Assessment in Physical Education

A Sociocultural Perspective

Peter Hay, Dawn Penney

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136478369
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Educazione fisica

Assessment has widely been acknowledged as a central element of institutional education, shaping curriculum and pedagogy in powerful ways and representing a critical reference point in political, professional and public debates about educational achievement and policy directions. Within physical education there remains significant debate regarding the subject knowledge, skills and understandings that should be assessed, in what ways and at what points in students' education this should occur.

Divided into three parts, Assessment in Physical Education makes an important contribution to our understanding of the socio-cultural issues associated with assessment in physical education, in terms of its systemic development as well as at the level of pedagogic relations between physical education teachers and their students. It provides readers with an insightful critique and theoretically informed ideas for rethinking assessment policies and practices in physical education.

This book will be of interest to advanced students and researchers in physical education and youth sport studies, as well as those involved in initial teacher education and teacher professional development.

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9780203133163-1

Over the past 20 years the significance of assessment has been increasingly recognised in the field of physical education. Such recognition has been evidenced by efforts to theorise and conceptualise assessment in physical education (e.g. Hay and Penney, 2009), as well as proliferating reports of specific research endeavours focusing on the impact of assessment on students and physical education practices (e.g. Annerstedt and Larsson, 2010; MacPhail and Halbert, 2010; Redelius and Hay, 2009) and the dissemination of assessment practice initiatives from around the world (e.g. Blomqvist et al., 2005; Nadeau et al., 2007; Oslin, 2003; Thorburn, 2007). The basis for this burgeoning interest has been mixed. Some have advocated the practice of assessment because of its potential contributions to effective pedagogy and student learning (Veal, 1995; Hay, 2006), while others have noted the importance of assessment and accountability to the standing of physical education within local, national and international curriculum settings (Hardman and Marshall, 2000). Meanwhile, past research efforts have highlighted that within the physical education community there are those who view assessment with a degree of suspicion, questioning whether the intentions and practices of assessment may in fact be counter to the nature, purpose and potential of the subject itself (Kneer, 1986; Matanin and Tannehill, 1994).

It is important that the international physical education community continues to broaden as well as deepen its interest in, and discussions about, assessment in and beyond the subject, given the significance of assessment in education more broadly. In this regard, assessment is arguably one of the most influential facets of contemporary education practice. At every level within and between education systems, from local schools right through to contexts of global systemic comparisons, assessment expectations, practices and outcomes have significantly shaped what is taught in schools, why it is taught, and how it is taught. This has perhaps been no better exemplified than in the impact of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), developed by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), on education interests and practices internationally and locally. This standardised assessment programme, developed and administered by an economic organisation, has precipitated unprecedented curriculum and assessment reforms across the member nations of the OECD. In Australia, for example, socio-political concerns over the relative decline in PISA achievement outcomes of Australian students have fuelled significant political will for curriculum and assessment reform across the country. Practically, this political will has been manifest in the development and implementation of a national curriculum and a national standardised testing regime. It was not coincidental that the subjects developed in the primary phase of the national curriculum included English, Mathematics, Science and History, given three of the four subjects’ direct connection with the primary content foci of PISA. The National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) has been similarly focused (in terms of content and structure) to reflect the content and interests of international comparative measures in an endeavour to ensure that Australia assumes and maintains a prominent international standing in relation to the quality of its education system. This national quest for global education competitiveness has had a direct impact on the curriculum development practices and pedagogies of many schools right across the country, where local school curricular endeavours have been reprioritised to focus more heavily on literacy and numeracy as well as provide time for regular NAPLAN ‘practice’ to ensure that the achievement standards at each school are competitive within the national system.

For physical education, the implications of these reform responses to an international assessment programme are compelling. In the Australian example, health and physical education was not initially considered a priority for national curriculum development and was only eventually nominated by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment Reporting Authority (ACARA) as a focus for development and implementation as part of a ‘Phase 3’ initiative following considerable lobbying from invested stakeholders such as universities, health-affiliated professional organisations and sporting bodies. Clearly, the initial absence of commitment to physical education in schools and then the phased introduction of other curriculum areas served to convey the government’s perceptions of the relative value of subjects to students’ educational experiences. The increasing significance of NAPLAN to the standing of schools and specific funding arrangements has also impacted on the time that schools provide for content and activities other than those specifically captured in the systemic testing regime. In numerous cases this has resulted in the truncation, and in some cases cessation, of substantial (health and) physical education programmes.

A sociocultural perspective

Clearly, in order to understand assessment practices in physical education, we must be cognisant of the influence of assessment beyond the subject. Subjects and the assessment practices that occur within them do not operate independently of, or unaffected by, the systemic environments in which they are situated. Assessment is complex and it is not so much the practicalities or technicalities of assessment that imbue it with its complexity, but rather the fact that its social origins and consequences are so diverse, messy and influential. Constraining one’s focus to the practical and technical elements of assessment carries the potential to overlook these significant factors and thus may undermine the potential efficacy of the practice itself. As Gipps (1999) reminded us, ‘decisions about even apparently technical matters are influenced by political and ideological considerations’ (p. 355). With this in mind it can be seen that, in order to optimise the practice of assessment in physical education, the basis for the practice and social dynamics of the assessment context need to be first understood.

A sociocultural perspective on assessment provides the breadth of focus necessary to comprehend the external and internal factors affecting assessment practices in physical education as well as the consequences of those practices for the subject and its key stakeholders. Critically, this perspective also draws attention to the fact that assessment is fundamentally a social activity. Assessments are required by people, developed by people, implemented by people and performed by people and have implications for people right across education systems. For this reason Gipps (1999) proposed that assessment can only be properly understood if the social, cultural, economic and political contexts of its operation are taken into account. Accordingly, a sociocultural perspective on assessment orients our focus to these social and cultural factors informing the conceptions and implementations of assessment as well as the impact that these conceptions and implementations have on the macro- and microsocieties to which they are directed.

Failing to recognise the social and cultural inputs and outcomes of assessment can lead to some significant and potentially problematic assumptions about assessment. Consider, for example, the meritocratic assumptions that underpin many large-scale systemic measures of students’ scholastic performances. On the basis of these assumptions, the outcomes of what are declared to be technically valid measures of defined capacity are believed to reflect the innate abilities and efforts of the candidates involved. The implications, in light of the widely reported achievement disparities between students in higher and lower socio-economic contexts (e.g. Connolly, 2006; Dunne and Gazeley, 2008; Knapp and Woolverton, 2004; Teese, 2000; Teese and Polesel, 2003), are that students from lower socio-economic areas are less intelligent or ‘able’, or generally more lazy. What is overlooked, which a sociocultural perspective directs our attention to, is the fact that these measures are written or controlled by middle-class education bureaucrats, and that children from lower socio-economic areas are less likely to have access to the same social and cultural resources as their higher socio-economic counterparts. Failing to challenge or question the meritocratic assumptions of systemic assessment regimes can have the impact of narrowing the real and perceived educational and vocational advancement opportunities of those with the least economic, cultural and social resources (Connolly and Healy, 2004; McLeod and Yates, 2006), while those from higher socio-economic areas potentially enjoy more optimistic educational futures.

We see then that there is something of a critical edge to the sociocultural perspective we are pursuing in this book. By critical, we do not mean that we view assessment as inherently bad or good. Neither are we assuming a classical critical inquiry position such as those posed by Kincheloe and McLaren (1994) or Popkewitz (1999), where the intention is to uncover inherent social inequities and injustices produced through practices or technologies of social control. Rather, our view acknowledges that any social endeavour or practice has consequences for those engaged within or by the endeavour and that these consequences are disproportionate in their effects. Again, this does not render assessment fundamentally problematic, but it does mean that it is important to consider what these effects might be, how the effects are distributed and what factors may contribute to these effects.

A critical perspective also draws attention to the manifestations and outcomes of power and control. As Penney and Evans have reminded us, ‘all pedagogical relations invoke power relations; there is no instruction without regulation, no pedagogy divorced of control’ (2004, p. 5). In many ways this is obvious in assessment practices, as the power of the teacher is manifest in their responsibility and authority to make judgements on students regarding certain facets of educational capacity. Implicit in the authority and work of assessment is the power to confer on students symbols representing the quality of their capacities in relation to constructed measures. Not only do the teachers make the decisions, but more often than not their perceptions, values and beliefs are significant in the formulation of those decisions. In the construction, implementation and marking of assessment pieces, the control of the teacher is evident in the selection of the mode of communication (physical performance, written piece, oral presentation, etc.), the response sequence, the criteria on which judgements are made and the assigning of grades to students (Bernstein, 1996). In contrast, the limited recourse of students to change the parameters of the assessment, avoid being assessed and challenge the judgements and their consequences, are all stark reminders of the comparatively weaker power and control states of the students. Of course, power and control operate within schools beyond the practices of assessment, and yet it is the outcomes of assessment that influence the students’ own power within the school and beyond it. Furthermore, as we will develop later, assessment expectations and outcomes for students and schools are important factors in the operation of power and control within and across the whole system.

Assessment as a message system

These brief examples of the operations of power and control in relation to assessment draw attention to the role that assessment performs in communicating value within an education system. In this regard, we can view assessment as operating as a message system. In describing the forms and control of knowledge production and reproduction in schools, Bernstein argued that the selection, classification, transmission and assessment of educational knowledge could be viewed as occurring through the three inter-related message systems of pedagogy, curriculum and evaluation (or in our current vernacular, assessment) (Bernstein, 1971). Notably, Bernstein proposed that the messages and their communication were the ‘consequence of the interactional practice within a context’ (1990, p. 23), further substantiating our observations of the social bases of assessment in all its forms and purposes. In relation to the critical facets of our sociocultural perspective, Bernstein’s identification of message systems provokes thought about the nature and consequences of particular systemic messages for schools, subjects, teachers and students operating within education systems.

Just as international and national systemic assessment imperatives have an influence on the extent to which subjects such as physical education are valued, assessment practices within subjects communicate values and shape the practices and experiences of key stakeholders therein. Consider that the intention to assess ‘something’ implies that the ‘something’ is worthwhile finding out about. Where some facets of a subject are assessed and others are not, by implication a distinction is made between the relative values of those facets. Similarly, assessment provides a mechanism for assigning value (in the form of grades) to those students who demonstrate the possession of valued knowledge and skills in a valued manner. The learning consequence of engagement with this message of value ascription and representation could be conceived of as the development of one’s perception of value within and of the subject. At a macro level, as we noted in relation to the impact of PISA on curriculum reform, this is evident in relation to the value of subjects themselves. Recognition within the physical education community of the significance of assessment to the value of subject areas is exemplified in Rink and Mitchell’s statement that ‘one unintended outcome of the standards, assessment and accountability movement is that any program [or subject] not included in high stakes state level assessment, for all practical purposes, does not “count”’ (2002, p. 209), and Hardman and Marshall’s equation of the lower status of physical education internationally with a ‘lack of official assessment’ (2000, p. 15).

The common thread concerning assessment beyond and within physical education is the communication of value. This is a key function of assessment and provides a significant basis, in current educational environments, for a peculiar mode of administration where curricular and pedagogical value is communicated via official assessment expectations. The degree of compliance with these expectations within the system is determined by the assessment outcomes of those being subjected to the assessment processes. Notwithstanding the potential negative consequences of pedagogic actions of the message systems (from the macro through to a micro level), recognising the mechanisms through which knowledge is selected, transmitted and assessed also helps us to understand how to optimise the transmission of valued messages. That is, the interrelatedness of the message systems, as well as the fact that the communication of the messages occurs as a consequence of interactional practices in schools (Bernstein, 1990), is important to note as they highlight that effective educational work in schools depends on the alignment and coherence of the three message systems (Penney et al., 2009) and a certain quality of stakeholder engagement within the system.

There has been much written in physical education literature concerning the messages communicated through curriculum and pedagogy, but comparatively less consideration given to the message system of assessment. This is not ignoring the increasing number of articles written about assessment techniques, but rather describing the absence of reference to assessment as a message system, or the effects of the system on physical education and its participants. We believe that this is quite an oversight, given Broadfoot’s observation that ‘assessment procedures are so closely bound up with the legitimisation of particular educational practices’ (1996, p. 87) such that assessment may be the most important of the three message systems.

Clarifying assessment

Having drawn attention to the operation of assessment as a message system, let us take a moment to clarify the language of our own ‘messages’ in this book. Sadler (2005) noted that discussions about assessment were notoriously hampered by semantic differences in the definition of terms and their theoretical and practical employment in education literature. International disparities in the employment and recognition of assessment terms are particularly notable. For example, the term ‘authentic assessment’ has particular currency in Europe, Australia and New Zealand; however, ‘performance assessment’ is the preferred term in the USA. Some would even argue that one or the other is a superior iteration of the intention towards learning-oriented and ecologically valid assessment, a claim that would no doubt be strongly countered by others. We take the view that such debates over what are largely semantic issues are unlikely to be resolved and offer little value for understanding and promoting productive assessment in physical education. Rather than attempting to comprehend and account for all the possible nuanced differences in assessment terms, for the purpose of communicating a sociocultural perspective on assessment we will provide some clarity on the terms that we will be using throughout this book. In this respect we do not view our clarifications as globally definitive, but anticipate that they will provide readers with a reasonable entry into the theoretical and conceptual offerings we are making.

Let us begin by proposing a definition of assessment itself. We employ the term ‘assessment’ in a comprehensive manner to include any action of information collection within education settings that is initiated for the purpose of making some interpretive judgements about students. This definition is deliberately broad and encompasses official and formal measures such as high-stakes standardised tests right through to the day-to-day informal judgements that teachers make on the learning states and progress of their students. The central features of our definition are collecting information and making interpretations. Implicit in these two foundational elements are the assumptions that information will be collected in education settings via various methods and that the information collected will be interpreted in different ways depending upon the purpose of collecting the information and the associated ...