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The current case study was designed to seek out incoming high school students’ perceptions of physical education (PE) and how students felt former PE teachers influenced their perceptions. The study was conducted at a high school in the United States and included semi-structured focus group interviews of 25 students. The results indicated that students have a mix of positive and negative perceptions of PE and reported that the purpose of PE was to participate in physical activity (PA) and learn how to live a healthy lifestyle through fun and meaningful experiences (theme 1). A fun and meaningful PE experience included learning how to live a healthy lifestyle, experiencing success in a variety of physical activities, and engaging socially with other peers (theme 2). The majority of students stated that their teachers controlled the factors that influenced their level of enjoyment in PE (theme 3). Students recognized that these activities and their teachers’ actions influenced their interpretations of their PA experiences in PE. Students reported that these perceptions could influence their future participation in PA. Based on the results of the study, PE has the potential to provide students with positive experiences with PA that encourage individual competence over social comparison. This, combined with meaningful content that is based on PE standards and students’ personal interests, can help to develop positive student perceptions of PE and increase students’ participation in PA.

Purpose/Method: This qualitative case study examined through an interpretive worldview how current high school (HS) physical education (PE) teachers (n=14) implemented online experiences that could have influenced students’ interpretations of their vicarious experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic (spring/fall of 2020). The study sought to better understand teachers’ perceptions of how social modeling of PA was implemented online, how online PA experiences impacted opportunities for social comparison among the students, and what teachers’ opinions of these practices were in relation to supporting students’ PA self-efficacy. Results: The results found that the study participants differed in their opinions on the most effective ways to provide students with PA demonstrations and implement students' PA experiences during online instruction. Many of the teachers relied more on online videos to demonstrate PA, resulting in a decrease in teachers personally modeling PA themselves (theme 1). Due to the stress of the pandemic on students’ well-being, teachers and their school districts prioritized students’ social and emotional health which influenced how teachers had students participate in PA online (theme 2). This resulted in fewer PA experiences with students participating in front of each other and none of the teachers requiring students to model PA for peers online. Conclusion: This study serves as a starting point to better understand how teachers implemented online instructional practices that could have influenced students’ interpretations of their vicarious experiences during the Covid-19 pandemic. The information collected in this study can be used by current PE teachers to design future online practices.