There is an evident need for Physical Education (PhysEd) programs that foster the positive growth and development of young people (Rosado et al., 2022). Programs for Personal and Social Responsibility have proven effective in developing greater empathy, motivation and emotional intelligence, demonstrating that PhysEd is important not only in terms of physical fitness and motor skills but as an essential element in any educational program (Ambrós, 2023).

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has raised the alarm on the growing physical inactivity of people of all ages and especially young people throughout the world (Chaput et al., 2020). In this context, Physical Education (PhysEd) plays an essential role is promoting physical activity and the acquisition of healthy habits (Fairclough et al., 2018). Research has shown that, in the case of PhysEd, the time dedicated to physical activity is highly unequal in terms of gender (Kirkham-King et al., 2017; Mayorga-Vega et al., 2019), where male students generally show much higher levels of physical activity than female students. This has been observed at both the Primary and Secondary Education levels.

A number of studies have also noted that the motivational predisposition of students is the key to their engagement in physical activity and interest in Physical Education (Stelzer et al., 2004; Moreno et al., 2006; Herrmann et al., 2024). Unfortunately, as students advance through their school years the levels of motivation, satisfaction and perceived utility of physical education tend to decrease, and especially among girls (Lago-Ballesteros et al., 2018).

Authors such as Rink and Hall (2008) have found that the negative perception of Physed among girls is due to the incongruence between the difficulty of the tasks assigned in class and their actual motor skills. Thus, it seems that the methodology used in PhysEd are more tailored towards male students and fail to motivate and interest female students.

One important model that has been implemented in Physical Education and Sports in the last decades has been that of Personal and Social Responsibility (Hellison, 1985), created to harness physical activity and sports to foment positive values and develop personal responsibility among young people at risk of social exclusion. The primary aim of Personal and Social Responsibility, is to develop the personal skills and competences for these students to successfully meet the challenges in their daily lives. And they can respond effectively to difficult situations. The key elements of the program are: (a) self-directed learning; (b) strengthen the teacher-participant relationship; and (c) transferring difficult situations from sport to life. Both the content and methodology of the Personal and Social Responsibility program are related to Bandura (1997) Social Learning Theory and the Positive Development Theory (Shek et al., 2019; Carreres-Ponsoda et al., 2021; García et al., 2021). The goals of the program are to (1) improve students’ social skills; (2) fostering a sense of responsibility both for oneself and for others; and (3) develop personal control strategies. As stated by Kohlberg and López (1982) and Piaget (1996), the development of personal responsibility focuses on personal commitment and taking on the challenge of life to achieve personal and professional success.

For Yao and Enright (2022), Prosocial Behaviour can be defined as a willingness to help others, involving emotional awareness, altruism and cooperation. For Caamaño and Leiva (2024), prosocial behavior goes beyond correct behavior, it is having the initiative to go out in situations of inequalities or social disadvantages. Prosocial Behavior refers to behavior that involves sharing, supporting and protecting others. The principal factors which facilitate Prosocial Behavior are empathy, moral judgment and positive emotions. Empathy is thus an important factor in the development of effective interpersonal skills such as problem solving (Saltos et al., 2020). For authors such as Aguirre-Loaiza et al. (2020), empathy also includes the capacity to commit to others and put oneself in their position. The practice of sport encourages the acquisition of moral values and positive patterns of behavior, boosting social skills such as mutual respect, cooperation, fair play and tolerance. All of these issues may be considered as Prosocial Behavior (Smith-Palacio et al., 2021; Piñeiro López et al., 2022; Figueroa et al., 2024).

A number of authors (Parise et al., 2015; Elizalde et al., 2024) maintain that sports programs enhance pro-sociability and improve moral reasoning, mitigating antisocial behavior. The term antisocial behavior refers to actions which are intended to harm, prejudice or denigrate others. Antisocial behavior in sport is manifested in cheating, faked falls or injury (Kavussanu and Stanger, 2017). Other authors (Escobar et al., 2024) highlight the importance of evaluating models of pro-sociability through sports, noting that not all sports equally discourage aggressive behavior and that the key to any prosocial sports program must be fostering moral behavior. Thus, programs that both encourage and facilitate the evaluation of moral behavior in sports are an essential element of Physical Education.

Similarly, Sari et al. (2024) consider sports to be the ideal means to promote positive values among young people. The concept of Positive Youth Development (PYD) is an effective approach in the development of these values ad behaviors and there is a great deal of literature dealing with the relation between sports and the development of reasoning skills among young people (Camiré and Santos, 2019; Kendellen and Camiré, 2019; Strachan et al., 2020).

According to Ortiz and López-Walle (2022), motivation is a psychological mechanism that governs the direction or intensity of behavior and is therefore an essential element in any commitment and engagement and can be transferred from the academic sphere to one’s personal life. An understanding of the Basic Psychological Needs of students is provided by the Self-determination theory by Ryan and Deci (2017). The focal point of this theory is to determine contexts which facilitate or hinder the development of intrinsic motivation and healthy psychological habits (Ryan and Deci, 2000; Huhtiniemi et al., 2019; Martínez Heredia et al., 2020). Furthermore, motivational regulation, driven by processes of self-determination are essential to the notion of autonomy. In this line, Mosqueda et al. (2019) propose certain types of motivation: intrinsic motivation (referring to an orientation towards autonomy and informed interpretation of circumstances); extrinsic motivation (referring to actions subject to external pressures rather than independent choice) and demotivation (referring to involuntary actions lacking clear purpose and the perception that outcomes do not depend on one’s actions).

Ryan and Deci (2017) describe Basic Psychological Needs (BPN) as the psychological nutrients necessary for personal growth, integrity and wellbeing. They also argue that BPN are drivers of personal satisfaction and wellbeing and the failure to meet these needs can contribute to the appearance of certain pathologies. These authors highlight three key BPNs: Autonomy, referring to the perceived ability to direct one’s own life; Competence, referring to the perceived effectiveness and mastery of tasks; and Relation, the feeling of meaningful interaction with others.

The influence of the media can have a direct impact, consciously or unconsciously, on students, often limiting the motivation of girls and leading them to assume predetermined social roles (Mateo-Orcajada et al., 2021; Chihuailaf-Vera et al., 2024). This can also the case with textbooks which employ sexist language or stereotypes and which may be subtly reinforced by teachers (Alvariñas-Villaverde and Pazos-González, 2018). The problem is accentuated when girls lack positive role models and contemporary society assigns predetermined roles through toys, games sexist films, etc. There is a failure to recognize the achievements of women in sport, as well as in science and politics, all of which contribute to the notion that sports is a masculine pursuit. Stereotypes are understood as a set of preconceived values, roles or beliefs inculcated in men and women and generally accepted by society (Navarro-Patón et al., 2020; Soberanis and Pech, 2023). It may be said, in line with Amurrio Vélez et al. (2012), that gender stereotypes are characteristics and traits attributed to an individual based on their gender. These characteristics are assigned according to the roles and identities traditionally ascribed to men and women. García Pérez et al. (2016) explain that gender stereotypes are assimilated through cultural and social contexts and that, just as they are learned, they can be modified or overcome through learning. For Ferree and Hall (1996), the concept of gender socialization is directly related to the social expectations, social control and struggles which sustain traditional roles and behavior among men and women.

Currently, physical education plays an important role in overcoming these gender stereotypes. A wide range of programs have been implemented aimed at different populations with different themes and orientations (Mateo-Orcajada et al., 2021; Tyarakanita et al., 2021). It is necessary to overcome gender stereotypes that present girls as less physically active than boys (Arrebola et al., 2019; Monforte and Colomer, 2019).

Considering this, we will explore the effect of a program which promotes (1) Personal Responsibility and, consequently, the taking of personal decisions and commitments based on personal goals; (2) Prosocial Attitudes as a consequence of empathy with others; (3) the influence of motivational processes among students in the development of Basic Psychological Needs; and (4) the overcoming of Gender Stereotypes in sport, leading to greater recognition, integration and engagement of women with sports.

The aim of this study is to explore the impact of a program to promote equal opportunity in university education in terms of Personal and Social Responsibility, Prosocial Behavior, Gender Stereotypes and the Basic Psychological Needs of students of Physical Activity and Sports Sciences.

A total of 72 male students, between the ages of 19 and 24 (21.0 ± 7.9 years), participated in the study. All were Spanish university students in the second year of the Degree in Physical Activity and Sport Sciences. A non-probability convenience sampling method was used.

The intervention consisted of 28 sessions. In the first session, students were informed of the procedure of the research, the scales to be completed and the pre-intervention data was collected. In the subsequent 26 sessions the ‘It Grows’ program was implemented for the promotion of gender equality among students. The order of the intervention was as follows: During the first 3 weeks (6 sessions) dynamics were conducted during warm-up period; the following 2 weeks (4 sessions) were dedicated to the resolution of case studies using the Wooclap platform; the following 7 weeks (14 sessions) involved practices in equality, course content and the development of the program; the final 2 sessions were dedicated to debate on videos. Finally, in the last session of the program students again completed the questionnaires on Personal Responsibility, Prosocial Behavior, Basic Psychological Needs and Gender Stereotypes in Sport and gave their feedback on the program, the changes in their way of thinking and the utility of the ‘It Grows’ program in the training of athletes.

The ‘It Grows’ program (Lamoneda Prieto et al., 2023) incorporates a series of activities designed to promote social equality, break gender stereotypes in sport, improve Prosocial Behavior and increase levels of Personal Responsibility among university students (Annex 1). The program was implemented between January and May of the 2021-2022 academic year and serves as a guide and framework to raise awareness of the achievements of women in sport, promote attitudes of equality and to contribute to the development of Prosocial Behavior and Responsibility. The program works in two ways: through directed activities and interactive activities. Our intervention consisted of 5 phases, gradually reducing the role of teachers and giving increasing protagonism to students. In the first sessions, directed by teachers, students experienced habitual situations involving commonplace gender stereotypes and about which students were asked to give their opinion and course of action. With the help of the online tool Wooclap, students responded to virtual situations and contexts, with themes such as “Women and Sport.” The questions were principally related to Prosocial Behavior and presented as open questions. At the end of this process students watched educational videos contextualizing the questions followed by an evaluation of their responses (Table 1).

The normality of the variables were analyzed by means of the Shapiro Wilk test. Assuming all variables had a normal distribution (p > 0.05), the pre- and post-intervention results were analyzed using a Student’s t-test for related samples. The effect size was calculated using the Cohen (1988) scale: an effect size below 0.2 is considered small, proximate to 0.5 is considered moderate and over 0.8 is considered large. Furthermore, the relation between the different variables was studied using the Pearson’s r. The confidence interval was established as 95%. The reliability of the questionnaires was calculated using Cronbach’s alpha.

A qualitative analysis was conducted for a deeper exploration of the thinking of students about the educational intervention program. Using the Wooclap platform, the personal contributions and criteria of participants was analyzed based on their work and final evaluations in the open questions. The research has an interpretive approach to existing interactions before the same object of study, triangulating the information collected in different instruments (Richards and Hemphill, 2018).

To certify the reliability, transferability and credibility of the results, coinciding text patterns were coded to permit the analysis of text extracts (Salmona and Kaczynski, 2024). Text and ideas saturation techniques were also used to establish thematic areas. After deliberation, the documents were organized and grouped into categories and sub-categories in line with the aims of the study and the specificity and coherence criteria (Trainor and Graue, 2014).

For the sub-scale social responsibility, the α values were 0.805 and 0.705 for personal responsibility. In prosocial behavior, the Cronbach’s alpha for reliability was between 0.724 and 0.814. The α values for the three sub-scales evaluating Basic Psychological Needs (perceived autonomy, perceived competence and social relations) were: 0.797, 0.860 and 0.906, respectively. The reliability, according to Cronbach’s alpha for each of the subscales of Gender Stereotypes in sports were between 0.675 and 0.805 for all the sub-scales with the exception of ‘Beliefs’, which scored 0.310.

Participants in the program showed significant improvement in all variables of the study: responsibility in PhysEd, satisfaction of Basic Psychological Needs, Prosocial Behaviour and Gender Stereotypes (p < 0.05). No significant differences were found in the sub-scales n° 2, sport and gender, n° 4, beliefs, and n° 5, PhysEd classes referring to “Gender Stereotypes” (Table 2).

A total of 513 text fragments were extracted, the majority positive comments (486 versus 27) Figure 1, firstly referring to Personal Responsibility (139 positive fragments and 18 negatives; for example: ‘hit them’). The second most common theme was related to prosocial behaviour (153 positive fragments and 18 negatives; for example: ‘I only know I do not know anything’). The third most common referred to Basic Psychological Needs (BPN) (100 positive fragments and 32 negative fragments; for example: ‘buy a piñata) and finally, the fourth most common theme was in relation with Gender Stereotypes (76 positive fragments and 4 negative fragments; for example: ‘a good slap is always a win but a little talking can also work’). The distribution of the responses is shown in Figures 2, 3.

This study has certain limitations, one of which is the absence of external actors, such as family members, or the lack of individual mentoring offering the possibility for discussion with researchers. Another limitation was the use of the “It Grows” program alone and the absence of another program such as de Deportes (2010). The intervention period should be more extensive, 10 months rather than the 5 months in this study. The absence of a control group is another shortcoming.

The aim is for this study to serve as a reference for future lines of research into gender stereotypes in physical activity in relation to the type of sports participants pursue and their recreation habits. Another future line of research may be the relation between gender stereotypes and the family experience of participants. Finally, there should be further research into the link between gender stereotypes, the classroom environment and academic results.