RAISING THE BAR

An Oregon Professor Helps Bring PE Into the Standards Movement

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By Lee Sherman

Terry Wood of Oregon State University is one of eight PE experts nationwide who crafted the national PE standards, released in 1995 by the National Association for Sport and Physical Education. Widely published in the area of psychomotor measurement and evaluation, Professor Wood was a keynote speaker at the 1998 International Sports Teaching Symposium in Taiwan. Northwest Education Editor Lee Sherman talked with him about the standards and about PE's ongoing evolution.

NORTHWEST EDUCATION:
How has PE changed in emphasis and purpose?

TERRY WOOD:
In the last two decades, we've seen an increased emphasis on movement fundamentals—teaching kids to move properly—particularly in elementary school. There is still an emphasis on sport in the upper grades, but it has shifted to leisure-time physical activity—that is, introducing an array of physical activities in such a way that kids will develop a positive attitude toward health-enhancing physical activities throughout the life span. More recently, we've seen the emphasis expand from education of the physical to educating children in three domains: cognitive skills, motor skills, and what I call psycho-social skills. The psycho-social area includes a multicultural component, and is aimed at helping kids with anger management, conflict resolution, taking responsibility for their behavior, and getting along with diverse populations—including individuals with different sexual orientation. And then there are certain values—habits of mind if you like—they should have, such as an appreciation for physical activity and the beauty of movement. This psycho-social area is receiving increasing emphasis, particularly as we see the increase of violent conflict in schools. The struggle in reforming PE is making the transition from the old to the new PE. It's a transition from a sport-oriented model to a physical-activity model based on content standards along with authentic assessment of students in the three domains. We have teachers who've been in the field for many years, and some of them are still operating under the more traditional model.

NW: How many programs out there are good and sound?

WOOD: I would say that nationally, not a high percentage. Recent research has concluded that insufficient exposure to quality physical education programs is a primary factor in the major decline of the fitness levels of American youth. It's pretty sad. In Oregon we do comparatively well. But we could do a lot better.

NW: Oregon has been out front by including physical education as a content area in its Certificate of Initial Mastery (CIM).

WOOD: Since 1995, I've been involved in the lobby to get physical education into the CIM and get some teeth into it. That just happened in August of last year when House Bill 3307 passed. The bill mandates testing in physical education by the district at the third, fifth, eighth, and 10th grades. In addition, the Oregon Department of Education recently hired a PE specialist to coordinate the development of state content standards so that every program will be on the same page. The legislation mandates that the state Board of Education develop content standards in PE to be implemented by the 2001-02 school year as part of the implementation of the CIM. I'm hoping that they adopt the national standards so we can get moving. We don't have to reinvent the wheel.

NW: What would be the typical sad program you might see?

WOOD: The sad program would be a program that lacks facilities. So you get a lot of kids in a very small space, like a cafeteria with a slippery floor, and you've got to move the tables away. A sad program is one with too many kids and too few teachers, many who are classroom teachers minimally trained in PE. When a teacher spends all of his or her time in classroom management, the best they can do is get the equipment out and say, "OK, let's play some games." They're not teaching skills. I can't blame the teachers for this state of affairs because when you see 300 different kids a week, and you've got them in an inadequate space, what more can you do?

NW: Aside from the Physical Education for Progress bill now before Congress, do you see any sign of interest at the federal level for supporting PE programs?

WOOD: In the last few years there was a resolution passed by Congress for daily physical education. It wasn't a bill, there was no money, but the support from the federal level was a real boon for us.

NW: Symbolically, anyway.

WOOD: Yes, symbolically—that they at least felt it was important. The other significant event on the federal level was the 1996 Surgeon General's Report on Physical Activity and Health. It calls for adequate daily physical education in the lower grades. But we're not seeing a response to that recommendation. We thought that when the report came out, it would have a positive impact similar to the landmark report on smoking tobacco back in 1964—that it would change things. Administrators in education either are not aware of it or they just have too many other things on their plate.

NW: How have the national PE standards, which you helped to develop, been received in the field?

WOOD: The last time I checked, over 2,000 copies had been sold. They can't sell them fast enough because physical educators were demanding direction, and we gave it to them.

NW: Were there conflicts or sticking points among members of the Standards and Assessment Task Force?

WOOD: A major sticking point for us was that we came out with seven content standards, three of which deal not with the physical elements of PE, but with the psycho-social element. Three out of the seven! It really shows the trend in schools today. It shows that PE is prepared to address behavioral management issues and some of the interpersonal skills that kids are really going to need to function responsibly in a multicultural society.

NW: What did you personally argue most forcefully for?

WOOD: Many physical educators do not assess appropriately. So it's hard to show accountability for our programs. That's one of the main reasons physical education programs are cut when there's a budget crunch. I've been fighting for accountability through assessment for years now—that is, we have to grade more effectively, and we have to be accountable for what we do. One of the foundations of the educational reform movement and the national PE standards is the assessment piece. How do you know when your students have met the content standards? You have to assess. That's why in the standards document there's a whole section on performance or "authentic" assessment. I saw it as a key to helping physical education become more accountable and to survive in the educational system.

NW: What's the biggest mistake that physical educators make in terms of assessment? Just not doing enough of it?

WOOD: That's a large part of it. Another problem is the reliance on high-inference grading criteria such as attendance, participation, and effort rather than low-inference criteria such as performance of motor skill and paper-and-pencil tests of knowledge. And there are reasons for that. Part of it is lack of sufficient training. Part of it is that they're inundated with students. They want to get their kids active, they don't want to be assessing all the time. And then just finding enough time during their day for all the paperwork is challenging. Much of the motor skill testing involves observation. While this type of assessment is subjective, when it's done properly with rating scales and checklists it's an effective assessment of one's skill. We have the methods for efficient and effective assessment. What it's going to take is retraining inservice teachers and training the new teachers who are in preservice right now. In the teacher education courses at OSU, we spend a lot of time on skill analysis and assessment.

NW: Do you have any sense of how many people are actually trying to adapt their curriculum to the standards?

WOOD: There are some communities and states that have really immersed themselves and are doing an incredible job. Wichita, Kansas, and Kentucky are good examples. But generally, there's slow movement. There are some states that have hardly started at all. Locally, a few of the larger districts such as Portland and Corvallis have adapted their curriculum to the national standards with some modification. However, my intuition is that the majority of districts have done little. Especially the smaller districts—they don't have the funds; it's a major undertaking.

NW: So many people say, "I hated PE." Do you see these new trends that you described earlier as changing that overall attitude toward "phys ed"?

WOOD: Yes, I do. I wouldn't blame those who say, "I really hated it." The individuals who were good at it liked it. Many of those who weren't naturally good at it—which is the majority of people—didn't like it at all. They felt threatened. A lot of practices that went on were not appropriate. But modern physical education teachers are extremely well trained in how to deal with kids. They're well versed in how to teach movement fundamentals in a way that's fun and enjoyable. If kids aren't interested in physical education, they're not going to recreate when they are adults. And so we spend a lot of time teaching our PE teachers how to make physical education interesting for kids.

NW: On the academic side, reformers are stressing the idea that every kid can learn and every kid can be successful. Yet I think a lot of educators might hesitate to say the same thing about physical education. Do you think every kid can learn to be skillful in movement?

WOOD: The idea here is not to mold kids into athletes. The idea is to give them minimal competencies to increase the chances that they'll want to recreate as adults and have a health-enhancing lifestyle throughout the life span. We have students set individual goals, not compare themselves to someone else. For individuals with a disability, we adapt the program to their abilities. The idea is to help each student reach his or her potential. And remember that students are assessed in the cognitive and psycho-social domains in addition to the motor or movement domain.

NW: Is it important to get parents involved?

WOOD: Parental involvement is critical. We're working hard on not only advocating for physical education, but also getting parents involved in PE with their child at home. If the attitudes and behaviors are not modeled at home, it's difficult for the PE teacher to get the point across. Also, if parents don't understand what's going on in physical education, it's really hard to get support for your program. We work a lot with our preservice teachers on how to advocate for their program.

NW: Do you feel optimistic about the future of PE?

WOOD: Guardedly optimistic. If this country is to come to grips with rising health-care costs, we must focus the health-care system on prevention. One of the most cost-effective interventions is a sound physical education program. Currently, some programs are not as effective as they should be, but we know how to deliver effective physical education. It's a matter of convincing taxpayers, parents, and administrators to provide the necessary resources. As the father of two preschoolers, the bottom line for me is that we owe our future generations nothing less than the best we can offer. So let's get to it.