Testing in Physical Education

Unfortunately, most people, when they think of testing in physical education, center on fitness testing, such as the President’s Council’s Physical Fitness Test. It is our opinion that emphasizing physical fitness is too narrow an assessment. In reality, there are four main domains of physical education. These four are: acquisition of motor skills, physical fitness, knowledge (strategies and rules of the game; plus benefits of physical activity, how to learn motor skills and mechanical analysis of movement, to name a few) and physical activity-related personal-social skills (such as best effort, sportsmanship, cooperation and others). A quality assessment of physical education is to include evaluation of each of these four main content areas (motor skills, physical fitness, knowledge and personal-social). Missing one of these evaluation areas in physical education would be tantamount to skipping the evaluation of division in math, verb usage in language arts, the Constitution of the U.S. in social studies or biology in science.

For starters, testing allows the teacher to tailor-make the curriculum. Simply put, if your students do well in the mile run/walk, but perform motor skills poorly, the instructor should increase the emphasis on teaching a variety of fundamental, object control and rhythm skills. Testing also allows the teacher to design a special program for a student not progressing as desired.

Testing also helps an instructor measure curriculum effectiveness. If the emphasis has been on throwing and catching yet the students do poorly on a throwing and catching test, something is wrong. This tells the instructor that the teaching strategies did not work or that the school does not schedule adequate time for physical education class.

Testing also justifies the curriculum.  Let’s say the next year the  curriculum changes and student motor skill scores improve. Testing provides concrete evidence that the instruction, and the changes in the curriculum, made an impact on children’s learning and acquisition of skills.

Finally, testing gives motivated students incentive to become physically active. For example, testing allows Motivated Mary to see that she needs to acquire more knowledge, fitness, motor skills, etc. As a result, she may begin running after school and improve not only her school mile run/walk time, but also her aerobic fitness level.

The above reasons are much more educationally sound than testing only for grades. Viewing testing as an evaluation of teaching, learning, the curriculum and school environment is a much healthier and more holistic approach to assessment.

As you read these evaluations, keep these key definitions in mind:

1. Validity: The extent to which a test measures what it is supposed to measure.
2. Reliability: Dependability of scores, their relative freedom from error.

• Very simple to give.
• Distance long enough to determine aerobic power rather than speed.
• Reliability rather high.

• Could be a bit longer. Students can often “gut” it out, making it a test of motivation rather than fitness.
• Kids can see where they finished, causing poorly performing students embarrassment.
• Often hard to motivate students to perform to their ability level.

• Short.
• Simple to deliver after the course is laid out.
• High reliability.

• Tests speed rather than aerobic power.
• Often difficult to lay out a course which is 600 yards long.
• Validity questioned.

Equipment: A tape player, a PACER cassette tape, marker cones, lines measured 20 meters apart and a score card and pencil for each student.
Pros

• Easily done indoors.
• Most like the treadmill test with its progressively building tempo.
• A generally reliable and valid test.

• Requires more equipment than most other tests.
• Often difficult for students to learn.

• Very simple.
• Students not compared to others to the same extent as in the mile run/walk and the 600-yard run/walk.
• Long enough to test aerobic power rather than speed.
• A generally reliable and valid test.

• The length of the test often scares students.
• Determining normative data for the test often proves difficult.

• Pulse recovery rather than a performance test.
• Shorter.
• Students not visually compared to anyone else (usually).

• Very low validity and reliability.
• Depends too heavily on people’s pulse rates. Natural differences can change results.