On being accountable: A challenge to physical education teachers and PE-CPD providers..

Throughout history, there has been a tendency to make extravagant claims at a number of different levels for the benefits and outcomes of PE. A recent UN resolution (2003, 58/5), for example, proclaimed 2005 the International Year for Sport and Physical Education “as a means to promote education, health, development and peace”. The chances are, however, that if peace does break out across the world soon or, indeed, does not, PE & Sport won't be held accountable. PE teachers, too, can make grand claims. In my own research, teachers identified an ambitious mix of health and social goals as the intended learning outcomes from their PE programmes (Armour & Yelling, 2004). Claims made for the outcomes of professional development for PE teachers (PE-CPD) can also be rather optimistic. For example, a new National PE-CPD Programme for teachers in England specifies five key outcomes, including the claims that it will raise the attainment of all pupils and enhance links between PE and physical activity/health. Yet, such claims can be made precisely because it is unlikely that teachers, or CPD providers, will ever be held fully accountable for them. Thus, even though the National CPD programme has sound quality control processes in place and is being evaluated independently, it is most unlikely that the attainment of all pupils will rise as a direct result of this programme no matter what PE teachers do. What is important in all this is that by fudging the issue of accountability, we neatly avoid having to make the kinds of dramatic changes to curriculum and pedagogy that such claims warrant. In other words, we write the words and make the claims but they are so far removed from the minutiae of daily practice that they can rarely be challenged.

Claims made about the impact of PE on increasing physical activity for health provide a useful illustration of the accountability challenge. If physical educators are to have any serious impact on young people's physical activity levels, and by that I mean an impact for which they are willing to be held accountable, then it seems clear that they shouldn't continue with some current practices because they don't appear to ‘work' for many young people. On the other hand, the suggestion that PE can't be held accountable for low levels of physical activity leaves it in the rather odd position of claiming to teach young people about the benefits of physical activity, while taking no responsibility for the outcomes of that teaching. And what of the role of PE in tackling the reported (albeit contested) obesity ‘epidemic' (Evans, Davies & Wright, 2003)? It is widely accepted that attempting to encourage young people to be physically active as part of a strategy to tackle obesity or overweight is far from straightforward. As Locke (2003) has pointed out, claims that PE can deliver physically fit or even merely active young people (and adults) would need to be supported by robust evidence, and the record on this is not promising. Yet, we may also need to accept that the growing credibility of research on the links between physical activity and health (e.g. Hardman & Stensel, 2003) has the effect of raising expectations about what PE could and should offer in this field.

Of course, in reality, taking an accountability stance towards PE soon leads to a series of thorny questions. Here's just one: if physical education teachers are to be encouraged to make realistic claims for the learning outcomes of their teaching, then should we expect teachers to make ever more ambitious claims as they become more experienced? If the answer to that question is ‘yes', then it would appear to indicate there is an implicit assumption that teachers are learning continuously and progressively throughout their careers; but are they? It is surely stating the obvious to remind ourselves that initial teacher training is supposed to be just that – initial. It implies that there is further learning to be had throughout a career, through in-service training or continuing professional development (CPD). However, as I have argued in a previous article on this site, there is a fundamental problem with CPD. It is worrying to note that we know very little about the impact of CPD upon teachers' learning or, more importantly, pupils' learning (Borko, 2004; Sandholtz, 2002). In other words, CPD providers are rarely held fully accountable for what they do. Moreover, I have argued elsewhere that there is a problem with PE-CPD. My own research in this area (Armour & Yelling, 2004) has found that much of the CPD available to PE teachers (in England at least) is simply inadequate. For example, an analysis of experienced PE teachers' CPD profiles revealed that their CPD was dominated by one-day, off-site, sport up-date ‘courses' and there was little or no evidence of challenge, progression or learning coherence. As one teacher commented:

Furthermore, as much of the professional development reported in this study was organised in the form of generic ‘courses' undertaken out of the school context, it struggled to meet the specific learning needs of individual teachers and their pupils. In other words, PE-CPD for these teachers was the very opposite of what the research literature defines as ‘effective' i.e. that which is embedded, sustained, collaborative and reflective (Guskey, 2002; Sparks, 2002; Garet et al, 2001).

Our PE-CPD programmes might look very different if CPD providers were willing to be held fully accountable. If some of the grandiose claims for PE-CPD outcomes were replaced by claims that were realistic, one result might be that professional development would be effectively downscaled, becoming more closely aligned to small and doable changes that are required to improve pupils' learning. The outcome of such a downscaling could be far from insignificant. Knight (2002, p.235) notes that in effective ‘learning schools' it was at the level of practice that “a culture of continuous tinkering was an engine of professional health, renewal and learning” Similarly, the WestEd (2000) study of low performing schools that were ‘turned around' found that ‘starting small' was a key feature of successful professional learning, and Fishman, Marx, et al (2003) argue that it is impossible to link teacher professional development to pupil learning where the goals of CPD are too broad. As Kubitskey, Fishman & Marx (2003) argue:

Without detailed research to demonstrate how teachers' learn in different CPD settings, and how that learning impacts on pupils' learning, we are unlikely to know whether PE-CPD has been ‘successful'. Moreover, as Stein et al (1999) point out, we should remember that CPD providers will also need support to learn new ways of working if teachers' CPD is to change. Indeed, more accountability could be a daunting prospect for PE-CPD providers, particularly those wedded to a traditional, model of provision. In this traditional model, the learning trail leading from CPD provider to teacher to school context and finally to pupils is long and uncertain. On the other hand, if the planned learning outcomes from a PE-CPD activity can't survive such a trail, then what is the point of teachers doing professional development at all? I would argue, therefore, that focusing on accountability for teachers' and pupils' learning from CPD might result in radical new approaches to PE-CPD provision.

In focussing explicitly on accountability for learning outcomes in PE and PE-CPD, I am not suggesting that we should value only those outcomes that can be measured at a crude level. Rather I am urging a critical and cautious approach to making public claims about the benefits/outcomes of PE, particularly those claims made for all pupils. Thus, for each claim that we make, we should ask ourselves four searching questions:

• Can we really support this learning claim as articulated; do we have evidence to suggest we can achieve it?
• If not, why are we claiming it (often a very revealing question)?
• What exactly should we/could we claim: what is realistic and doable?
• How will we gather and use evidence to underpin any claims made?

Importantly, there is no suggestion that the accountability challenge should be met by any one sector of the physical education profession alone; instead this is a challenge for teachers, teacher educators, professional development providers and researchers. Slavin (2004, p.27) reminds us that ‘research in education has an obligation to answer the “what works” questions that educators, parents and policymakers ask…'. I would argue that claims made for the benefits or learning outcomes of physical education programmes should be underpinned by evidence-based knowledge of what is achievable and what ‘works'. The task, therefore, is to engage in a radical re-examination of our core purposes, assumptions, outcomes, responsibilities and, crucially , accountability structures.