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A growing body of literature suggests that excessive sedentary time may have deleterious health consequences, particularly among inactive individuals. Given that older adults are the least physically active and most sedentary of any demographic group, research on active, healthy aging must consider both the cause and the consequences of prolonged time spent sitting. Current evidence suggests that reducing sedentary time may be beneficial to older adults and allow them to better maintain their functional capacity and autonomy, but more research is needed to enable the development of evidence-based behavioral goals that will improve health outcomes. There is also a need to consider sedentary behavior from an organizational and societal perspective that moves beyond workplace and school settings to be inclusive of older adults, the fastest growing population in the world.

Occupational socialization theory (OST) has framed research on physical education (PE) teacher recruitment, professional preparation, and ongoing socialization in schools for nearly 40 yr. Using scoping-review methods, the authors sought to understand the current scope of published research on PE-teacher socialization using OST by descriptively and thematically reviewing 111 identified studies published in English-language journals between 1979 and 2015. Results indicate a predominance of qualitative, cross-sectional research related to PE-teacher socialization, most of which was conducted by a relatively small group of scholars. Themes derived from the analysis of study findings communicate the complexity of teacher socialization experiences and are used to develop recommendations for future research and practice that work toward helping improve teachers’ lived experiences while creating better contexts in which students can learn. The paper concludes with a discussion of extending OST research to understand the recruitment, professional education, and socialization of kinesiology faculty members and professionals across subdisciplines.

Step counting is now a widespread and acceptable approach to self-monitoring physical activity courtesy of the recent surge in wearable technologies. Nonetheless, there remains no recommendation for steps/day in federal physical activity guidelines. The authors review current scientific literature to consider evidence regarding the volume, dose (frequency, intensity, duration, timing), and dose-response relationships for step-based metrics, including steps/day (volume), cadence (steps/min; intensity), peak 30-min cadence (steps/min; composite index of frequency, intensity, and duration), and zero cadence (proxy for sedentary behavior). Preliminary evidence suggests that communicating federal physical activity guidelines using step-based metrics could facilitate individuals’ ability to comprehend and achieve a physically active lifestyle.

In recent years, there has been tremendous growth in the use of wearable activity trackers in biomedical research. Activity trackers are also becoming more popular with consumers, who are able to share their data with researchers and practitioners. Steps per day is a useful variable that is estimated from most wearable activity trackers. It has intuitive meaning, is strongly associated with health variables, and has the potential to be standardized across devices. Activity trackers and other wearable medical devices could provide new information on health-related behaviors and their interaction with genetic and environmental variables. If integrated into medical practice, wearable technologies could help motivate patients to change their health behaviors and might eventually be used to diagnose medical conditions. The convergence of wearable medical devices, computer applications, smart phones, and electronic medical records could influence the practice of lifestyle medicine.