Students’ participation in the assessment of learning and performance in team games

Jean-François Richard, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Department of Elementary Education and Educational Psychology

Faculty of Education

Université de Moncton

Paul Godbout, Ph.D.

Professor (Retired)

Department of Physical Education

Faculty of Education

Université Laval

Ste-Foy, Québec

Games and sports are a major part of most physical education curricula (Werner, Thorpe, & Bunker, 1996). During the past twenty years, there has been a particular focus in the way games and sports have been taught. Tactical approaches to teaching games such as “Teaching Games for Understanding” (Bunker & Thorpe, 1982) have been developed based on the fact that more traditional approaches of teaching games, such as a technical approach, have demonstrated themselves to be not very efficient in helping students’ understand, perform and consequently better appreciate games and sports. Controversy still exist pertaining to the most efficient teaching strategy (Rink, 1996). However, the fact remains that whatever the approach used in teaching games (technical or tactical), when emphasis is placed on solving tactical problems, there is a need for measurement procedures and instruments that adequately assess students’ performance in actual game contexts with regards to different assessment scenarios (diagnostic, formative, summative).

Traditionally, game performance has been assessed using standardized tests. This type of testing strategy only reflects a student’s technical performance. Also, standardized tests are conducted outside of an actual game play situation. Consequently, this type of assessment strategy does not reflect a student’s global performance and his/her game understanding very well. In an authentic assessment perspective, different assessment procedures have been surfacing in the sport pedagogy literature in order the remedy this situation. One of these procedures was developed by Gréhaigne, Godbout and Bouthier (1997). The Team Sport Assessment Procedure (TSAP) is intended to provide teachers with objective data on student performance in different invasion and net games while avoiding standardized tests. Several studies have looked at different issues related to this peer assessment procedure in elementary and middle school (grades 5 to 8) physical education classes (Richard et al., 2000; Richard, Godbout & Gréhaigne, 1998; Richard, Godbout, Tousignant, & Gréhaigne, 1999). From this previous work, two new studies are currently in progress. The purpose of the first study is to verify the TSAP’s contribution to students’ knowledge (i.e. tactical knowledge, critical thinking skills) and performance in modified basketball game play. Based on a tactical approach to teaching games, the effect of the TSAP in a formative assessment scenario will be compared to more traditional methods of formative assessment (i.e. standardized testing, teacher feedback, etc.).

Since validity and reliability of the TSAP have been established at the elementary and middle school levels for basketball related activities, the purpose of the second study is to continue the validation process and to verify elementary and middle school students’ precision and reliability using the TSAP with different games that present either a different type of interaction between teams (i.e. net games such as volleyball) or a different way of manipulating the projectile (i.e. soccer). Based on recommendations by Richard et al. (2000), the establishment of validity and reliability of the TSAP (or any other type of assessment procedure for that matter) with games that present different types of interaction or object manipulation may not be direct and automatic.

It is hoped that the results of these two studies will help teachers and teacher educators to better understand how this type of peer assessment procedure can be utilized in order to effectively reinvest assessment data into students’ construction of tactical knowledge and performance in team games and sports.

This project is supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (410-99-1263).

References

Bunker, D. & Thorpe, R. (1982). A model for the teaching of games in secondary schools. The Bulletin of Physical Education, 18(1), 5-8.

Gréhaigne, J.-F., Godbout, P., & Bouthier, D. (1997). Performance assessment in team sports. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 16, 500-516.

Richard, J.F., Godbout, P. & Gréhaigne, J.F. (2000). Students’ precision and reliability of team sport performance. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 70(1), 85-91.

Richard, J.F., Godbout, P. & Gréhaigne, J.F. (1998). The establishment of team-sport performance norms for grade 5 to 8 students. Avante, 4 (2), 1-19.

Richard, J.F., Godbout, P, Tousignant, M., & Gréhaigne, J.-F. (1999). The try-out of a team-sport assessment procedure in elementary and junior high school PE classes. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 18 (3), p.336-356.

Rink, J.E. (Ed.). (1996). Tactical and skill approaches to teaching games and sports [Monograph]. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 15(4).

Werner, P., Bunker, D., & Thorpe, R. (1996). Teaching Games for Understanding: The evolution of a model. Journal of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, 67 (1), 28-33.