Financial barriers often restrict sport participation among children from low-income families. Schools are thought to offer equitable access to programming, including school sport participation. However, pay-to-play school sport models can inhibit participation among students from low-income households. Recognizing the potential benefits of school sport and realizing the financial barriers to participation, the purpose of this study was to understand the extent to which school sport promotes educational experiences and holistic well-being of Canadian youth from low-income families. A case study was conducted with stakeholders who were supported by funding from a non-profit organization to help cover the costs of school sport registration fees. Data were collected from in-depth interviews with low-income students and their parents, teacher-coaches and school administrators. Three overarching themes were representative of the experiences of school sport participation among low-income students: (1) healthy student-athletes, (2) developing student-athletes in school, for life, and (3) supporting student-athletes as a community. The participants perceived that school sport participation offered holistic health benefits, and developed skills and behaviours that support positive educational experiences and foster life skills. Further, our results highlighted the importance of the school community in supporting low-income students to participate in school sport teams and the need to reframe school sport to better support low-income families.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused drastic changes in education, which had to adapt to changing scenarios (online, face-to-face, hybrid teaching). Within physical education (PE), strategies such as 'do not use or share equipment' were proposed to avoid infections. These strategies fit with an emerging pedagogical model called the Self-made Material Model (SMM), which involves students creating their own PE equipment. The objectives of the present study were: (a) to analyse PE teachers' beliefs about the use of self-made material in their classes, (b) to evaluate teachers' perceptions of the impact of the use of self-made material in PE lessons during the pandemic and (c) to examine gender/age differences. A quantitative, snowball research design was followed. The Self-made Material Questionnaire ( Méndez-Giménez and Fernández-Río, 2011) comprising two scales (41 items) was adapted: Teachers' beliefs about the use of self-made material scale and Teachers' perceptions of the impact of self-made material usage during the pandemic scale. In total, 1093 in-service teachers (443 women, 40.5%; M = 41.39, SD = 9.54) from 13 Ibero-American countries participated. Descriptive statistics were calculated, Student's T test was conducted for comparisons by gender and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was run for comparisons by age ranges. Overall, the scores were high, emphasising the potential to promote recycling and students' creativity and respect for the material. Women scored higher in items such as promoting interdisciplinarity, equality, attention to disability and education in values. In total, 833 (76.21%) teachers used self-made material during the pandemic and reported high levels of satisfaction, expectations of use, usefulness and profitability. No gender differences were found. In the COVID-19 era, the SMM is playing a relevant role as a meaningful framework and a helpful teaching methodology in different educational scenarios.