Murray Mitchell

High Stakes Assessment: A Journey Into Unknown Territory

The purpose of this article is to explore efforts to reform physical education programs and to describe why they might not have been successful in the past. The general education and physical education reform literature is examined with attention to the current standards, assessment, and accountability reform movement prevalent in most states. General themes facilitating South Carolinas effort to gain support for policy initiatives and implement a high stakes assessment program are developed with attention to the political activities essential to gain support for change.

The Role of Homework in Helping Students Meet Physical Education Goals

W hile homework has long played a vital role in many school subjects (e.g., see Como, 1996; Doyle & Barber, 1990), the same cannot be said ofhomework in physical education programs. Attention to the role of homework has only recently become more relevant to physical educators, due in part to the current emphasis on establishing links between physical activityat school and lifelong health benefits. These links are explicit in the national standards for physical education (National Association for Sport and Physical Education [NASPE], 1995), where Standard Three states that students should exhibit physicallyactive lifestyles and Standard Four identifies the merit ofachieving and maintaining a healthenhancing levelofphysical fitness. The purposes ofthis article are (1) to offer teachers a taxonomy that can help them determine the role of homework in their physical education programs, and (2) to provide them with examples of homework that might enrich the physical education experience for their students.

High Stakes Assessment in South Carolina

I n the spring of 2001, one third of high schools in the state of South Carolina submitted student-performance data to the South Carolina Physical Education Assessment Program. A monitoring committee of peers analyzed the data for accuracy during the summer. The results were subsequently submitted to the state Department of Education (SDE) and reported to school administrations in each of the districts. Each school was given a grade based on the percentage of students in that school who had achieved the state standards. Within the next few years, all elementary, middle, and high schools will be required to submit data every three years and inform parents ofthe resulting grades in a school report card. A partnership of physical education professionals working through the South Carolina Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance (SCAHPERD) has worked for the past seven years to establish statelevel physical education program accountability by implementing standards, developing assessment materials, and making policy.

Teacher Perceptions of a Physical Education Statewide Assessment Program

Abstract A statewide program assessment was established to make positive change in physical education school programs in South Carolina. Reform efforts depend both on balancing accountability for change and teacher support for change (Odden &Anderson, 1986). The purpose of the study was to determine teacher perceptions of the South Carolina Physical Education Assessment Program and its effects across six related themes including: changes in teaching and learning, changes in curriculum and instruction, teacher awareness of the assessment program, teacher support for the program, work place conditions, and the advocacy role of the program. It was also the purpose of this study to determine if the survey responses were in any way related to teacher and school variables. The overall results of the study indicated positive change and support for the assessment program, supporting the viability of the standards, assessment, and accountability reform effort to positively impact physical education programs.

The Physical Education Teacher Education Faculty Shortage

JOPERD • Volume 77 No. 3 • March 2006 A recurring problem facing the entire education profession is the lack of qualifi ed, effective teachers. This problem has most commonly been framed as arising from the diffi culty of recruiting and retaining teachers. However, a related problem that worsens this shortage has received far less attention: the declining supply of qualifi ed teacher education faculty—in our discipline, this refers to physical education teacher education (PETE) faculty. Castle and Arends (2000) presented evidence of a trend toward an increasing number of vacancies in teacher education programs, outpacing the supply of qualifi ed candidates. This was based on a decline in the number of applicants per opening in PETE programs during a three-year period and an increase in the number of positions left unfi lled by qualifi ed applicants. More specifi cally, Woods, Goc Karp, and Feltz (2003) described the probability that this trend would continue in kinesiology and physical education programs. This survey of department chairs, regarding the emphasis of study for their doctoral students, found that only 10.3 percent of their doctoral students were studying pedagogy. Yet, an analysis of job openings in higher education revealed 22.05 percent of the job postings were in pedagogy. This imbalance has two probable outcomes. One possibility is that positions will remain unfi lled and program directors will hope to fi nd qualifi ed applicants at a later date—if they are able to justify retaining the position. Administrators will, on occasion, allocate the funds for an unfi lled position to another unit that has found a qualifi ed applicant. A second possible outcome is that programs will be forced to fi ll the pedagogy position with an unqualifi ed applicant (e.g., someone with a background in history, philosophy, psychology, or some other area). If this were to occur, it would be because of a combination of factors. In some cases, faculty members simply do not want to lose the position and need a person (any person) to work with their tuition-paying students. In other cases, there are still those who believe that “it is only teaching” and anyone can do it. The need to fi ll positions with qualifi ed professionals should be a priority because PETE faculty are critical to the future of the physical education profession. Siedentop and Locke (1997) gave four main reasons for this. First is the PETE faculty’s ability to prepare future teachers for the nation’s schools. Second is the PETE faculty’s responsibility to provide continuing professional development for teachers. Third is the need to improve and sustain better school physical education programs. Fourth is the need for PETE faculty to contribute, through their research, to the knowledge base for teaching and teacher education, in order to fulfi ll the preceding needs and responsibilities. Without qualifi ed faculty in this area, who else can be called upon to contribute to and translate the knowledge base for practitioners?

Teacher Enthusiasm: Seeking student learning and avoiding apathy

Researchers have identified connections between teacher enthusiasm and positive student achievement, test performance, recall, on-task behavior, attitudes toward learning, intrinsic motivation toward the subject matter, feelings of vitality, and ratings of teacher effectiveness. There may also be positive benefits for teachers when enthusiasm invades the instructional setting. The purpose of this article is to address the importance of teacher enthusiasm, identify indicators of enthusiasm, and offer some insight into helping teachers and teacher candidates show enthusiasm.

Program Advocacy: Parent Night with a Purpose

JOPERD • Volume 83 No. 5 • May/June 2012 T oward the beginning of each academic year in public school, parents are often invited to an evening meeting at school to learn more about what their children will be learning and doing. Schools refer to this evening as a “curriculum night,” “meet the teachers,” “open house,” or perhaps “parent night.” Whatever the school calls it, the intent is essentially the same—to tell parents about school programs and help them understand how they can contribute to creating a positive learning experience for their children. Cultivating support and earning respect from parents can help children learn and succeed in physical education. Support from parents may also be significant when schools hope to acquire resources through tax levies or a future bond referendum. Parental support is also important for all curricular activities—whether in science, math, language arts, history, or physical education. Parent night is, in short, a prime opportunity for program advocacy—a chance to make the case that what is going on in the physical education program is important and makes a valuable contribution to the lives of the children served by the school. Many parents have had the opportunity of attending this kind of session. They have seen effective representations of quality programs, though there is often a notable absence of any presentation about the physical education program. Sadly, some presentations make it difficult to support physical education as a required subject in schools. Teacher educators have the responsibility of trying to help current and future teachers to maximize the positive effect of planning and delivering program-advocacy efforts in their schools and community. The purpose of this article is to describe some of the negative presentations that should be avoided and offer some examples of more positive presentations to secure the support for, or at least avoid opposition to, current physical education programs in schools.

Choosing a Physically Active Lifestyle Now

March/April 2007 A major goal for most quality physical education programs is to provide sufficient education and motivation for students to choose to live physically active lifestyles. This article clarifies what a “physically active lifestyle” really means both now to school-aged students, and in the future, as these students become adults. Furthermore, the article describes how this concept ties to the national standards for physical education and shows two significant ways we have been trying to work toward this goal in South Carolina.

Content development: using application tasks to celebrate and calibrate.

JOPERD • Volume 80 No. 5 • May/June 2009 P reservice teachers learning how to teach physical education struggle with appropriate task development within lessons. Even experienced teachers may face challenges when trying to motivate students. The purpose of this article is to describe briefly what is known about content development and offer suggestions for how students can benefit from one of the most popular (and most abused) types of tasks used when developing content—application/assessment tasks. Rink’s (2006) framework for describing tasks provides a helpful basis for exploring content development. There are four main types of tasks in this process: (1) informing tasks, (2) extension tasks, (3) refinement tasks, and (4) application/assessment tasks. First, informing tasks introduce content for learners. Teachers use these types of tasks to introduce the first thing they want students to do in class (e.g., get a ball and a partner and work on the stationary pass from 5 yards apart). Informing tasks also occur at other times during a lesson whenever the teacher changes the focus to begin a new task (e.g., “Now that our passing is a little sharper, we’re going to work on our shooting by taking 10 free throws each”). Second, extension tasks are ways to manipulate the level of difficulty or complexity for learners. Upward extensions are used to increase the task difficulty or complexity in order to challenge students. For example, when working on dribbling skills, moving from a passive defender (e.g., dribblers must dribble past a defender who cannot move) to a semi-active defender (e.g., dribblers must dribble past a defender who can only pivot on one foot) would increase the difficulty of the exercise. A lateral extension consists of changing something about an activity to maintain interest in a task that may otherwise become tedious, but leaving the challenge level the same. For example, a teacher might change a chest pass drill from trying to hit an “X” on the wall to doing a chest pass to a stationary partner. One final type of extension is downward. When teachers discover that they have created a task that is too difficult for learners, simplifying the drill will keep students working on the skill rather than abandoning the focus on the skill altogether. For example, students serving in volleyball or tennis often do not have the ability to create enough force to get the ball into play from the baseline. A reasonable downward extension would be to have the students move closer to the net while still practicing the correct mechanics of the overhand style of this serving skill. This type of downward extension allows students to continue working on the skill rather than giving up and playing basketball instead. Third, refinement tasks are used by teachers to attend to qualitative improvements in student performances. Once the general idea of how to perform a skill has been grasped, more attention can be given to the details of how to perform the skill more effectively. In gymnastics, for example, one of the first challenges in doing any balancing skill is simply to find the center of gravity and keep it within Content Development Using Application Tasks to Celebrate and Calibrate

Choosing an Active Lifestyle

4 JOPERD • Volume 78 No. 4 • April 2007 Aspiring teachers across disciplines lament the behavior of those preparing them for a career when they say one thing and do another. Sadly, this incongruence may be creeping into the norms of behavior for new physical educators, and the consequences can be devastating. Have you ever been told in a lecture that a “lecture” is not the most effective way of delivering instruction? I recall one particular lecture in which a well-known and respected teacher educator had just completed the topic of “checking for understanding following a demonstration” by noting that asking students “Any questions?” is an inappropriate way to complete this important function. How was the topic wrapped up? You may have already guessed that he fi nished with “Any questions?” I shudder to think of what my own students might be able to share if given the chance to point out my foibles. It is quite normal for all of us to have at least some inconsistencies between what we say and what we do. The challenge for professionals is to do our best to recognize and remediate such inconsistencies. Whether we change our espoused positions to be consistent with our behavior or start doing what we identify as best practice, consistency in professional performance is important. Recently I have become increasingly concerned that the expectations for physical education teacher education (PETE) students do not match those for K-12 students when it comes to understanding fi tness concepts, learning various motor skills, and establishing a healthy lifestyle and level of personal fi tness. The national standards for physical education (National Association for Sport and Physical Education [NASPE], 2004) include the expectation of demonstrating competence in movement forms (standard one), understanding the principles surrounding the performance of physical activities (standard two), choosing an active lifestyle (standard three), and achieving and maintaining a health-enhancing level of physical fi tness (standard four). Modeling these choices does not appear to be a priority for many majors at my own institution. Based on informal discussions I have had with teacher educators at other institutions, it appears that many students have insuffi cient fi tness levels (some higher than others), low levels of motor-skill performance in a variety of movements (attributed by many to over-specialization on the part of majors), and little if any sense of professional obligation to change these things. Furthermore, both preservice and inservice teachers often have misconceptions of fi tness-related concepts (Castelli & Williams, 2007; Miller & Housner, 1998). These same prospective teachers will later appear in front of students in schools to describe the importance of being skillful and fi t and how to achieve these important goals. Obviously, fi tness levels vary from student to student. There are very fi t athletes in most teacher preparation programs, but there are also many students who have to keep a part-time job (a fulltime job in some cases) to pay tuition and cover living expenses for themselves and occasionally for their families. Maintaining a healthy and active lifestyle can be a real challenge for students with little or no spare time. The motor-skill limitations are hypothesized to be an artifact of early specialization. Youths are pressured to specialize in one sport that they will be able to excel in. When this happens, skill levels are high in a limited number of activities, but virtually nonexistent in others. Many majors who specialize in team sports, struggle with racquet sports or with individual activities like gymnastics, or vice versa. Can we create a nation of movers if we do not live our own message? Who would follow a guide who kept stopping to ask others for directions? Would you buy a Ford from a car dealer driving an import? Should you accept career advice from someone who cannot hold a job? Is it reasonable to expect students to value fi tness, an active lifestyle, and skillful performance when the message is delivered by unfi t, inactive, and low-skilled teachers? What are the implications for the future of our children when our teachers are not fi t, do not understand fundamental concepts surrounding their content, do not live a physically active lifestyle, and cannot perform the skills they are trying to teach?