An MTT thoughts on Assessment in PE 

Introduction

As a Master Teacher, I was often asked by PE teachers to share my views and experiences on Assessment in PE. I will relate these experiences when I was heading the PE Department in a local secondary school and an encounter with a member of the senior management when I was at MOE HQ as a curriculum planner. All these occurred about 14 years ago. In my previous school, PE grades were given on the students’ result slips at the end of the academic year. The PE grades were derived based on an aggregate of fitness test results, sport skills tests using checklists and class participation scores. The grades given were no lower than “B” as the PE teachers perceived that no one should ‘fail’ in PE and participation actively in PE was an indicator of good performance. However, the scores did not indicate whether the students have achieved the curriculum standards as described in the syllabus.

On one occasion, the school leader casually remarked, “what did the grades mean to the students, parents, and teachers? And was there a need to assess PE?” I could not answer him at the point. A few years later, when I was an MOE HQ curriculum planner, a similar comment came when I was working on a paper on PE assessment. The senior manager stated candidly that PE is all about letting the students enjoy physical activities, sweat it out and have fun. By assessing or testing them, it would take the joy out of the subject. The perspectives given by the school leader and HQ senior management could be based largely on their perceptions of PE and the role of the assessment in general. With those comments, it had also caused a dissonance in me on how PE assessment can be a vital part of teaching and learning and better accepted by PE practitioners and students. For the students, the general mindset would be PE has no assessment or test as it is supposed to be fun and lots of play with their peers. There is no real impetus to learn and improve in the sports and physical skills. In fact, many frowned when PE teachers used assessment tools like peer observation worksheets or self-check tools. Currently, the impetus for me as a pedagogical leader would be to work alongside teachers to change their views and beliefs on PE assessment. By doing so, not only the teachers’ mindsets towards assessment will change, but it will also influence students’ predispositions to learning and assessment in PE.

The nature of PE and PE Assessment

PE is often positioned in many educational systems as a non-examinable subject and a non-core subject. In Singapore, PE is a curriculum subject in all mainstream schools from primary to pre- university levels. PE must be taught by qualified PE teachers and it is non-examinable. PE assessment is practiced based on local decisions of the schools. In 2008, GCSE O level examinable PE was introduced for the first time as an GCE O level School Initiated Elective (OSIE) subject. Initially, five secondary schools were given the approval by MOE to offer the subject to Secondary Three Express Course level as an elective subject like Art, Music, and Design and Technology. The PE teachers had to be trained and accredited as school-based assessors conducted by trainers from the Cambridge examination board. The subject comprised of Practical and Theory components, and it was assessed locally and moderated by the Cambridge examination board. This was Singapore’s first foray into PE as an examinable subject. According to the schools that offered the subject, the process of assessment was time consuming and onerous both for the teachers and the candidates. 

Whilst it somewhat escalated the profile of the subject, at the same time, it also deterred many schools from offering the subject. Subsequently, in 2018, the subject became a local paper and renamed as Exercise and Sports Science (ESS) GCE O level subject and about 18 schools (approximately 12% of the secondary school cohort) are offering it. Like the predecessor, the subject is equally if not more rigorous. The latter deterred many schools to take up the subject as an elective.

At present, apart from schools who offer ESS O level, PE assessment in the school’s formal curriculum was never perceived by the PE teachers as an important function in their lessons and often perceived as a good to have, and not essential. Most schools still practice summative form of assessment for reporting purposes. For the primary level (Primary One and Two), the teachers would have to assess students and submit the attainment levels into the MOE Holistic Report Card assessment portal at end of school year. Rubrics of the physical skills were provided by the MOE curriculum and policy office to guide and scope teachers with their assessment. When it was first implemented, it caused an uproar amongst the PE teachers and as expected, there were a flurry of questions on how to assess the students and how to validate the attainment levels. As expected, many PE teachers resorted to teaching and assessing by the learning outcomes and most did it as a summative form of assessment at the end of the year. However, there would lie a missed opportunity to inform PE teachers that true essence of the report card was not about teaching to the standards but more of aggregating a series of formative assessment data to form a holistic information of the students’ performance in PE, specifically referring to the fundamental motor and cognitive abilities of the students.

Teacher Beliefs vs Practice

Recently, assessment knowledge and practices amongst teachers had gained traction due to increased awareness through the proliferation of assessment literacy (Skills Future for Educators- SFED). HQ MOE and AST had been rolling a series of assessment literacy workshops and symposiums for school leaders and teachers. For PE, to help teachers better under the assessment planning and processes, the PE Assessment Resource Guide (PE ARG) was designed and rolled out in 2018. The intention of the PE ARG is to support assessment planning and practices in schools. It is also designed in tandem with the implementation of PE Teaching and Learning Syllabus rolled out to schools in 2014 (in phases) and more recently, in 2024.

Firstly, the need to align teachers’ perceptions that assessment, in particularly formative assessment plays a pertinent role in preparation, task designs and enactment of lessons. More importantly, assessment provides the key information for teachers and students to teach and learn better respectively. As Wiliam and Leahy (2015) outlined, formative assessment is synonymous with good assessment and Black and Wiliam (2009) posited that teacher, learner and peers could be an agent of formative assessment. As the PE syllabus and the PE ARG was rolled out separately, it gave teachers the notion that PE assessment was an afterthought, and it was separate (or good to have) in the process of planning and lesson delivery. Granted, great efforts had been made to level up the teachers’ assessment literacy through official communication platforms and PD offerings, the practices by the PE teachers were still very uneven. Assessment for Learning (AfL) practices remained at best; an afterthought and many still relied on summative assessment to derive at an eventual grade for PE. For Primary One and Two, the PE teachers had to key in attainment levels of students as part of the Holistic Report Card.

The “washback” effect described by Xu and Liu (2018) was evident when teachers chose to “teach to the test” and the students strategically, “learnt to pass the test”. Teachers and students were just too fixated on attaining the results and foregoing the educational aspect of learning and applying the skills in authentic context. For example, the PE teachers would spend a significant amount of time to allow students to practice “perfecting” the skill of passing a basketball. However, the skill of passing in basketball would have to be situated in the game and it would involve decision-making about the type of passes to be used in different game situations. In a nutshell, one could do a static chest pass well and yet not become an accomplished basketball player. The latter would be one of the learning outcomes in PE.

Secondly, in the PE ARG, the rubrics (by learning areas and physical activities) and suggested assessment tools are aimed to ease the burden of designing school-based rubrics and tools. Whilst it was generally well received by the PE teachers, at the same time, it created some issues. For instance, teacher competency to interpret the rubrics and its purpose due to lack of subject matter knowledge and experience. Another instance would be how the suggested assessment tools fit into their scheme of work and the knowing the purpose of the tools. Many would attempt to use the tools in the classroom but failed to leverage on the potential of the tools. The latter has the inherent opportunities of involving students in assessment – both self and peer assessment. The teachers would often find the experience too onerous and give up easily citing time and resource constraints. Many would also cite that the students were not keen to partake in the exercise because they just wanted to play and have fun with their peers. Learning physical skills would be perceived as secondary to them. Based on my school-based support for teachers, what I noticed was that PE teachers often forego the practice of informing the students the learning objectives (goals), attainment criteria and how they would be assessed and given feedback. Teachers would generally delve straight in the practice tasks and feedback was often given at the end of the lesson to the class and not the individuals. Hence, students were not given specific feedback of their performance and time for reflection to improve on their skills because the lesson had ended, and the next lesson would be some time away.

For a more sustained and successful assessment practice, some teachers often would invest time to scaffold assessment practices throughout the course of the lessons. For example, I witnessed a PE teacher who started the teaching unit with purposefully designed tasks that enabled students to observe peer’s performances and give feedback to each other. To support the students, they could refer to the cue words written on the whiteboard. Cue words like bent knees, straighten arm and pointing to a target were augmented with demonstration and pictorial illustrations to help students identify the key features of the skills. Over time, students not only developed the habit of observing and giving feedback to peers. They were able to reflect on their own practices based on what they observed and made sense of the success criteria and learning cues. As posited by Klenowski (2009), AfL is the centre of all classroom instruction as it is “part of everyday practice by students, teachers and peers that seek, reflect upon and respond to information from dialogue, demonstration and observation in ways that enhance ongoing learning.” (Klenowski, 2009, p.264). The practice of observing, providing peer feedback and reflection when done consistently over time would eventually develop a positive culture of learning and assessment in a classroom.

Formative Assessment in PE

Whilst the current assessment practices by teachers are varied, there also lies opportunities for teachers to realize the potential of formative assessment in the teaching and learning of PE. It is in part due to PE being a performance-based subject and it is non-examinable. The teachers would not need to be overly concerned with standards and national examinations. The suggested rubrics in the PE ARG would be the main tool that the teachers would use for their assessment for learning. In our local context, the PE ARG is aligned to the MOE PE syllabus and the main communication to the teachers would be to leverage on formative assessment to add value to students’ learning experiences in PE. This notion would resonate with Rinaldi’s (2006) definition of the process of assessment as a decision of what to value add to the learners. 

As the assessment literacy amongst teachers’ levels up, the teachers would move away from assessment in silos to assessment that is fit for a purpose and align to the curriculum outcomes. If teachers embraced AfL, they would begin to gather useful evidence, interpret it and provide information to the learners of what they learnt, how successful (or not successful) their teaching was, and preparation for what would be next to do in a lesson. More essentially, the teacher would empower students to develop an understanding of “what and how they are learning, to recognize and value achievement, and to take responsibility for directing and regulating their own learning. In doing so, the traditional roles of teachers and pupils, and relationships between them are transformed, and in turn the culture of the classroom undergoes fundamental change.”(Swaffield, 2009, p.2). 

I recalled a PE teacher I worked with two years ago on Mosston’s reciprocal teaching style (Mosston, 2006) with a Primary 2 class. In this lesson, the students experienced peer observation using a peer observation worksheet and provided feedback on dribbling skills. The interaction between the students was heartening and the students were effectively engaged throughout the lesson. They were observed to be proactively providing feedback to each other as well as guiding peers to improve on their skills. At the end of the lesson, the teacher said this me, “I never once realized that teaching can be so liberating as I do not need to be the one that went around the class to give feedback and provide individual instructions to students.”

Opportunities to involve students in assessment

Assessment for all?

Will core and personalised curriculum work in PE?

In a recent discussion on educational assessment, the notion of core and “personalized” curriculum thoroughly intrigued me. For PE, core and “personalized” curriculum can possibly fit in very nicely. For example, for the primary level, core curriculum will feature mainly the fundamental movement (i.e. walking, running, jumping) and manipulative (i.e. throwing, tossing) skills. For personalized curriculum, the students make their own decision to select skills that want to excel in. Ipsative assessment fits perfectly well in this context. For example, achieving personal bests in running speed or throwing distances. As the students pursue intrinsically to work towards their best physical performances, their skill set will naturally improve over time. For students in secondary schools, they learn to play organized sports like basketball, volleyball and football. The core curriculum can be the fundamental games skills and understanding the basic concepts and rules of the game. For “personalized curriculum”, the learners can continue to deepen their learning by refining their skills and experiencing the different levels and aspects of the sports. Alternatively, they can learn the game by observing others play and become sports analysts, managers and even coaches. The latter is a very apt example of what authentic assessment in PE can be. The learners will immerse into the authentic settings of sports in the “real” world and as they leave schools, they may not play the sports they had learned anymore, but at least, they will become educated spectators who appreciates sports.

Ultimately, teachers are task designers of learning experiences that consider learners as agents of learning. In PE, the stress of national standardized testing is off-loaded from the teachers and students and hence, it presents a multitude of ways in which the teachers can experiment and explore by having a differentiated classroom. The latter encompasses varied pedagogical approaches to help the learners learn better and go beyond just learning to meet the curriculum standards. Learning becomes intuitive and metacognitive through the various formative assessment practices like self, ipsative and authentic assessment. The prerogative for the curriculum designers, school leaders, middle managers, and teachers are to see the enablers and finding plausible solutions to the barriers. In conclusion, I would like to draw on Saddler’s (2007) definition of learning -   learners can be said to have learned something if they are able to do something they could not do before, on demand, independently and well”. Our greatest achievement as educators will be for our learners to wean off us and continue to practice lifelong learning on their own.

REFERENCES

Black, P.J., & Wiliam, D. (2009). Developing the theory of formative assessment. Educational

Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 21 (1), 5-31.

Boud, D. (1986). Implementing student self-assessment. Sydney: Higher Ed. Research and Development Society of Australia. 

Boud, D. (1995). Enhancing Learning Through Self-assessment. London: Kogan Page.

Boud, D., & Soler, R. (2016) Sustainable assessment revisited, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 41:3, 400-413, DOI: 10.1080/02602938.2015.1018133

Hughes, G. (2011). Towards a personal best: a case for introducing ipsative assessment in higher education. Studies in Higher Education, 36(3), 353-367.

Klenowski, V. (2009). Assessment for learning revisited: An Asia-Pacific perspective. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 16(3), pp. 263-268

Mosston, M. and Ashworth, S. (2008) Teaching Physical Education (6th Ed; First Online Edition).

Spectrum Institute for Teaching and Learning. Retrieved from http://www.spectrumofteachingstyles.org/e-book-download.php [Accessed 21 May 2021].

Q. Xu, & J. Liu (2018). A Study on the Washback Effects of the Test for English Majors (TEM), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1963-1_2

Rinaldi, C. (2006). In Dialogue with Reggio Emilia. London: Routledge.

Sadler, D.R. (2007). Perils in the meticulous specification of goals and assessment criteria. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy and Practice, 14(3), 387-392.

Swaffield, S. (2009). The misrepresentation of Assessment for Learning and the woeful taste of a wonderful opportunity. Presented at 2009 AAIA National Conference (Association for Achievement and Improvement through Assessment). Bournemouth, 16-18 September, 2009.

Tay, H.K., Tan, K.H.K., Deneen, C.C., Leong, W.S., Fulmer, G.W. & Brown, G. T. L. (2019): Middle leaders’ perceptions and actions on assessment: the technical, tactical and ethical, School Leadership & Management, DOI: 10.1080/13632434.2019.1582016

Ryan, A.G. (1988). Program evaluation within the paradigm: Mapping the territory. Knowledge: Creation, Diffusion, Utilization, 10(1), 25-47.

Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. Cambridge, M.A: Harvard University Press.

Wiliam, D. & Leahy, S. (2015). Embedding Formative Assessment – Practical Techniques for K-12 Classrooms. Florida: Learning Sciences International

Contributed by: 

Mr Benjamin Tan, Master Teacher, PESTA

Back to content page.  Click here for previous issues of the newsletter.

Keen to share any ideas or practices, comment on key issues or contribute to the newsletter. Click here for more details.

Be part of the community. Join SPEA as a member. Enjoy members' benefits! We like to thank our partners for their generosity and continual support. 

Stay connected with us at SPEA Instagram Page.