RESEARCH General Education

FITNESS
Teachers accepting of state-mandated physical education norms

Melissa Mitchell, News Editor
(217) 333-5491; melissa@uiuc.edu

3/1/03

Photo by Bill Wiegand Darla Castelli, a professor of kinesiology, says South Carolina's efforts to hold schools and teachers accountable for meeting a more comprehensive set of state standards in physical education is a unique approach.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Because physical education generally has not been considered a "core" subject by educators and policymakers, national and state-based school reform efforts launched within the past decade often have left P.E. sitting on the bench. But when lawmakers in South Carolina began considering legislation to mandate the establishment of state education standards, physical education professionals there stepped up to the plate to ensure their place at the reform table.

"Professionals in the state of South Carolina made a case to be part of the current standards, assessment and accountability movement," said Darla Castelli, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "The South Carolina Physical Education Assessment Program (SCPEAP) is one of the first efforts by a state to hold schools and teachers accountable for meeting a more comprehensive set of state standards in physical education. It is a unique approach to program assessment in that teachers assess students in a sampling of classes, across four student performance indicators."

Passed in 1994, the legislation holds schools accountable for student academic achievement through testing and public reporting of school performance. Before moving forward with the reforms, however, teachers first had to receive training in procedures for collecting data and assessing student performance. Beginning in 2001, Castelli, who did her graduate work at the University of South Carolina, and other researchers there initiated the first comprehensive analysis of SCPEAP’s effectiveness. Results of the study will be reported later this year in a monograph published by the Journal of Teaching Physical Education. Castelli co-wrote two of the chapters, including one with Judith Rink, a professor of physical education at South Carolina, which compares schools designated as having high- and low-performing physical education programs.

Perhaps the most critical shared characteristic of high-performing schools, Castelli said, was a recognition that "individual efforts of teachers – high expectations, enthusiasm and the ability to balance roles – mattered."
Other indicators of success included cohesive, positive departments; strong departmental leadership; effective, regular communication; effective use of student choice in the curriculum; and an active administration that was supportive of policy.

Among the characteristics shared by low-performing schools: teachers acted individually rather than collaboratively as a department; informal procedural communication; perception of conflict among various teaching roles, including coaching responsibilities; lack of curricular choice by students; an ineffective department leader; and a passive administration.

Despite performance differences, Castelli said, 86 percent of the 243 teachers evaluated supported accountability initiatives, and two-thirds indicated they had made changes as a result of the state mandate. "That’s significant," she said.