Toward a Culturally Situated SDT-EI Model of emotional intelligence in physical education: a narrative review

Emotional intelligence (EI) has emerged as a pivotal construct in educational psychology; however, understanding of how physical education (PE) contributes to its development remains fragmented. Eight prior systematic reviews have concluded that PE can develop EI, but three gaps persist: no integration across educational stages, no unified mechanistic account, and no cross-cultural perspective-despite emerging evidence that EI pathways differ across cultural contexts. This narrative review synthesizes 64 publications-including primary studies, eight systematic reviews, and meta-analyses published from 2014 to 2026, together with foundational theoretical works outside that window-through thematic synthesis complemented by an exploratory bibliometric scan, effect direction plotting, and transparent evidence grading, organized around self-determination theory (SDT) as a unifying mechanistic framework with culture positioned as a formal boundary condition. The review centers on PE as a curricular subject in formal educational settings; organized sport enters it only where embedded in educational programs. Four pedagogical models are identified-Teaching Games for Understanding combined with Sport Education, the Sport Education Model, cooperative learning and Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility, and mindfulness/body-expression approaches-and their shared effectiveness is best accounted for by their convergent capacity to satisfy basic psychological needs. The Mercader-Rubio research program and independent cross-validations are synthesized into an SDT-based mechanistic account whose supporting evidence is predominantly cross-sectional and self-report-based and therefore associational rather than causal. Drawing on three direct cross-cultural comparisons, evidence is presented that multiple key links in this chain are culturally modulated. These findings are integrated into a proposed Culturally Situated SDT-EI Model of Physical Education-a theoretically derived framework that has not yet been tested as an integrated structure-generating three design principles for culturally responsive PE-EI programs and eight priorities for the empirical validation the model now requires.