ABSTRACT
In preceding chapters we have outlined the basic premise that assessment can be viewed as a system or technology for defining and communicating value in educational settings, and demonstrated the way in which this valuing occurs in the development of systemic assessment practices and official curricular expectations. Our attention now turns to the enactment and outcomes of assessment in the classroom and, specifically, the practices of assessment in the physical education class. With this focus it quickly becomes apparent that the sites of teaching and learning are where the work of assessment to define and ascribe value is perhaps most acutely experienced by students and teachers alike. These are the contexts where teachers plan assessment tasks and programmes, collect information and make judgements about their students’ progress and achievement, and report this information to various stake-holders. As several researchers have demonstrated, the experience of being assessed and the outcomes of that assessment are significant contributors to students’ understanding of what is valued in a subject (Redelius and Hay, 2009), how the students themselves are valued and how they view their own value in and beyond the subject (Reay and Wiliam, 1999; Hay and Macdonald, 2008). Thinking about a physical education class from the perspective of students, we can recognise that, through participation in activities that are formally identified as assessment, tasks or ‘events’ signal very openly to students the relative value that is accorded to particular abilities and/or performances in physical education.
