The teaching and assessment of the content and cognitive domains of two areas of physical activities for examined physical education

The introduction of assessments and examinations in Physical Education led to a shift from a recreational to an educational ideological base in the subject (Carroll, 1994). This resulted in the development of modes of assessment of the practical coursework for GCSE and ‘A’ level PE and Sport Studies that challenged the principles of validity and reliability of assessments. Further to this, teaching the content and cognitive domains (Bloom’s taxonomy) of the practical coursework in the gym and class-based environments, as suggested by the examiners (MEG, 1993) still resulted in unsatisfactory learning outcomes. This led to a study which investigated the teaching of an athletic type and a game type activity to high school students (16-18) in three environments, practice-based classes (n=32), practice-based classes with discussions of a handout at the end of each session (n=27), and class-based sessions (n=38). The teachers’ and pupils behaviours of the three experimental teaching units (ETUs) were analysed using the systematic observation technique CAFIAS. A second study examined the impact of the teaching environments on the assessment of the content (techniques, tactics and rules) and cognitive (knowledge and comprehension, application and analysis, and synthesis and evaluation) coursework of the two activities using an unseen written paper with diagrams and a video based unseen written paper.

The first study showed that the time spent on content emphasis was higher in the class-based ETUs, and that more time was spent on giving direction in the practice-based sessions. The class-based sessions provided more opportunities for teachers and students to communicate verbally. From the second study, ANOVA and MANOVA (repeated measures) procedures revealed statistically significant scores for all teaching environments (p<0.05) of both activities. However, the class-based athletic type activity yielded higher scores on the video based assessment for techniques, tactics, rules, knowledge and comprehension, and application and analysis, while evaluation was best assessed using the written paper to narrow the gap of gender inequalities in assessment. When the game type activity was taught in a practice-based class, the unseen written paper was found to yield higher scores for techniques, tactics, rules, and application and evaluation questions. Nevertheless, a practice-based class did not adequately prepare students for a video-based assessment in game type activities, except for the knowledge cognitive domain. The class-based, and practice and handout groups achieved statistically significant (p<0.05) better scores on techniques, tactics, rules, knowledge and evaluation questions of the video based papers. The findings of these studies are limited to the performance coursework of athletic type and game type activities of GCSE and ‘A’ Level PE and Sport Studies.