Chinese primary school physical education teachers' ongoing training and professional competence: an evidence mapping review and a hypothesis-generating conceptual framework.

Ongoing training has gained increasing research attention as a means to improve the professional competencies of Chinese primary school physical education (PE) teachers. However, prior reviews have largely focused on general teachers, secondary teachers, or other subjects, leaving primary school PE teachers under-researched. Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) 2020 guidelines, we systematically searched Web of Science and Scopus, identifying 29 peer-reviewed studies. Methodological quality was assessed using the Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT), and findings were synthesized thematically. Critically, no included study directly targeted Chinese primary school PE teachers, revealing a fundamental evidence gap. Thematic synthesis of indirect evidence from adjacent populations, including general primary teachers, secondary teachers, teachers of other subjects, and non-Chinese contexts, identified four competency dimensions that may be influenced by ongoing training, namely instructional design, professional knowledge, teaching practice, and self-efficacy. Given the complete absence of direct evidence, all conclusions drawn for the target population are explicitly hypothesis-generating rather than confirmatory. Based on these indirect findings, we tentatively propose a testable chain mediation model in which ongoing training may sequentially influence professional knowledge, teaching practice, self-efficacy, and ultimately professional competence, offering a potential framework to guide future empirical investigations. This mini-review contributes an evidence map for this under-researched population and provides a heuristic conceptual framework to inform future research designs.