatic term and complex construct, remains of public concern globally (Zhang et al., 2024). In New Mexico, health disparities in children are marked despite the early childhood programmes in place to redress wellbeing deficits. Its children have higher indices of obesity than across other states (U.S. Census Bureau, 2023). Obesity prevalence is higher in American Indian students than Hispanic, White, Asian, and African American peers (NMDOH, 2025). Just under a quarter of children have been reported to live in families below the federal poverty level in New Mexico (New Mexico Children’s Cabinet, 2022). A further national report saw improvements and declines across wellbeing indices in New Mexico's children (SNM, 2026-https://sourcenm.com/2025/06/09/national-report-again-ranks-new-mexico-last-in-child-well-being/) with child and teen deaths increasing beyond the national average.

Critical thinking, despite its being a concept without a firm consensus (Rivas, Saiz and Ossa, 2022; 2) has long since been acknowledged as an integral part of and requisite for physical education (Ennis, 1991; McBride, 1991). Critical thinking is one tacit means to build awareness and pragmatic competences through a justice orientation (Culver et al., 2022). One means to improve critical thinking is to facilitate and promote metacognition. The enquiry examines critical thinking, understanding, and physical skills and competencies needed to plan and participate in self-selected physical activities, where equitable provision, established in the school setting, would likely differ when beyond this. The participants (N=90; 4 classes) experienced their physical education lessons set through either direction instruction (Englemann et al., 1988) or metacognitive instruction (Brown, 1987) across one semester. These approaches were pedagogically contextualised through a models based practice approach using direct instruction (Rosenshine, 1983) and metacognitive instruction (Murray & Napper-Owen, 2021). Knowledge, and contextual transference of this from school to home settings, alongside metacognitive awareness, were significantly superior in the latter. Developmentally appropriate health and fitness indices improved significantly across both groups. Implications support the incorporation of critical thinking into pedagogical practice as part of a holistic approach to executive functioning across teacher education and also in support of families and their communities.

Whilst many welcome interventions are aimed at addressing discrepancies in the wellbeing picture, this intervention explored school influenced mediums of wellbeing and activity pathways to move beyond the school gate into home and community settings. Therein established pathways of knowing, doing and transferring (such as from class settings and physical activity sessions) were tapped into, acting as cognitive heuristics familiar to all involved to facilitate the transfer from school to beyond the school gate to encourage activities for wellbeing enhancement in the home context. Enabling processes such as :- 'executive function' to make best of children's brain management systems informing them of what to do, why and how to complement the physicality of activity participation, learn about self-regulation of thoughts, emotions and actions; and ‘agentic wellbeing’, pertaining to an individual’s sense of influence, self-control and engagement in their (own) management of their respective lives and health, were fundamental pillars of the work undertaken with the participants and through their active, explicit activity choices, reflections and follow-ups.

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