Quality and Health-Optimizing Physical Education: Using Assessment at the Health and Education Nexus

Background: The United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO) recognizes quality physical education (QPE) must, along with physical, social and affective educative goals, seek to improve the health status of youth (UNESCO, 2015). Health-Optimizing Physical Education (HOPE) is a model of physical education (PE) that seeks this goal but is creating much debate in the discipline (Sallis et al., 2012). Purpose: The aim of this paper is to present a conceptual assessment framework for QPE and HOPE on which future assessment protocols may be based that serve both health and educative goals. Methods/Data analysis: Policy and literature pertaining to QPE and HOPE were reviewed and compared for similarities and differences. This was followed by an analysis of literature on assessment in the health and education disciplines. These analyses provided the authors with the insight to propose a new model of assessment for HOPE models to implement QPE. Results: Many similarities exist in the policy of QPE and the published literature on HOPE. However, the measurement model of assessment can often circumvent two important assessment functions for education settings that need to be addressed in a wider QPE and Models-Based Practice (MBP) context. Conclusions: HOPE models were established using an interventionist mindset and are therefore well suited to integrating well-defined MBP pedagogies as appropriate ‘intervening’ strategies by using a clinical approach to teaching and assessment. To date, they have lacked an assessment framework that has been capable of addressing both the health and educative goals that both HOPE and MBP seek to achieve. This paper provides new insight by reimagining the role MBPs and assessment practices have to play in the health and education nexus.