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Physical activity programs in school and community settings have the potential to foster positive youth development related to social and emotional learning. However, research findings and best practices that promote these outcomes are often not implemented in practice. The field of implementation science can help researchers understand and navigate the barriers to implementing what we know from research into policy and practice (i.e., to bridge the know-do gap). In this paper, after describing positive youth development, social emotional learning, and their application in physical activity settings, I share reflections from my engaged scholarship with the teaching personal and social responsibility model to illustrate ways my collaborators and I have tried to address the know-do gap. Lessons learned about ways that kinesiology researchers can actively support the implementation of our research in society are discussed.

Older adults with mild balance dysfunction can benefit from early intervention. This research explored the experiences of older adults with mild balance dysfunction participating in an 18-week supervised outdoors Seniors Exercise Park program and 6 weeks of unsupervised independent practice. Factors influencing attendance and independent practice were also explored. Semistructured face-to-face interviews were conducted with 24 participants (mean age = 77.4 years, SD = 5.4) and 22 participants (mean age = 77.5 years, SD = 5.6) after 18 and 24 weeks, respectively. The data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Many participants perceived improvements in health and responded positively to the supervised Seniors Exercise Park program. Factors supporting attendance included building social connections and positive instructor personality. Barriers to training included competing time demands and poor health. These insights suggest that a group-based Seniors Exercise Park supervised program was well accepted and can be an option to improve the health of older adults with mild balance dysfunction.

Given the multifaceted nature of physical activity behavior in children and adolescents, researchers have conducted myriad intervention studies designed to increase physical activity across many populations, study designs, contexts, and settings. This narrative review overviews the characteristics, conclusions, and research gaps/future directions indicated in prior reviews of interventions to promote physical activity in youth and identifies potential knowledge gaps. Seven databases were searched for articles published between January 2012 and September 2022. A predetermined list of characteristics of included reviews was extracted. Reviews (n = 68) concluded that interventions were generally effective. Little attention was paid to implementation, theoretical framework was only addressed in about half of reviews, and only a quarter specifically examined individuals from underrepresented groups. Family, community, and policy work are needed, and overarching reviews such as this study should occasionally occur given the high number of reviews focusing on specific populations or settings.

The health and physical activity (PA) needs of people living with disabilities are underserved and understudied. This article provides an overview of research on PA and health research in people with disabilities. Research gaps and inequities are highlighted, along with their impact on advancing the fundamental rights of people with disabilities to fully participate in PA. The importance of translational PA research to disability communities is described. We provide case studies from two lines of PA and disability research that have been moved along the translational spectrum and into practice. The article concludes with three calls to action to kinesiology research and practitioners: (a) to include people with disabilities in research; (b) to advocate for adequate resources and support in alignment with equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts; and (c) to work in meaningful partnership with people with disabilities to support translational research programs that have real-world impacts.

Autonomy-supportive teaching increases prosocial and decreases antisocial behavior. Previous research showed that these effects occur because autonomy-supportive teaching improves students’ need states (a student-level process). However, the present study investigated whether these effects also occur because autonomy-supportive teaching improves the classroom climate (a classroom-level process). Teachers from 80 physical education classrooms were randomly assigned to participate (or not) in an autonomy-supportive teaching intervention, while their 2,227 secondary-grade students reported their need satisfaction and frustration, supportive and hierarchical classroom climates, and prosocial and antisocial behaviors at the beginning, middle, and end of an academic year. A doubly latent, multilevel structural equation model showed that teacher participation in the intervention (experimental condition) increased class-wide need satisfaction, a supportive climate, and prosocial behavior and decreased class-wide need frustration, a hierarchical climate, and antisocial behavior. Together, greater collective need satisfaction and a more supportive climate combined to explain increased prosocial behavior, while lesser need frustration and a less hierarchical climate combined to explain decreased antisocial behavior. These classroom climate effects have been overlooked, yet they are essential to explain why autonomy-supportive teaching improves students’ social functioning.

Minimizing the temporal gap between behavior and reward enhances persistence, but the effect of other outcomes is unknown. Two concurrently run studies aimed to investigate whether persistence on a physical task would be influenced according to whether participants expected immediate versus delayed goal feedback. Furthermore, whether this effect occurs via intrinsic motivation (Studies 1 and 2) or delaying the desire–goal conflict (Study 2) was examined. Using a counterbalanced within-person design, 34 participants in each study (Study 1: 16 males, 18 females; Study 2: 15 males, 19 females) completed two wall-sit persistence tasks, one with immediate feedback expected (regarding the participant’s position on a leader board) and the other with feedback expected to be provided 1 week later. A two-way mixed analysis of variance found no significant differences in persistence between conditions in either study. Furthermore, no indirect effects were found via intrinsic motivation or delayed desire–goal conflict. Study findings did not support the hypothesis that the timing of expected feedback enhances persistence.