Reframing educational assumptions in PE and Sport - with clarity!

Dear readers,

Based on the popularity of last week’s post about reframing in qualification PE, I have decided to follow up with a second post about one (or to an extent, two) elements of last week’s post.

Last week, I wrote that the concept of student ability should be reframed to student performance. I also argued that student ability had little to nothing to do with student performance in qualifications such as GCSE PE, A-level PE or BTEC Sport or any other PE qualification you wish to consider. I really believe that I need to restate this point:

Student ability –whatever that is– has no relationship whatsoever with student performance in courses such as GCSE PE, BTEC Sport, A-level PE, etc.

Please ponder this statement carefully. Please, now consider all the assumptions and school/college systems that suggest or are based on the idea that student ability is linked to student performance. Would it be fair for me to state that almost all school/college systems contain this assumption? Maybe it’s not all. But it’s a lot! Now, what if this weird, PE-blog-writing fella (a description of myself) is right and the assumptions that our school protocols are based on are wrong?

So, what does research say about IQ, ability, brain power or whatever other term you want to use about intellectual ability? In essence, this is a summary of the research:

• IQ is generally recognised as a measure of reasoning and processing.
• IQ is a very controversial measure of “general intelligence”. It can be considered unfair or unrepresentative as can any derivative of an IQ test.
• Many aspects of intelligence are unmeasured and, probably, unmeasurable.
• There do appear to be intellectual “geniuses” or outliers in the human population and this level of ability may affect a person’s capacity to perform very, very, very high-level processes.

So, if my summary of ability research is reasonable, what does this mean for students in schools or colleges taking a GCSE or even A-level PE course? I argue that it means that ability/intelligence/IQ/Midyis/SATS/11+ or any other standardised test cannot and will never be able to measure student learning potential nor predict performance. Furthermore, where ability/intelligence/IQ does seem to have an impact on performance is at the very, very, very top level. Think Einstein… think Curie… think Mozart… think Garvey.

Yet, in this context, I am arguing that the concept of “student ability” is falsely linked to student performance all the time in schools/colleges.

Why? Seriously, why?

I want to take things a little further and make a statement about how I work with the concept of student ability with my own students, classes and my own children:

I see student ability as:

1. highly unlikely to be what I perceive it to be;
2. unmeasurable;
3. not associated with student performance in GCSE or A-level PE;
4. not controllable as a variable in the learning and teaching cycle.

Therefore, whatever student ability is, it is DEFINITELY completely irrelevant when it comes to student performance in something like our PE courses. Uff! That feels heavy and it worries me how readers will interpret it. However, I stand by these statements.

We should recognise that ability/intelligence/IQ does impact performance at the very, very top end of thinking and performing. However, I think it is fair to say that GCSE PE is not the highest echelon of human performance. Therefore, my belief is that ability is irrelevant in this context.

So, according to James/me, student ability is completely irrelevant to GCSE PE, BTEC Sport or A-level PE performance. It is not a variable of value. Therefore, in my opinion, student ability should be awarded exactly 0% of focus and time in relation to student performances on these courses. In other words, I ruthlessly neglect student ability in the context of learning on GCSE PE, say.

So, what are the variables of value? What should we be focussed on?

I have previously written my success criteria for student behaviours and, ultimately, student performance and it looks like this:

You can download the full PDF version of this image and supporting documentation here (or by clicking the image above) and use it as a stimulus to discuss things with your colleagues or even students.

Be cautious how you interpret the words in the image above. Be cautious with “behaviours”, for example. This is not referring to being a “well-behaved student”. This has to do with the learning behaviours that cause deep and sustained learning. Be careful with “resources” because this is more specific than it may seem. Read below, for more clarity:

Whenever I present this equation to colleagues I do so philosophically rather than mathematically. It is not an equation that one should add numbers to (I tried this for about three years). Rather, it is a thought experiment and that experiment is this:

What if every single factor influencing student performance in a GCSE PE course, say, was contained in that equation? What would it do to my course structure, classroom model, support of students, homework model and teaching? What might change? What if student ability was not included in that equation at all.

It’s not by the way.

So, just for a second, consider what it would mean if I/James/this weird PE fella was right? What if? What if? What if?

What if we collectively decided we were going to refocus our collective energies in more productive learning and performance-focused ways? What would it mean? What would happen?

Finally, to wrap up my ramblings, I want to leave you with an anecdote. The first time I walked into a GCSE PE classroom as a trainee PE teacher at Archway School in Stroud, Gloucestershire –a brilliant school, by the way, and one I am deeply proud to be associated with–  I knew something was wrong with that classroom. I knew deep down. I knew it in my gut, in my heart or in my soul. I knew it but I didn’t know what was wrong or why. I didn’t know what was wrong with the rows of desks and tables with the teacher zone at the front.

Now, I believe I do know what and why and I also believe I may, and I really stress may, have a potential solution too.

Now, if that’s not a cliffhanger, I don’t know what is!

Thank you for reading. Have a lovely day.

James