Theme:

Assessment Literacy: Theories and Practices

The importance of the issues of assessment is essentially six-fold:

• Assessment is an integral part of the curriculum planning and development and PE teachers should be familiarize with the major concepts.

• There are varied conceptions of how assessment may be used for facilitating learning and teaching in PE namely “assessment of learning”, “assessment for learning” and “assessment about learning” that warrant our understanding in full.

• There are different interpretations of issues while implementing the assessment practices namely “criterion and norm-reference reference”, “formative and summative”, “objective and subjective”, “internal and external”, “informal and formal”, “validity” , “reliability”, “credibility”, “trustworthiness”, “performance based”, “standard based” and “learning outcome framework” and “authentic” etc. that require our clarification.

• The Curriculum Development Council (2002a) states that “assessment should have an encouraging and motivating effect on learning” (CDC, 2002a, p.64). Assessment should reflect students’ learning progress, help them understand their achievement in learning, strength and weaknesses and provide information for teachers to appraise their effectiveness of the programme so that measures for programmatic improvement can be initiated.

• In response to the report “New academic structure for senior secondary education and higher education” (Education and Manpower Bureau, 2005), two consultation documents concerning the new senior secondary curriculum and assessment framework for PE have been proposed (CDC and HKEAA, 2005). In the documents, two types of assessment including “internal” and “public” were proposed in the coming PE curricula in senior secondary schools in Hong Kong. Particular attention is needed to address the issues.

• Understanding, modeling and promoting good assessment practices will enhance the quality and culture of assessment in PE. Acquainting PE teachers with assessment literacy has been identified as an initiative to improving PE in Hong Kong.

Aims:

Through different programmes initiated in the Summer School for PE teachers, the organizing committee seeks to:

• Create more awareness of the role assessment that plays in PE curriculum development and practices for promoting teaching and student learning in schools.

• Share good and innovative curricular and pedagogical practices designed to enhance learning and teaching through PE.

• Disseminate and promote effective curricular and pedagogical practices with particular emphasis on assessment.

• Enhance further PE teachers’ competence in teaching newly developed and cultural content of PE in schools.

• Promote PE teachers to develop suitable, relevant and innovative school-based curricular and pedagogical practices.