Effective implementation of the Sport Education Model in physical education: A meta-analysis of participant and intervention characteristics

PLOS One | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0331228 October 16, 2025 6 / 17 The participants consisted of 2 elementary-level studies [8,35], 9 secondary-level studies [7,21,36,38,39,41–44], and 4 university-level studies [20,37,40,45]. Regarding SEM experience, 1 study [42] included participants with SEM experience, 6 studies [8,36,37,39–41] included participants without SEM experience, and 8 studies [7,20,21,35,38,43–45] were classified as unable to determine due to a lack of relevant information in the articles. In terms of class size, 7 studies [36,37,39–41,43,44] were categorized as small, 4 studies [20,38,42,45] as medium, and 4 studies [7,8,21,35] as large. All experimental groups adopted the characteristics of the Sport Education Model (SEM) as the main framework, while the control groups employed standard traditional teaching methods. Regarding the intervention frequency, 4 studies [20,40,44,45] conducted ≤1 lesson per week, 6 studies [36–39,41,42] conducted 2 lessons per week, and 4 studies Fig 1. PRISMA flow diagram. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0331228.g001