The focus of contemporary research is to understand how teacher and students as individuals participate in a culturally situated environment, interact and develop shared practices with the aim of achieving educational purposes. From these lines of research, some scholars consider that the domain-specific content knowledge is a key element for the teaching/learning settings These lines of research are based on the assumption that physical education is a result of shared and co-constructed processes between teacher, students and a specific learning environment. This literature reviews current works and research from papers published in English and French language in the last 10 years (1995-2005). The goals of this review is to identify quality standards and benchmarks based on scientific evidence for physical education as an essential component of culturally sensitive education which contribute particularly to personal and social development. Criteria of inclusion concern papers based on contextualized researches with a focus on effective practices with a special attention to PE content. The sources of the documents reviewed are: - the AIESEP international proceedings because this association gives a broad view on what is at stake in the current PE research all around the world, - the ARIS proceedings (French speaking association for research in sport pedagogy and physical education), - the issues of the major American and European journals and reviews in physical education , - the latest handbooks in physical education and sport sciences. Three cornerstones for quality physical education emerge from the sources: (1) Teacher Education, (2) Curriculum and content issues, (3) Student learning. Each of them will be the focus of the three sections below.