Developing an Evidence-Based National Physical Education Standards Framework for Nigeria: A Grounded Theory Approach

Nigeria lacks a formally adopted national physical education standards framework, resulting in wide variability in curriculum content, instructional expectations, assessment practices, and programme outcomes across states and school types. This dissertation develops an evidence-based national physical education standards framework for Nigeria through a grounded theory methodology, constituting an original policy-relevant scholarly contribution. The research proceeds through theoretical sampling of physical education stakeholders across all six geopolitical zones including curriculum specialists, master teachers, state education officials, students, parents, and sport scientists. Constant comparative analysis of interview data, focus group transcripts, international standards frameworks, and Nigerian curriculum documents generates a grounded theory of physical education standards development contextualised to the Nigerian education system. The emerging theory identifies equity, cultural relevance, progressive skill development, health integration, teacher capacity, and assessment validity as the six foundational principles of an appropriate Nigerian standard. An original draft National Physical Education Standards Framework is developed through iterative expert consultation and pilot testing in 12 schools across four states. Psychometric evaluation of aligned assessment rubrics confirms adequate reliability and content validity. The dissertation makes original theoretical contributions to standards development methodology in physical education and provides a directly usable policy product for the Federal Ministry of Education and the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council. Keywords: national physical education standards, grounded theory, curriculum framework, Nigeria, policy development