4Physical Activity, Fitness, and Physical Education: Effects on Academic Performance

Key Messages

 Evidence suggests that increasing physical activity and physical fitness may improve
academic performance and that time in the school day dedicated to recess, physical
education class, and physical activity in the classroom may also facilitate academic
performance.

 Available evidence suggests that mathematics and reading are the academic topics that are
most influenced by physical activity. These topics depend on efficient and effective executive
function, which has been linked to physical activity and physical fitness.

 Executive function and brain health underlie academic performance. Basic cognitive
functions related to attention and memory facilitate learning, and these functions are
enhanced by physical activity and higher aerobic fitness.

 Single sessions of and long-term participation in physical activity improve cognitive

 Given the importance of time on task to learning, students should be provided with frequent
physical activity breaks that are developmentally appropriate.

 Although presently understudied, physically active lessons offered in the classroom may
increase time on task and attention to task in the classroom setting.

Although academic performance stems from a complex interaction between intellect and contextual
variables, health is a vital moderating factor in a child's ability to learn. The idea that healthy children
learn better is empirically supported and well accepted (Basch, 2010), and multiple studies have
confirmed that health benefits are associated with physical activity, including cardiovascular and
muscular fitness, bone health, psychosocial outcomes, and cognitive and brain health (Strong et al.,
2005; see Chapter 3). The relationship of physical activity and physical fitness to cognitive and brain
health and to academic performance is the subject of this chapter.

Given that the brain is responsible for both mental processes and physical actions of the human
body, brain health is important across the life span. In adults, brain health, representing absence of
disease and optimal structure and function, is measured in terms of quality of life and effective
functioning in activities of daily living. In children, brain health can be measured in terms of
successful development of attention, on-task behavior, memory, and academic performance in an
educational setting. This chapter reviews the findings of recent research regarding the contribution
of engagement in physical activity and the attainment of a health-enhancing level of physical fitness
to cognitive and brain health in children. Correlational research examining the relationship among
academic performance, physical fitness, and physical activity also is described. Because research in
older adults has served as a model for understanding the effects of physical activity and fitness on
the developing brain during childhood, the adult research is briefly discussed. The short- and long-
term cognitive benefits of both a single session of and regular participation in physical activity are
summarized.

Before outlining the health benefits of physical activity and fitness, it is important to note that many
factors influence academic performance. Among these are socioeconomic status (Sirin, 2005),
parental involvement (Fan and Chen, 2001), and a host of other demographic factors. A valuable
predictor of student academic performance is a parent having clear expectations for the child's
academic success. Attendance is another factor confirmed as having a significant impact on academic
performance (Stanca, 2006; Baxter et al., 2011). Because children must be present to learn the
desired content, attendance should be measured in considering factors related to academic
performance.

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PHYSICAL FITNESS AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY: RELATION TO ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE

State-mandated academic achievement testing has had the unintended consequence of reducing
opportunities for children to be physically active during the school day and beyond. In addition to a
general shifting of time in school away from physical education to allow for more time on academic
subjects, some children are withheld from physical education classes or recess to participate in
remedial or enriched learning experiences designed to increase academic performance (Pellegrini
and Bohn, 2005; see Chapter 5). Yet little evidence supports the notion that more time allocated to
subject matter will translate into better test scores. Indeed, 11 of 14 correlational studies of physical
activity during the school day demonstrate a positive relationship to academic performance
(Rasberry et al., 2011). Overall, a rapidly growing body of work suggests that time spent engaged in
physical activity is related not only to a healthier body but also to a healthier mind (Hillman et al.,
2008).

Children respond faster and with greater accuracy to a variety of cognitive tasks after participating in
a session of physical activity (Tomporowski, 2003; Budde et al., 2008; Hillman et al., 2009; Pesce et
al., 2009; Ellemberg and St-Louis-Deschênes, 2010). A single bout of moderate-intensity physical
activity has been found to increase neural and behavioral concomitants associated with the
allocation of attention to a specific cognitive task (Hillman et al., 2009; Pontifex et al., 2012). And
when children who participated in 30 minutes of aerobic physical activity were compared with
children who watched television for the same amount of time, the former children cognitively
outperformed the latter (Ellemberg and St-Louis-Desêhenes, 2010). Visual task switching data among
69 overweight and inactive children did not show differences between cognitive performance after
treadmill walking and sitting (Tomporowski et al., 2008b).

When physical activity is used as a break from academic learning time, postengagement effects
include better attention (Grieco et al., 2009; Bartholomew and Jowers, 2011), increased on-task
behaviors (Mahar et al., 2006), and improved academic performance (Donnelly and Lambourne,
2011). Comparisons between 1st-grade students housed in a classroom with stand-sit desks where
the child could stand at his/her discretion and in classrooms containing traditional furniture showed
that the former children were highly likely to stand, thus expending significantly more energy than
those who were seated (Benden et al., 2011). More important, teachers can offer physical activity
breaks as part of a supplemental curriculum or simply as a way to reset student attention during a
lesson (Kibbe et al., 2011; see Chapter 6) and when provided with minimal training can efficaciously
produce vigorous or moderate energy expenditure in students (Stewart et al., 2004). Further, after-
school physical activity programs have demonstrated the ability to improve cardiovascular
endurance, and this increase in aerobic fitness has been shown to mediate improvements in
academic performance (Fredericks et al., 2006), as well as the allocation of neural resources
underlying performance on a working memory task (Kamijo et al., 2011).

Over the past three decades, several reviews and meta-analyses have described the relationship
among physical fitness, physical activity, and cognition (broadly defined as all mental processes). The
majority of these reviews have focused on the relationship between academic performance and
physical fitness—a physiological trait commonly defined in terms of cardiorespiratory capacity (e.g.,
maximal oxygen consumption; see Chapter 3). More recently, reviews have attempted to describe
the effects of an acute or single bout of physical activity, as a behavior, on academic performance.
These reviews have focused on brain health in older adults (Colcombe and Kramer, 2003), as well as
the effects of acute physical activity on cognition in adults (Tomporowski, 2003). Some have
considered age as part of the analysis (Etnier et al., 1997, 2006). Reviews focusing on research
conducted in children (Sibley and Etnier, 2003) have examined the relationship among physical
activity, participation in sports, and academic performance (Trudeau and Shephard,
2008, 2010; Singh et al., 2012); physical activity and mental and cognitive health (Biddle and Asare,
2011); and physical activity, nutrition, and academic performance (Burkhalter and Hillman, 2011).
The findings of most of these reviews align with the conclusions presented in a meta-analytic review
conducted by Fedewa and Ahn (2011). The studies reviewed by Fedewa and Ahn include
experimental/quasi-experimental as well as cross-sectional and correlational designs, with the
experimental designs yielding the highest effect sizes. The strongest relationships were found
between aerobic fitness and achievement in mathematics, followed by IQ and reading performance.
The range of cognitive performance measures, participant characteristics, and types of research
design all mediated the relationship among physical activity, fitness, and academic performance.
With regard to physical activity interventions, which were carried out both within and beyond the
school day, those involving small groups of peers (around 10 youth of a similar age) were associated
with the greatest gains in academic performance.

The number of peer-reviewed publications on this topic is growing exponentially. Further evidence of
the growth of this line of inquiry is its increased global presence. Positive relationships among
physical activity, physical fitness, and academic performance have been found among students from
the Netherlands (Singh et al., 2012) and Taiwan (Chih and Chen, 2011). Broadly speaking, however,
many of these studies show small to moderate effects and suffer from poor research designs (Biddle
and Asare, 2011; Singh et al., 2012).

Basch (2010) conducted a comprehensive review of how children's health and health disparities
influence academic performance and learning. The author's report draws on empirical evidence
suggesting that education reform will be ineffective unless children's health is made a priority. Basch
concludes that schools may be the only place where health inequities can be addressed and that, if
children's basic health needs are not met, they will struggle to learn regardless of the effectiveness of
the instructional materials used. More recently, Efrat (2011) conducted a review of physical activity,
fitness, and academic performance to examine the achievement gap. He discovered that only seven
studies had included socioeconomic status as a variable, despite its known relationship to education
(Sirin, 2005).