Promoting lifelong physical activity and high level performance: realising an achievable aim for physical education

Background: Even though all school-aged children in most countries experience some form of curricular physical education many do not maintain a lifelong involvement in sport or physical activity. From a theoretical perspective, the development models that dominate sport are limited by their staged and linear approaches to development (e.g. Cote's Developmental Model of Sport Participation) and their focus on a ‘distinct’ pathway to elite sport. R.P. Bailey and colleagues in 2010 advocated a new approach to understanding development in sport that enables a lifelong flow between different, but interrelated, motives for participation in sport (e.g. Participation, Personal Excellence, Elite Excellence). It is suggested that a common set of skills facilitate participation for these related but distinct motives across the lifespan. However, we argue that many curricular models in PE do not equip individuals with the skills necessary to maintain their involvement in sport and progress back and forth between diff...