ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Assessment, Testing and Applied Measurement
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1562387
The Effect of Active Learning on Academic Performance in a Norwegian Primary School Setting -the Health Oriented Pedagogical Project (HOPP)
Provisionally accepted
- 1Faculty of Applied Ecology, Agricultural Sciences and Biotechnology, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Elverum, Oppland, Norway
- 2Faculty of Health, Welfare and Organisation, Østfold University College, Halden, Østfold, Norway
- 3, Faculty of Social and Health Science, Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Elverum, Oppland, Norway
- 4Østfold University College, Halden, Østfold, Norway
- 5Kristiania University College, Oslo, Norway
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Background Numerous systematic reviews, with varying degrees of certainty, have suggested a beneficial link between physical activity and academic achievement.The Health Oriented Pedagogical Project (HOPP) in Horten, Norway, integrates active learning in seven elementary schools' curricula (n=1545), aiming to merge physical activity with academic instruction. The control group consisted of two schools from Akershus County, doing standard teaching (n=752). The data were collected from 2015 to 2019.The results highlight the active learning potential to complement traditional teaching methods and foster overall academic success in elementary education. Active learning, partially replacing traditional classroom methods with physical tasks, yielded significant academic benefits. Secular trends for national tests in 5 th -grade intervention school students across five years showed improvement compared to control schools in English, arithmetic, and reading. Both intervention and control schools displayed a significant change in slope across the study period. Compared to national median results, the intervention schools also revealed an improvement.HOPP's findings underscore the effectiveness of active learning in enhancing academic performance, with intervention schools surpassing national medians after four years of intervention. Trial registration: Clinical Trials, NCT02495714. Registered 20 June 2015 -Retrospectively registered. http://www.Clinicaltrials.gov.
Keywords: physical activity, Active Learning, academic performance, elementary school children, Education
Received: 17 Jan 2025; Accepted: 30 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Fredriksen, Bjerva and Mamen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Asgeir Mamen, Kristiania University College, Oslo, Norway
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