Improving Fitness Testing in Schools

This website is an ongoing project, with more information and resources being added over time. It has been developed to support Health and/or Physical Education (H/PE) teachers in:

• grappling with current research on fitness testing and fitness education; 

• reflecting on their current approaches to teaching in, through and about fitness testing;

• engaging with student voice as part of their planning;

• developing improved, evidence-based approaches to fitness testing and fitness education.

The information shared below has been developed over the last 15 years, and in conjunction with a range of amazing colleagues, teachers and students. If you have any questions, please get in touch. Alternatively, if you use any of the approaches suggested below, I would love to hear about your experience.

 How do students feel about fitness testing?

Students were asked a range of questions related to fitness testing at different points in time. Before delving into what the students said, it is worth sharing a little about the context.

Who? 48 Year 8 and 9 students in a co-educational secondary college in Victoria, Australia.

What? Students participated in a battery of fitness tests, planned and taught by the teacher. The tests included beep, Illinois agility, sit and reach and vertical jump.

How? Students participated in the beep test as a class, before splitting into small groups and completing the remaining tests in small groups that had been chosen by the teacher. Once each test was completed, students were asked to write their results on a large spreadsheet that listed all students.

First, students  were asked to draw a picture depicting how they felt the moment they were told that they were participating in fitness testing in their next HPE lesson. The feelings that were mentioned the most in the drawings were:

1. Nervous

2. Happy

3. Overwhelmed

4. Anxious

5. Energetic

6. Excited

7. Fearful

8. Hopeful

9. Insecure

10. Surprised

Below are some of the images that were drawn by the students. As you can see, each student was experiencing a range of sometimes contradictory feelings at the same time.  What this tells us is that they responded to news of the forthcoming fitness testing in very different ways, and while some were 'happy' and 'excited' to hear that they were going to be participating in fitness tests, others were 'fearful', 'angry' and 'disgusted'.

After participating in a suite of fitness tests as part of their usual HPE lesson, the students were asked to draw a second picture, this time depicting how they felt immediately after they had finished their battery of fitness tests. The feelings that were mentioned in the drawings the most were:

1. Tired

2. Happy

3. Proud

4. Stressed

5. Embarrassed

6. Excited

7. Scared

8. Weak

9. Anxious

10. Confused

Below are some of the images that were drawn by the students to explain how they felt after participating in fitness tests. Continuing the theme highlighted above, the drawings, and the verbal responses that followed, highlighted the complexity of students' feelings toward participating in fitness tests.

After completing the two drawing tasks, the students were asked a range of questions, including:

• how do you feel during the lesson that you are participating in fitness testing?

• what do you learn when  doing fitness testing?

• why do you think you do fitness testing in HPE?

• are there some things you like about doing fitness testing in HPE? 

• are there some things you don’t like about doing fitness testing in HPE?

• in what ways does fitness testing impact the way you think about your body?

In summary, there was a large range of feelings and emotions related to students' experiences of fitness testing in HPE (43, in total). Interestingly, and as you can see from the drawings above, for most students they experienced a combination of positive and negative feelings and emotions. As you can see from the lists of most popular emotions before and after fitness testing, the students mainly reported positive feelings beforehand (e.g. energetic, excited), along with a few ambiguous (e.g. 'nervous' and 'surprised') and negative (e.g. fearful, overwhelmed) feelings. After the fitness testing however, the majority of feelings experiences were negative (e.g. embarrassed, confused, weak), with the exception of 'happy', 'proud' and 'excited'. That said, interviews revealed that some students claimed to be 'excited it's [the fitness testing] over'. The interviews revealed that the main sources of negative feelings were: i) participating in the beep test as a whole class and; ii) listing their results on a class spreadsheet. Both of these approaches left many of the students feeling 'exposed' and 'judged'.

How can we do fitness testing differently?

The good news is that we already know a few ways to increase the liklihood of students  having a positive experience of fitness testing. According to O'Keefe and colleagues (2021), learners, and boys in particular, tend to have more positive attitudes towards fitness testing, and they view it to be a useful part of their PE. Their research suggest that the two key factors contributing to positive learner attitudes were: (1) the testing was one component of a broader fitness education unit, giving students an opportunity to learn in, through and about fitness testing; and (2) a student-centred approach to administering fitness tests, utilising learners with more seniority to facilitate the administration of fitness testing, served to support learning and the process more broadly. 

Vazou, Mischo and Ladwig et al. (2019) suggest that simple modifications to pedagogy could improve students’ experiences of fitness testing. Drawing on existing research that focuses on fitness testing, we can identify some approaches to teaching in, through and about fitness that can be educative, meaningful and safe for students. For example, teachers can ensure that:

• the testing is one part of a broader fitness education curriculum/unit of work.

• there is clear learning intention and educative purpose for the testing, and that this is communicated to learners.

• the tests that students are expected to participate in are relevant and meaningful to all students’ lives. 

• the process is not rushed, and students have the time to explore, critique and learn in, through and about fitness testing.

• students have the opportunity to reflect on their fitness testing experience, and identify what they have learned, how they feel, how the experience is meaningful and useful to their day-to-day-lives etc.

In terms of how the tests are conducted, learners we have worked with have suggested that they would appreciate having an opportunity to choose:

• where they are tested, with some preferring the option to participate at home, or in an area of the school away from others.

• who they are tested with, with most preferring to participate with a small number (3-5) of chosen friends.

• which tests they participate in, so that they can ensure that the tests are relevant to them and their lives beyond school (e.g. a basketballer might choose to focus on a vertical jump and agility test).

• whether they participate in validated tests or a test they develop themselves.

Students have also been very clear that they:

• want to know the purpose of fitness testing.

• want to be clear on the learning that should be taking place.

• do not want the results to be publicized, but

• want to know how the results are being used, and to what ends.

• do not want to be assessed on their results.

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO READ THE ARTICLE THAT THE ABOVE WAS BASED ON, PLEASE FIND IT HERE: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25742981.2023.2183477

Ultimately, the first step to improving how fitness testing is done in your school, it to ask your students what they think and feel about their past experiences.

From fitness testing to fitness education

You may already have a fitness education unit of work, in which case you might just take some time to reconsider the approaches to fitness testing within that unit.

If your fitness testing currently exists in isolation, the next step would be to start to put together a unit of work. To do that, using a 'backward design' we start by identifying the  'big questions' we need to explore in a fitness education unit. 

'Big Questions'

Depending on the 'age and stage' of your students, these might include:

• what is fitness? 

• how do I improve my fitness?

• what is health-related fitness?

• what is skill-related fitness?

• what elements should be included in a fitness plan?

• what are training principles? How do I use them to help me develop a fitness plan?

• how do I monitor and evaluate my fitness plans?

Once we have identified the 'big ideas' we need to explore in a fitness education unit, the next step it to commit to some relevant learning outcomes that we want our students to achieve by the end of the unit.

Learning Outcomes 

In an Australian context, teachers need to provide opportunities for students (Year 7 and 8) to learn and demonstrate that they can investigate and apply movement concepts and select strategies to achieve movement and fitness outcomes (Achievement Standard). More specifically, students need to demonstrate that they can:

• participate in physical activities that develop health-related and skill-related fitness components, and create and monitor personal fitness plans (Content Description, ACPMP083).

The Content Elaborations suggest that this can be achieved via:

• performing physical activities that improve health- and skill-related components of fitness and analysing how the components are developed through these activities;

• measuring heart rate, breathing rate and ability to talk in order to monitor the body’s reaction to a range of physical activities, and predicting the benefits of each activity on health- and skill-related fitness components;

• designing and monitoring a personal fitness plan that proposes realistic strategies for maintaining fitness, health and wellbeing.

Once we are clear on what components of the curriculum we are working toward achieving, the next step is to decide how we are going to assess students' abilities to demonstrate they have achieved the intended learning outcomes.

Assessing Learning

If we focus on the content description in the first instance, we see that we need to assess students' abilities to do two key things:

1. 'participate in physical activities that develop health-related and skill-related fitness components' 

2. 'create and monitor personal fitness plans'.

Important to note here, is that with the context of HPE the focus is always on students demonstrating learning and not fitness (though the former may lead to the latter).

In deciding how to assess these learning outcomes, a few questions could be raised. For example:

• what will the success criteria be?

• how might we differentiate when assessing participation? For example: Enthusiam/effort? Proficiency? Range of activities and/or skills? Leadership? Personal and social capabilities during the activities? Such questions lead us to think about,

• what will students monitor in relation to their fitness plan? For example: Validity and reliability of measures? Enjoyment? Adherence to the plan? Impact of the plan on health-related and skill-related fitness components (noting that physiological improvements in fitness can take several weeks to occur)? or likelihood of the plan having an impact if followed for 12-16 weeks?

Your answers to these questions are dependent on many factors, including your students, and there is not necessarily a 'right' way to respond to the above questions. 

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Once we know how we are going to assess learning we can continue to 'backward plan', and start to think about what activities could support students in achieving the assigned learning outcomes.

Planning for Learning

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