In recent years, education is no longer understood as a simple transmission of knowledge. Nor is it identified exclusively with learning certain essential skills such as communication, writing, etc. There is a global academic consensus where education is understood from a holistic perspective that encompasses all dimensions of the human person. Following a neo-Aristotelian perspective, education must reach the essence of the acting person on being, and not exclusively on knowing or doing. If not, otherwise it would be a superfluous or incomplete education. Let us give an example for your better understanding. In the case of educating in justice, education would not consist of knowing what justice is, nor knowing how to carry out acts of justice, but would consist of being fair (Aristotle, 2003). Knowing and doing can only be understood as previous steps of the ladder.

James Arthur defines character as a set of abilities that guides a person’s usual way of behaving (2019), that’s to say, his way of being. The way someone behaves is how he is, and it is reflection of his character. For example, one person is considered cheerful when he usually smiles, and as a consequence, he’s said to have a cheerful character. Therefore, it can be deduced that educating character makes impact in what me mean as real educaction, the way of being, and and hence the importance of character education in order to achieve a comprehensive holistic education.

Character is a set of virtues that a person acquires, which enables him to do good and be good (Kristjanson, 2019), and, character education is the process in which young people know and do the good (Jubilee Centre for the Character and Virtues, 2017).

Sport is widely considered as an ideal practice for the person’s character development (Rudd, 2005). There are numerous colloquial expressions that we can find in which sport is positively related to the character and virtudes development: “sport forges character”, “sport is a virtues’ school”, etc. However, how much of the previously said is based on scientific evidence? Is sport really a medium to achieve character education?

In fact the discussion about the influence of the sport practice on the person’s character is completely open (Giroux 2020; Kirk, 2018). Although it seems true that physical education correlates especially with the development of the performative virtues (Likona, 2009; Shields, 2011), the knowledge is more diffuse in the rest of the character’s dimensions: intellectual, moral and civic (Baehr, 2013; Lickona, 2009).

From a theoretical point of view, sport gathers the necessary characteristics to think that educational sport and physical education can positively impact on the character development (Brunsdon & Walker, 2021; Weiss & Bredemeier, 1990), but it’s actually that way in the practical standpoint?

In the present project we will do a systematic review of the experimental programmes about character education taught in the subject of physical education in order to shedd more light about the relationship between physical education and character education. We will stand out the different proposals, methodologies, programmes implemented in schools, as well as the main investigated virtues in the physical education area.

The search of the papers which are part of this study were taken by the data base Web of Science (WOS) and Scopus owing to their rigorous inclusion criteria, making sure the relevance and quality of the found papers. The search strategy and later analysis are based on the PRISMA declaration 2020.(Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and MetaAnalyses). The included articles in the revision are due on December 1st in 2022. The search protocol was applied independently in each data base. The used key concepts to identify the papers about the topic were (“physical education” AND (character OR virtue)). The search was applied to the title, summary and each one of the subsections of the papers or the key words (Topic, TITLE-ABS-KEY). 324 WOS papers and 351 Scopus papers were found. For the selection of the review papers, in the first place, a first phase was carried out simply scanning the titles, discarding those that were not related to physical education. Secondly, an in-depth reading of the summary (abstract) was carried out applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria shown below: Exclusion criteria: a) Not relevant to physical education or the field of sport. b) Written in a language other than English or Spanish. c) Book chapters or books. Inclusion criteria: d) Quasi-experimental studies. e) Measurement of any of the groups of the educational community: students and/or teachers. f) Assessment of a virtue The information from the included articles are the following ones: Basic information: authors, year, country, published journal and areas of knowledge. Methodology: qualitative/quantitative study, division into experimental, quasi-experimental, pre-experimental, correlational, ex post facto, with or without a control group, pretest-posttest, transversal-longitudinal, and measurement instruments. Analyzed sample: number of participants, age, sex, geographic location. Physical education: purpose, sport(s) or activities, theoretical basis or framework underlying the program, duration of the program; and quantity, duration and frequency of the sessions, as well as the results obtained.

Several conclusions can be drawn. First, the predominance of the theoretical approach in the papers on character education and physical education and the need to develop new empirical research. Secondly, the need to unify terminology. The concept of character education or virtue are umbrella concept that overlaps with other similar terms, dispersing knowledge and making difficult further analysis. Virtue is confused with value, quality, strength of character, etc. And character education with moral education, positive education, civic education, etc. With this study it is expected to uncover the large number of benefits that physical education provides for the development of character in each of its dimensions: intellectual, performative, moral and civic; based on scientific evidence. We will try to unify diferent perpective: phylosophical, psicological, etc. And also we will try to relate the different methodologies with the development of each one of the categories of virtue. And finally, we hope to highlight the most studied sports to develop character.

Aristóteles. (2003). Ética a Nicómaco. El Cid Editor S. A. Arthur, J. (2019). The formation of character in education: From Aristotle to the 21st century. Routledge. Baehr, J. (2013). Educating for intellectual virtues: From theory to practice. Education and the growth of knowledge: Perspectives from social and virtue epistemology, 106-123. Brunsdon, J. J., & Walker, D. I. (2022). Cultivating character through physical education using memetic, progressive and transformative practices in schools. Journal of Moral Education, 51(4), 477-493. Ciapponi, A. (2021). La declaración PRISMA 2020: una guía actualizada para reportar revisiones sistemáticas. Evidencia, actualizacion en la práctica ambulatoria, 24(3), e002139-e002139. Giroux, H. (2020). Critical pedagogy (pp. 1-16). Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden. Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues. (2017). A Framework for Character Education in Schools. University of Birmingham. https://www.jubileecentre.ac.uk/userfiles/jubileecentre/pdf/character-education/Framework%20for%20Character%20Education.pdf Kirk, D. (2018). Precarity and physical education. The Journal of the Latin American Socio-Cultural Studies of Sport (ALESDE), 9(1), 15-28. Kristanjánsson, K. (2015). Aristotelian character education. Routledge. Kristjánsson, K. (2019). Flourishing as the aim of education: A neo-Aristotelian view. Routledge. Lickona, T. (2009). Educating for character: How our schools can teach respect and responsibility. Bantam. Shields, D. L. (2011). Character as the aim of education. Phi Delta Kappan, 92, 8-53. Rudd, A. (2005). Which" character" should sport develop?. Physical Educator, 62(4), 205. Weiss, M. R., & Bredemeier, B. J. L. (1990). Moral development in sport. Exercise and sport sciences reviews, 18(1), 331-378.