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Goal Displacement in Junior High School Physical Education after the PE Examination Reform: Manifestations, Mechanisms, and Correction

Author(s)

Jialin Zhang

Affiliation(s)

Junior High School Affiliated to Huanggang High School, Huangzhou, Hubei, China

Abstract

When physical education is assigned a score in the senior high school entrance examination, the subject gains a standing it did not previously hold. It also acquires a measurable output that is not the same as its educational purpose. This paper treats the gap between the two as goal displacement, that is, a process in which the indicator adopted for accountability gradually takes the place of the aim it was meant to serve. Taking junior high school physical education in Huanggang as the context of observation, three manifestations are described: narrowing of content to the examined events, reorganisation of practice intensity around score thresholds, and reduction of classroom assessment to timing and counting. They are traced to three mechanisms: accountability transmitted through a comparable score, a measurement technique that admits only what is easy to count, and a contraction of the space in which teachers decide what and how to teach. Correction is argued to lie at two ends rather than in a rejection of the examination, namely rebuilding the teaching unit around a learnable sport so that examined events become material rather than the whole content, and redesigning process assessment so that it records progress, participation quality, and understanding of rules. The analysis is theoretical and its proposals are stated as designs to be tested rather than as established effects.

Keywords

Junior High School Physical Education; Physical Education Examination; Goal Displacement; Curriculum Narrowing; Process Assessment

References

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