STRATEGIES FOR CONTENT DEVELOPMENT

STRATEGIES FOR CONTENT DEVELOPMENT






There are no national curriculums in physical education, and there are few state or local curriculums to which physical educators are held accountable. Physical educators are therefore largely left on their own when establishing goals and instructional programs. Lack of accountability has produced much diversity. It has given the creative teacher the opportunity to more nearly match programs to student needs. It has also resulted in many poor programs-programs that have no identifiable pedagogical goals or programs that bear no relation to their stated goals.
Judy Rink (1985)

This chapter focuses on program building. All of the experiences that students have in physical education in a particular school represent that school's program. Physical education is the subject matter, and the activities done in physical education form the content of that program. Everybody would agree' that those experiences in physical education ought to add up to something significant in the lives of students. Thus, the content of the program must be developed to achieve goals that will affect the lives of students who experience the program. While that, sounds appropriate and even easy, it is not! Developing the content of a physical education program requires a set of decisions about what goals to strive for and what activities to use to achieve those goals. It also requires technical planning skills to develop a series of learning experiences for those activities—learning experiences that achieve the goals which define the program. Not ail physical teachers plan well because they do not have serious goals for student learning, as Box 10.1 indicates.
To develop content for a program, there¬fore, you must involve yourself in two fairly distinct and different undertakings. The first thinking about your subject matter and establishing a set of goals—involves reflection, valuing, sensitivity to local considerations, and making tough decisions among some attractive choices. The second—technically planning the content development—involves both a thorough knowledge of the activities and planning skills such as task analysis and instructional alignment.
Planning an exciting, attractive, useful program is a fundamental aspect of becoming a skilled, professional physical educator. Putting that plan into action on a daily basis represents the important culmination of thoughtfully choosing goals and activities and skillfully planning content so that students engage in a series of learning experiences that gradually help them achieve the goals of the program. Reflection, decision making, and planning, however, should not be thought of as ends in themselves. Teachers are not good because they develop good-looking program plans or carefully devised unit plans. They are good when program and unit planning pay off in better teaching and more learning.

The Professional Context for Planning
Nearly every school district in America has a curriculum syllabus for the subjects taught in its schools. Some states also have syllabi for all subjects taught in the schools. Generally, these curriculum guides include both a set of broad objectives to be achieved in the subject and a list of activities that are thought to contribute to those objectives. The objectives for physical education are most often categorized as (1) motor skill, (2) fitness, (3) knowledge, and (4) social development. The words used as labels for these categories differ from place to place, but most objectives can be placed in these four areas. There are usually a large number of activities listed in the district curriculum syllabus (sometimes referred to as a Graded Course of Study). If teachers program activities that are not among the approved activities in the district syllabus, they are at risk for liability if an injury is sustained, because the activities were not "officially sanctioned" parts of the curriculum. Thus the most common practice is to include in district syllabi most activities that might be taught in physical education. These activities are sometimes grouped into areas such as aquatics, team sports, individual sports, cooperative games, basic movement, adventure activities, and dance. In some larger city districts, there might be a prescribed yearly program that requires teachers to follow a sequence of activity units chosen by a supervisor or district committee.

This tradition of defining a program through broadly conceived curriculum syllabi has resulted in the situation described in the quotation that opens this chapter. The fact is that most physical education teachers can, over a period of time, substantially influence the program they teach to students. The overall lack of accountability for specific outcomes in physical education allows teachers to develop programs that are very good—and can let programs deteriorate until they become very bad.
The elementary physical education specialist typically works with other specialists in a district to establish an overall elementary program. Within the general guidelines, the individual teachers are left to plan and deliver that program according to their own interests. The middle or secondary school physical educator typically works with colleagues within a school—and to a lesser extent with other middle and secondary colleagues at other schools in the same district. Again, however, the opportunity for variation exists even among teachers within the same school's physical education staff. These situations represent the typical professional context for developing a physical education program.

What Is the "Good" in Physical Education?
Developing the content of a physical education program starts with decisions about activities and goals. The most often cited curriculum development model (Tyler, 1949) suggests that goals should be established and then activities chosen to meet those goals. For example, following this goal-driven planning model, a teacher would first establish that cardiovascular fitness was a primary goal and then would examine activities to ascertain the degree to which they could contribute to that goal. Most evidence, however, suggests that teachers' primary concern in planning is with the activity chosen rather than the goals to be reached (Stroot & Morton, 1989). For example, a teacher might learn about Team Handball and decide that it would be a good activity to include in a program. Regardless of whether you begin by examining various goals to be achieved or by thinking about various activities that might be included in a program, you are, at that point, making some fundamental decisions about your views of physical education.
What is the "good" that students acquire when they experience a physical education program? Is it fitness? Skill in sport? The development of cooperation and attitudes about competition? Is it an aesthetic experience? Is there some kind of personal meaning to be derived from activity that defines the essence of physical education? Or is developing a sense of oneself as a competent mover or player the primary good to be achieved? These issues need to be confronted. They are not about the technical planning of syllabi, units of instruction, or daily lesson plans. They are about the "stuff" of physical education. They are about answers to questions like "What am I trying to accomplish?", "What am I contributing to the lives of these students?", or "How do I want my students to be different as a result of completing this program?". Answers to these questions involve values and personal visions.
Different visions of the "good" should, of course, lead to a different programs. That is where the technical skills of content development and planning units of instruction become central. Suffice it to say at this point, if you believe that the "good" is a personal commitment to and knowledge about lifetime fitness, then your program should be substantially different from that of someone who believes that the primary "good" is to play well and enjoy a variety of sports. Your program will be different still from a teacher whose personal vision is for a physical education that results in people becoming confident, competent movers.
There appears to be no consensus within the profession on what constitutes the primary "good" to he achieved in physical education. As Box 10.1 "Differing Visions of the 'Good' in Physical Education" indicates, there are at least eight curriculum models that compete in contemporary physical education, representing different visions of the "good." That may be one reason most of the "goods" described above are typically included as goals in physical education program planning. There has been a growing consensus nationally, however, that not all "goods" can be achieved in any one program—and that trying to achieve too many goals results in little achievement in any area.

The generally accepted goals of physical education are to promote physical fitness, self-esteem, and cognitive and social development. However, the practice—the proliferation of and emphasis on teaching too many activities in too short a time—has made these goals more difficult to attain. The smorgasbord approach of requiring team sports, individual sports, dance, physical fitness activities, all within the space of one school year lessens those students' opportunities to master any one activity through which they can meet the stated goals. (Taylor & Chiogioji, 1987, p. 22)
This tradition of trying to reach multiple goals through a varied program of activities is called the multiple activity curriculum. It is the traditional approach to developing content for physical education. Although it has recently has been questioned seriously, it continues to represent the most common approach to programming physical education.
The arguments against a multiactivity approach have resulted in a renewed interest in what I call main-theme programs,. that is, programs that have a clear sense of a more limited "good" and arrange sequences of activities to achieve that good.
The (good) programs stood for something specific. We learned about good fitness programs, good social development programs, and good adventure programs. Each of the programs had a main focus that defined and identified the program. (Siedentop. 1987, p. 25)
Main-theme programs develop because the physical educators responsible for them had a vision about what was the primary "good" to be achieved and then developed content to achieve that vision. A certain theme becomes an organizing center for a program—the central thrust around which content is developed to meet goals.

Developing an Equitable Curriculum
While a teacher's personal vision of the "good" is a powerful and legitimate influence on content development, it is also important that the physical education experience serve students equitably. One important question that all curriculum planners should ask is "What groups are best and most served by this curriculum?" Are males better served than females? Are those interested in competition better served than those interested in an aesthetic experience? I believe that curriculum planners have an ethical responsibility as professional educators to develop curricula that serve students who are different and especially those who traditionally have not been well served in physical education. Griffin and Placek (1983) have offered the following suggestions for equity in curriculum planning.
1. Include the elimination of gender/race stereotyping and discrimination as a goal of the curriculum.
2. State curricular objectives in language that is nonsexist/nonracist.
3. Provide a balance of activities that accommodate different physical abilities and interests; for example, quickness, strength, finesse, aesthetics, strategy, power.
4. Actively encourage participation in activities that have been traditionally stereotyped by race or gender.
5. Group students by ability and size whenever possible.
6. Use evaluation strategies that do not penalize developmental differences among students.
10.1 Differing Versions of the "Good" in Physical Education
Placek (1983) studied a number of physical education teachers to deter-mine how they planned and what they saw as indicators of success in teaching. The responses led her to conclude that when students were well behaved, physically active, and having fun, their teachers felt as if they had achieved success. Achieving specific learning goals—no matter how they were conceptualized—was not how these teachers judged their success. Instead, they saw themselves as successful when students were busy, happy, and good.
Sherman (1979) also studied teacher planning in physical education and concluded that teachers planned primarily for well-managed classes and engagement in activity, rather than for specific learning outcomes.
Stroot and Morton (1989), on the other hand, studied effective elementary physical education specialists and found that student learning was clearly evident as the main objective in their planning. The visions of these elementary specialists differed; that is, each had a different view of what was most important in physical education. However, they all had a view that related directly to student learning, and they all planned activities so that students could achieve the goals of program.
Here are two activities that can help you come to grips with your own visions about physical education and examine them in light of those of classmates or colleagues.
1. Secure a physical education syllabus from a local district. Could you carry out your vision of physical education and still fall within its guidelines? Could classmates who have differing visions do the same? What does that mean?
2. Have each member of class (or colleagues) prepare a rank-ordered list of "goods" that define physical education. Limit the lists to four or five outcomes. Then collate the lists with number is getting 5 points, number 2s getting 4 points, and so forth. Is there consensus?
Physical education has been a content area where certain groups have sometimes been put at a disadvantage and suffered as a result—the lesser skilled, the overweight, and females, for example. Program-level planning is one place where action can begin to ensure that this doesn't happen.
Factors Affecting Program-Level Planning
Too many programs are planned for the achievement of a wide variety of goals in ideal circumstances. Good program planners are always conscious of practicing the "art of the possible." They are aware that programs need to achieve real results to be valued by students, administrators, and parents. Once a program is achieving important results, it can be expanded and become more daring, more ambitious. While some program planning might start from ground zero, it is more likely that you will do program planning by selecting goals and activities from a district syllabus and then developing content to achieve those goals. Regardless, the following factors will need to be considered.
1. Your own personal vision of physical education. You are a professional person and have the right—the obligation—to pursue your own vision of what constitutes a good program. You are more likely to plan and teach well if your program reflects your own interests and visions. Whine this is not the only factor you can consider, it perhaps should be the initial one.
2. The nature of the local district. You will need to consider the values and norms of the community where you teach. These values and norms may favor some activities more than others, such as outdoor winter activities in the Northeast. There may be sanctions on some activities, such as religious sanctions about social dancing. Over time, a physical educator can help to change the values and norms of a community as regards physical education, but to ignore those values and norms at the outset is a mistake.
3. Facilities and equipment. It would be foolish to ignore facilities and equipment when developing content for a program. The size of the indoor space, the kind of surface on an outdoor space, the accessibility of a pool, and the provisions for specialized activities are important. Equipment can be purchased or made, but it takes time to build an equipment inventory. Since early success in programs is important, it makes sense to initially develop a program that "fits" your facility and equipment. However, to use limitations in facilities or equipment as an excuse to delay program development is equally foolish. The physical education literature is replete with evidence of how seemingly inadequate facilities have been developed and how activities can be modified to fit facility and equipment constraints.
4. The educational programming within the school. Typically, physical educators have to fit their program within the larger program of the school. Open classroom elementary schools, flexibly scheduled middle schools, alternative high schools, or modularly scheduled schools each present different programming formats for physical educators. This is one of those issues that "you can't know until you get there!" This factors requires that physical educators be able to rearrange their sense of program—especially time—to meet the schedule of the school.
5. The status of the learners. While in most cases teachers can assume that they are serving a normal population of students, it is possible that groups within a school or even an entire student body might have special needs. For example, fitness testing may reveal an unacceptably low level of cardiovascular fitness or very poor upper-body strength. Students may have substantial access to team sport instruction in the community but very little opportunity to learn more recreationally oriented individual and dual sports such as tennis and golf. These factors might cause you to consider a program to serve these needs better.


The combination of these influences will affect content development for your program. Considering them carefully and realistically will help you avoid problems and optimize your chances for initial success. Success in your program will build support from fellow teachers and administrators, as well as increase the interest and enthusiasm of the students you teach. From a solid base of success and support, you can then begin to work toward developing your program further. As you do, you no doubt will struggle again and again with your vision of what constitutes the primary "good" of physical education. That continuing struggle is important for you to stay alive as a concerned professional.

Choosing the Content—Selection of Activities
The organizing center of a program is the main theme that defines the "good" of physical education in that program. Once a main theme is selected, it remains to choose activities that will form the content for the program. It is precisely at this point that program planning often breaks down. Activities are sometimes chosen because they are "neat" or because it is "that time of year," rather than for the degree the activities contribute to the main theme. The following guidelines are helpful for selecting activities.
1. An activity is "appropriate" because it contributes to program goals. "Appropriate" in this case is a relative term. If your main theme is sport education, then golf and tennis are "appropriate" activities. If you have an adventure theme, then repelling and climbing are "appropriate" activities. Team Handball is a wonderful sport that would contribute to a sport education theme. However, golf is not an "appropriate" activity for a fitness curriculum, nor is aerobics "appropriate" for an adventure or sport curriculum.
2. Successful programs accomplish goals. If you are to err in planning, it is wise to err in the direction of trying to achieve too little rather than too much. Limited goals—a fewer number of activities—are easier to achieve than a large set of goals and many activities. Doing activity units well takes time. There is reason to question whether an "exposure" program accomplishes anything of lasting value (see Box 10.3 "Does Physical Education Suffer from Overexposure?"). If you want your program to be successful, choose a limited number of goals and develop a limited number of activities to reach those goals. This assumes, of course, that the goals you are trying to accomplish are learning-oriented, rather than keeping students busy, happy, and good.
3. Know what you are doing. The activities you choose become the content of your program. Teachers should know their content well, because without that knowledge it is difficult to develop content thoroughly. Choosing activities you have limited experience with results in inadequately developed content. How much space does the activity take? How can it be modified? How are skills and strategy best refined? How should equipment be modified? To answers these questions typically requires that you know the activity well.
If you choose activities that do indeed contribute directly to the goals implied in your main theme, if you know those activities well enough to develop the content appropriately for the learners you serve, and if you provide sufficient time for those learners to make meaningful gains in doing the activities, then you will have taken huge strides toward establishing a successful program of physical education.
10.2 Differing Visions of the "Good" in Physical Education
There are at least eight curriculum models that compete in contemporary physical education. Each of these models represents a different vision of how the "good" in physical education should be conceptualized and developed into a program. The eight models are as follows.
1. Developmental education. The traditional education ¬through the physical approach using a multi-activity program to accomplish broad developmental goals of skill, fitness, knowledge, and social development.
2. Humanistic physical education. A social development model in which activity outcomes are secondary to a growing sense of self, responsibility, independence, and cooperation.
3. Fitness. Typically, fitness models focus on lifetime fitness and emphasize health fitness and its related knowledge components of exercise and nutrition. Such programs are increasingly called "wellness" programs.
4. Movement education. A model in which moving competently, confidently, and intelligently become primary outcomes and aesthetic, cooperative activity is valued over competitive activity. Learner decision making is emphasized and teaching strategies are typically discovery-oriented.
5. Kinesiological studies. Also called the "concepts curriculum," this approach focuses on blending activity experiences with knowledge about activity that is derived from the subdisciplines of physical education. A more "academic" approach, this model emphasizes cognitive and attitudinal outcomes over skill and fitness outcomes.
6. Play and sport education. This model emphasizes developing competent players who understand and value the best of sport traditions and outcomes. Emphasis in this model is on strategic play rather than isolated skill development. It place4kudents in roles as coaches, referees, and record keepers.
7. Personal meaning This model emphasizes the fact that individuals derive different kinds of personal meaning from physical education, and that creating and enhancing that meaning is a primary goal. The purposes of students are given central focus in development of program content.
8. Adventure curriculum. This model emphasizes self-development through risk and adventure activities. Cooperation and personal knowledge are emphasized, and the natural environment becomes the primary educational space.
Sources: Jewett & Bain, 1985; Siedentop, 1990.

Developing Content: Knowing Where You Are Headed
Whether you are developing content for a one-year high school program or a seven-year elementary school program, you need to know what you want to happen as outcomes for the program. Content is always developed in a direction—and you should first develop the final destination so it can provide the necessary guidance as you proceed. The final destination of content is developed by establishing terminal goals—statements describing student performance that should occur reliably as a result of participating in the program. It is only when you know exactly what you want students to be able to do at the end of your program that you can begin to decide what needs to be done within the program to get them to those points.
Terminal goals should be defined as meaningful units of performance, which are performances that are useful for settings other than the instructional setting. For example, in programs in which the content is sport—where sport serves as an organizing center—terminal goals should be defined in terms of game settings rather than as isolated skill performances. Terminal objectives for tennis should be defined in terms of playing the game of tennis rather than as executing skills in nongame settings. This also means that "passes a test on tennis rules" is not a meaningful terminal goal. Instead, a goal such as "while playing, scores game correctly and identifies rule violations correctly" would be more appropriate.

Box 10.3 Does Physical Education Suffer from Overexposure?
How many times have you heard a physical educator say that his or her goal was to "expose" students to a game or activity? What is implied in such a statement is that the teacher doesn't really have expectations that students will learn a great deal or improve in the necessary skills and strategies of the game or activity, but will instead just "get to know it a little." Far too often, from my point of view, students get exposed to volleyball somewhere in the fifth or sixth grade, then exposed again to volleyball in the eighth or ninth grade, and then again in the senior high school program. Because each of the efforts is aimed at exposure, students never get beyond beginning skills and seldom can play at a level higher than that for "backyard" volleyball. I believe that this represents serious "overexposure."
One of the major lessons of recent teacher effectiveness research is that effective teachers hold high, yet realistic expectations that students will not only learn a great deal but will continue to learn and improve in whatever is the subject matter being studied. There is no thought to merely expose students to reading or mathematics. Students are expected to learn and to continue to learn and improve from day to clay, month to month, year to year.
For effective teaching to occur in physical education, someone must care that students learn and improve. In many schools—far too many—the school administrators do not care as much as they should. Thus it is clear that if the physical education teacher does not care about learning, then quite likely few others will.
Haven't we all "exposed" students long enough to volleyball, tennis, golf, and a host of other games and activities? And, how many games of kickball and bombardment need to be played before students are "over¬exposed"?
Skill and strategy goals therefore should be defined in terms of game play rather than in nongame settings. Knowledge goals, too, should be defined in terms of how the knowledge should be used in applied settings, rather than displaying the knowledge in an artificial setting, such as a written test. Attitudinal, social, and emotional goals are much more difficult to define, yet the same principle needs to be used—they should be defined in terms of their meaningfulness in noninstructional settings. Developing good attitudes toward lifetime fitness, for example, can be defined in terms of students volunteering (that is, choosing) to take part in intramural aerobics or joining the school bicycle club. Developing appropriate emotional control in competitive settings can be defined by player behavior toward referees, teammates, and opponents. Social qualities such as cooperation can be defined in terms of situations in which students can help each other—and then do. Here are some examples of program-level terminal goals of meaningful student performance (defined here without specifying the activities).
• During games, students will call their own violations accurately and assess the appropriate consequence (this goal includes knowledge of rules and emotional control to call their own violations).
• During games, students will execute appropriate offensive strategies called for by the situation.
• In noninstructional time, students will choose to take part in lifetime fitness activities.
• When participating in activities that involve risk, students will use appropriate safety techniques specific to the activity.
• In games, students will utilize skills appropriate to situations and will execute those skills with appropriate technique.
• When planning exercise programs, students will adjust factors of intensity, duration, and frequency to accurately reflect their current status and desired improvements.

Developing Progressions to Achieve Terminal Goals: Getting There
Once you know where you are headed, you have to decide how to best get there. To understand how to get there, you should first know where you might be starting from; that is, what will be the level of skill and understanding of the students when they will enter the program. As a trained professional educator, you will know this in a general way from your study of motor development, elementary physical education, and secondary physical education. This general knowledge will allow you to develop content by planning progressions that lead to terminal goals. The application of these progressions, however, will always be specific to the students taught in any particular place and time. Experienced teachers know that you can teach two fifth grade classes in consecutive time blocks and require very different progressions to adequately meet the developmental differences in the two classes. Nonetheless, developing progressions becomes an important technical skill in developing content. Developing progressions is where knowledge of content and knowledge of teaching come together—what Shulman (1987) has called pedagogical content knowledge; that unique blend of content and pedagogy that is the special expertise of the teacher.
Progressions are learning tasks that move students from less complex, less sophisticated performances to more complex, more sophisticated performances, and eventually to the kinds of meaningful performances that represent the goals of the program. Teachers communicate progressions to students through a series of instructional tasks within a lesson or unit, and, from year to year, across units in the same activity. Rink's (1985) model for developing progressive instructional tasks is widely used in physical education. Initial tasks serve to inform the student of a new skill or strategy. Subsequent tasks serve to refine the quality of the performance, to extend the performance by altering it slightly, and to apply the skill or strategy (Rink, 1985).
1. Refining the quality of performance. Perhaps the most neglected, yet most important kind of progression is the sequence of learning tasks through which students improve the technical quality of performance—what Rink (1985) calls refinement tasks. Teaching fourth- through sixth-grade children how to shoot a basketball one-handed is a typical example. One-hand shooting can be introduced with a demonstration and explanation of the four or five critical performance elements that define the skill (an informing task). Students can then practice this skill and perhaps will do so every day of the basketball units in the program. But the skill should be refined. The position of the shooting hand will not always be correct. The shooting elbow will move improperly to the side. The off-hand will be either too dominant or not act sufficiently as a guide. The flexion of the knees will be too late, too early, or not apparent. It is through a series of refining tasks that students become more aware of the technical components of good shooting so that the quality of their shooting improves. Each skill or strategy tasks that a teacher introduces will need to be refined. In refining tasks, the conditions of practice do not change. Only the focus of student attention changes as different technical elements of the skill or strategy are emphasized. Success in skill and strategy requires quality performance, and that should become the teacher's goal. Refining tasks can't always be fully anticipated. Teachers must use information about the performance of their students to develop progressive refining tasks.
2. Within-task progressions. Both skills and strategies need to be simplified to begin with and then gradually made more complex. Think of building content in the track and field part of a program; for example, the shot put. The basic task—putting the shot—will not change, which means that right from the outset a legal "put" rather than a throw is taught. However, few would begin to teach shot putting by having students start at the back of a shot put circle and then teach the glide and put in their mature forms. Instead, a series of within-task progressions are taught—Rink (1985) refers to this as intratask development. You might begin with an implement that is lighter than a standard 6-pound elementary shot and students stationary in the final putting position, focusing on hip and shoulder rotation to provide force for the put. Regardless of where you begin, you would have to refine the skill demanded in that task before you extend the skill with a slightly more complex task, which then would again requite refinement before moving to still another more complex task. Rink (1985) refers to within-task progressions as extending tasks, those that change the complexity of performance. The refining-extending cycle, repeated over and over again, forms the central core of content development in physical education. Knowing what to refine and how much to extend—for the specific learners you are working with—is perhaps the most important ingredient of expert planning.



Table 10.1 Examples of Refining Tasks and Extending Tasks
Situation: Basketball, one-hand shooting, novice or young learners. Initial informing task: Square to basket, ball in possession, stationary position, close to basket.
Refining tasks:
• Shooting hand spread behind ball.
• Off-hand supporting (not pushing or leaving go too early).
• Elbow toward basket (not toward side).
• Ball at head level (not brought down).
• Knee bend to generate force (rather than just with arms).
• Press toes to generate force (keep ball high).
• Emphasize wrist snap with ball "rolling" off fingertips.
• Coordinate knee bend and toe press.
• Extend wrist and flex elbow as knees are bent.
• Keep eye on rim.
Extending tasks:
• Pivot away, pivot hack to square up position and shoot.
• Receive pass from teammate, square up and shoot.
• Shoot from different angles, but always squared up.
• Gradually extend distance from basket.
• Back to basket, pivot, square up and shoot.
• Move to spot, receive pass, square up and shoot
• Dribble to spot, square up, and shoot.
• Shoot from spot, move to next spot, receive pass, square up and shoot.
Note: Keeping a class shot chart where students keep track of their shooting prictice each day can produce the accountability needed to keep students on-task.

3. Between-task progressions. When planning a program that begins with either novice learners or young learners, it is necessary to consider progressions between tasks that are thought to be related. For example, moving from the scissors jump to the Fosbury style in developing high jump content, from a one-hand set shot to a jump shot in developing basketball content, or from 3-versus-3 strategy in soccer to a full-sided game with more players in a larger space all represent different tasks rather than variations of one major task. The progressions among them become important building blocks in developing content for a program. Between-task extensions need to be thought through carefully. Teachers sometimes assume that tasks are progressions when they are not. To be a progression, one task would have to be related to another in terms of common, critical performance elements (see section on task analysis page 189). I would argue that the underhand volleyball serve is not a progression for the overhand serve—even though the underhand serve might be used for young or novice volleyball players. The technical demands of the two skills are too different for them to be a skill progression. The scissors high jump, on the other hand, contains virtually all of the beginning technical elements that students will need when they eventually learn the Fosbury style, so those two tasks are a legitimate progression.

Instructional Alignment: Doing the Right Thing
Progressions should be thought of as instructional tasks that lead to terminal performance goals. Earlier in this chapter, I argued that terminal performance goals should be developed as meaningful units of performance, which were defined as performances useful for students in settings other than the instructional settings; that is, playing games well, skillfully negotiating wilderness settings, participating competently in fitness activities, and the like. As refining and extending tasks are designed to help students progress toward terminal goals, it is important that instruction be aligned so that they have the best chance for success.
Instructional alignment exists when there is a match in the stimulus conditions of intended outcomes, instructional processes, and instructional assessment. In other words, instructional alignment requires a match between goals, practice, and testing. There is substantial evidence to suggest that well-aligned instruction produces achievement results that are two to three times stronger than nonaligned instruction (Cohen, 1987). To understand the concept, let's first examine a nonaligned situation—a mismatch. Suppose you state terminal goals for volleyball that focus on the appropriate execution of skills and strategy in game play. However, most of your instructional practice tasks are isolated skill drills whose conditions do not reflect the conditions of game play. Your testing consists of forearm passing against a wall, set-passing with a partner, and a serving test for accuracy. In this example, the stimulus conditions of practice and testing are seriously nonaligned with those described in the terminal goals.
Developing volleyball content so that better instructional alignment exists using the same "game play" terminal goals—requires that instructional task progressions be defined by the conditions of the game situations in which they might occur. Isolated skill practice is replaced by different kinds of "mini-scrimmage" situations. Testing or evaluation is done during game play rather than in isolated skill-testing situations. Either a qualitative assessment of skill and strategy during game play is made, or statistics are kept on players (serve percentages, returns, sets, kills, blocks, and so forth) and those are used for assessment purposes, much as they are on volleyball teams.
The concept of instructional alignment requires teachers to think seriously about the nature of the goals they have for their students and how they can arrange task progressions that meet those goals. Using assessment procedures that are highly aligned with the goals helps to ensure a better match. "Teach what you test and test what you teach" is an old adage in education. It is often violated in physical education.
Box 10.4 instructional Alignment Exercise
Here is an exercise to help you practice and understand the concept of instructional alignment. Assume you are developing content for basketball. You are at that point where you are thinking about designing progressions for the skill of passing. Assume, too, that your terminal goals are for students to execute passes appropriately in game settings.
If you were planning to begin instruction with novice learners or with fifth grade children, where would you begin with this skill? Remember, the notion is to arrange the conditions of practice tasks so they match the conditions stated in your terminal goals.
Would you allow students to "travel" as they begin practicing passing; that is, allow them to drag a pivot foot as they pass?
Would you ask them, as an extending task, to use the "other foot" as a pivot foot in practicing passing tasks?
What kinds of passes do you most often see in a game at the middle or junior high school level? Would you spend more time practicing those passes rather than a two-handed chest pass to a partner who is not far away and with no defender present at all?

How and when would you introduce the presence of a defender? How would you gradually increase defensive pressure, or would you just allow it right away?
What are the most important critical technical elements of passing that you would need to plan to refine?
What are the most common passing errors made by beginning learners? Finally, do you think you know basketball well enough to complete this exercise with confidence?

It is worth repeating that to effectively refine student performance of skill or strategy and to carefully align the conditions of outcomes, instruction, and assessment, you must know a great deal about the activity for which you are planning. As Cohen has suggested, this need to know quite well the subject you teach brings us full circle to the issue that began this chapter.
Teaching what we assess, or assessing what we teach seems embarrassingly obvious. The fundamental issue is: What's worth teaching? This is the same question as: What's worth assessing? We can either know what we're doing, or not know what we're doing, but in either case, we'll be doing something to other people's children. Do we not have an ethical obligation to know what we're up to? (Cohen, 1987, p. 19)
If instruction is well aligned with goals and assessment procedures, then it
will allow students many opportunities to practice relevant skills and strategies in situations similar to those in which they will he used. Rink (1985) has referred to these kinds of tasks as applying tasks. It is clear that a particular instructional task can serve both to refine a skill or strategy and still be an applying task; that is, the stimulus conditions of practice can be such that they are aligned with terminal goals, even though the major purpose of the practice might be to refine or extend the performance of a skill or strategy. Thus both refining and extending tasks can be defined so that they serve as applying tasks, too—and, when they do, instructional alignment is more likely.

Closed and Open Skills
If the execution of skill and strategy, as in sport performance, becomes important content in your sense of appropriate physical education programming, the distinction between closed and open skills should affect how you develop that content. Closed skills are performed under standard environmental conditions (Gentile, 1972). The shot put is a good example. The size of the ring, the weight of the shot, the dimensions of the sector into which it is put, and the rules for putting are all standard. Open skills are performed under changing environmental conditions, so that responding effectively to the changing environment becomes most important. A basketball guard dribbling down court to initiate an offense is a good example. The guard contends with differing defensive configurations, each of which might cue a different set of offensive options. Defensive pressure changes, as do the conditions of the game itself—time remaining, score, and the like.
The closed-open distinction is best understood as a continuum, with the most skills performed under most constant conditions at one end and skills performed under most variable conditions at the other. Sport skills are placed on the continuum according to the conditions under which they are performed, as shown in the following diagram.

Developing the content of closed and open skills differs markedly. The more closed the skill, the more emphasis will be on refining technique. The goal is to develop a consistent, high level of technique that is per¬formed invariably. The more open the skill, the less time will be spent on technique and the more time will be spent on extending tasks that cover the variety of situations where the skills will be used. The goal is to develop performance that is appropriately responsive to the changing demands of a game setting. One of the major error, an error in instructional alignment—physical educators make when developing content for open skills is that they treat them as if they were closed skills, with the conditions of practice constant instead of variable.



Accountability: Driving the Instructional Task System
In Chapter 5 it was shown that instructional task systems are driven by formal and informal accountability—and that in the absence of accountability the instructional task system can be suspended. What happens in the total absence of accountability for performance in the instructional task system depends on two things: (1) the focus of the managerial system in which students might have to look like they are making an "effort" and (2) the interests and motivations that the students have for the subject being taught.
Accountability refers to all of the practices teachers use to establish and maintain student responsibility for task involvement and outcomes. The clearest form of accountability is the grade-exchange opportunity—what we typically refer to as testing or assessment. Grade exchanges occur infrequently in most physical education classes, often only at the end of a unit. Effective teachers utilize many different kinds of accountability mechanisms to keep students strongly on-task and motivate them to improve their performance. Among these account¬ability mechanisms are:
• Public challenges with result reporting, such as "Shoot from the six spots
with your partner rebounding" and then "How many made 3? 4? 5? 6?"
• Recording scores, such as keeping records of time on a fitness circuit and recording daily results on a class poster.
• Carefully supervising practice and noting successes publicly, such as monitoring the practice of a volleyball bump and set drill and, at the end, noting the several practice groups who did particularly well.
• Carefully supervising practice and providing specific feedback and general support, such as monitoring the practice of a serve-and-return tennis practice task and providing support for students working hard and technical feedback to students making errors in critical element of the skills.
• Building accountability into the practice task, such as designing a dribble, pass, trap, and tackle soccer task into a mini-game by providing students a way to keep "score."

The point to be made in including a discussion of accountability along with the planning is that teachers need to build accountability into their task progressions if they expect students to stay on-task and be motivated to improve their performances.
Accountability should not always be thought of as an "extra" but, instead, should be integrated with the instructional task itself. Eventually, if instructional tasks are designed so that practice conditions are aligned with meaningful terminal goals, students will become more and more motivated by cluing the task itself—which is typically referred to as intrinsic motivation.

Extending your Program in Nonattached Time
As you develop content for a physical education program, you will begin to repeat one phrase again and again—"There's not enough time!" Physical educators everywhere feel as if they don't have enough time to meet program goals. There are only two ways to react to this fact of professional life. First, you can adjust your terminal goals downward to realistically fit the amount of time assigned for instructional classes. Second, you can try to extend your program time by having students participate in nonattached time. Nonattached time refers to school time that is not part of regularly assigned physical education class time. Examples are recess time in elementary school, intramural time, study period time in high schools, or club and special activity time.
In a recent study of effective elementary physical education specialists (Jones, et al., 1989) it was found that weekly allotted class time was between 45-80 minutes, well below what is thought to be appropriate for the elementary school. However, each teacher studied had found ways to extend his or her program to nonattached time. If you want your program to have a greater impact on students, then extending its influence to nonattached time becomes an important goal.
There are several prerequisites for effectively extending your program to nonattached time.

1. Students must be motivated to participate, because participation in nonattached time is not required. Thus you must make your program attractive and find "reasons" for students to participate. For example, you might give class soccer teams extra points in their competition if they practice as a team at recess time. You might have track and field events to practice during the time you are doing track and field as a class unit—and if students can improve their performance in nonattached time, it will "count" for their class performance. You might have interclass competitions within sport units. You might develop a mass aerobics session three times per week, train student leaders, and let students choose their own music.
2. To benefit from practice during nonattached time, students must be on their way toward being independent learners. Activisity during nonattached time is only minimally supervised. To stay on-task and benefit from practice during nonattached time, students must know what to do and how to do it, without having to be told by their teacher. This suggests that activities during nonattached time should be familiar, and the routines necessary to practice should be well established.
3. Students like the social nature of affiliation with a group. Practice during nonattached time seems to work better when students have membership in a group. For example, the class team that practices during recess forms an affiliation and has social implications. Belonging to a weight-training club that meets twice per week allows for social interaction and membership. Being able to go to aerobics with your "friends" becomes an informal group membership. These affiliations not only make social interaction more likely and fun for students (don't forget the student-social system) but also create moderate pressures for students to attend regularly and take part.