Analysis and Strategies of College Physical Education Reform

Through the investigation of the status of college physical education, this work analyzes the crisis existing in the physical education curriculum. Reform plans and strategies are proposed on the teaching objectives, teaching contents, methods of organization, evaluation criteria, venues, equipments and teaching staffs, with the aims of providing guidelines and references to the ongoing physical education reform in colleges of China.


Introduction
In 2002, the Ministry of Education of China issued the general teaching outline of college physical education.It clarified the teaching objectives of physical education.Provincial Committee of Education integrated and compiled the teaching materials.Colleges composed their curriculums and criteria of physical education respectively.Due to the different levels the colleges are at and different geographical regions the colleges locate, they exhibit big difference in the situations in physical education.Some of the colleges need teaching reform and some need proper regulations.Through the investigation of the reform situations of physical education of 50 colleges, search of physical education and other related materials and observations of the curricular and extra-curricular activities carried out, the authors explored the construction of new teaching system consisting of general college physical education objectives, content, organization methods, evaluation criteria etc. Changes also were proposed on the current situation of physical education, such as limited curriculum setting and invariant teaching mode.The current curricular form of physical education is mainly in elective course.Most of the physical education courses are competitive sports instead of sports of leisure and recreation.There is also lack of focus on the theory of physical education teaching, which also results in incomplete access criteria and system on students' performance and health.According to this situation, the reform plans and strategies are proposed in order to provide guidelines and references to the ongoing physical education reform in colleges.

Research targets
50 general colleges and universities nationwide, including 12 national key universities and 38 normal universities/polytechnic colleges.

Research methodology
2.2.1 Interview method: interviews were carried on among colleges with deans who are in charge of physical education and physical education department heads, as well as discussions and seminars on the research of physical education teaching method.
2.2.2 Survey method: 50 questionnaires were sent, with 48 retrieved (feedback rate of 96.2%).Prior to distribution, the questionnaires were conducted a validation test by 15 experts in related area.100% of the participating experts believed that the questionnaire is feasible and has high validity.Questionnaires retrieved were tested using the small scale re-measurement method and to carry out a reliability test (r = 0.83 and 0.788), indicating that the questionnaire has high reliability.
2.2.3 Literature review method: information was accessed and collected on sports in schools, colleges and universities of monographs, papers, reports and related archives.
2.2.4 Mathematical statistics method: according to the research purposes and requirements, the relevant data derived from survey results were statistically processed and analyzed.

Physical Education Curriculum Status
In the survey of 50 colleges and universities, all of them have physical education 2-hour-class once a week.Basic physical education course are available for the first year students and the options of specialized sports courses are available for the second and third year students.Sports electives are available for the fourth year students.Many schools have organized sports clubs in recent years and turned the instruction of sports electives in the form of sports clubs.The master students are also required to take the sports electives, including basketball, volleyball, soccer, track and field, martial arts, aerobics, swimming, artistic gymnastics, table tennis, badminton, tennis etc.For the first and second students who are verified by hospital to be not suitable to participate in intense sports, they are provided the courses of physical health improvement.The content of physical education theoretical courses are sports training methods, sports health, sports competition rules, the value and function of sport, leisure of sports and sports technical principles, of 2-4 hours per week per semester.Physical performance evaluation is to convert sports results, theoretical results, compliance achievement and attendance into a percentage of assessment.The colleges of China have more rigorous form of physical education.The curriculum of physical is lack of variation and too much emphasizes on the leading role of teachers.The teaching methods merely emphasize on the 'one-side instruction', which makes teaching into the form of forcing.This traditional type of methods results in the strong dependency of students on teachers and deprives students of innovation and initiative.

The form and status of current physical education teaching
From the statistics of the survey results, the main form of college physical education courses are sports electives, followed by the combination of traditional physical education and specialized sports.Each university manages to compose syllabus, textbooks and teaching materials according to their own situation.The purely traditional form of physical education teaching has been abandoned by the majority of colleges and universities.However, there is lack of guidance and encouragement from teachers to let students form interests in sports and habits of taking excises.Therefore, many college students seldom take excises after the physical education course; some of them even prefer to be the audience of sports competition rather than participating in it.The final results are the fitness of college students in recent years declined dramatically.

The status of physical education theory courses
In college physical education, the situation of overlooking the teaching of sports theory is still quite serious.The contents of physical education course are mainly the teaching of sports skills and training of physical fitness.The physical educational excises and activities limited the students for a long time on the scope of improvement of physical health and proficiency of sports skills and theories.The overlook of the exploration of enhancing college students' intellectual and psychological capabilities through physical education greatly constrained the functions of 'overall education'.In the survey of 50 colleges and universities, only a small number of colleges maintain the physical education theory class up to 8 hours per semester.Most colleges and universities only hold theory class for 2 hours per academic year.Over the years, the college students exhibit great contrast between their lack of sports knowledge and the relatively high IQ of Chinese college students.Among the 50 colleges and universities surveyed, only 23 of them have set up healthy education seminars and talks, which is contradictory to "establishing the guiding idea that health has the first priory in school education".

Course evaluation method
Methods of evaluation in teaching lack of validity and scientific supports, with too much emphasis on skills and fitness assessment.The methods take use of traditional standard and 'one ruler' like exam-oriented approach of test.This test method has its advantages but also obvious drawbacks, which mainly does not consider well enough for students' study attitude and progress.It ignores the differences between individual student and overlooks the students' initiatives of study.This traditional method of evaluation lack of consideration of the subjective efforts of students and the improvement on skills and tactics, resulting in serious hurts on the students, especially the learning initiative of 'students poorly performed in sports'.

Reform of teaching methods and organizational form
According to the current realities, during the first year, the physical education course should mainly emphasize on the improvement of fitness and general proficiencies of basic sports skills.In the second year, the courses should mainly foster students' interests and specialized sports skills.The reason is that there is no systematical and institutional physical education before college in many parts of China; some places even do have physical education at all.It is believed that in the future, with the growth of economy and improvement of physical education system, our organizational form will have significant changes.The forms with great variety, flexibility and freedom such as sports clubs will be gradually implemented.The physical education methods in the future, in addition to the options classes, elective courses and health classes, the club sports, training and recreation may be considered as physical education courses.With the majority of students' welcome and interests, the trend of integration of curricular and extra-curricular activities can be established.Teachers will be active and flexible in using a variety of media to help and guide students in learning and physical exercise.Requirements of quality education indicate that education physical education should break the identity, trying to achieve the combination of general guidance and personalized treatment, and the combination of group training and individual practice, with the enhancement students' self-care ability.The teaching is not only for all students but is also designed for every individual according to his or her own physical and skill condition.The teaching efficiency can therefore be improved.

Reform of the form of evaluation
The new evaluation method can be designed from the following points: 1) Emphasize on behavior, attitudes, evaluation, forming a combination of quantitative and qualitative evaluation.Let care, desire and attitude in the first priority of consideration and comprehensively evaluate the students' thinking, judgment, skills and performance in all.By doing so, the emphasis of physical education curriculum will be knowledge and skills, as well as the affective learning, which is favorable for life-long sports development.2) Give the same emphasis on the process evaluation and result evaluation.Process evaluation is timely and relevant.It can feed back the teaching information to teachers promptly, to achieve constant supervision and encouragement to students, while continuing to reform the teaching program.Teaching process can be better controlled through multiple evaluations.Process evaluation methods consist of mainly four types: teachers' evaluation, peer assessment between teachers and students, peer assessment between students, students' self-evaluation.3) Comprehensively evaluate the teaching process, conduct an overall assessment of the total learning process for a student or a teaching project and give a reasonable grade.To achieve this, it is required to comprehend the attitude, thinking, skills and knowledge.The grade should be given based on all of the aspects.

Reform of the facilities and equipment
We can take use of market and sponsors to attract funding for new stadiums, which will be managed socially and gradually connected with the social community.Some paid service and stimulus of holidays sports consumption can be temporary solutions for the funding shortage.These approaches have been tried in some schools and obtained successful experience.It not only solves some of the equipment and service charges, but also provides venues for some sports competitions.Such approaches must keep pace with the operation open to society, both for the convenience of students, teachers, as well as the surrounding citizens.There will also be increased income of teachers, which can effectively reduce the part-time jobs taking by teachers in their non-professional areas.It provides the platforms for the teachers to exhibit their expertise and enables teachers much broader exposure, greatly improving teachers' professional capability and teaching quality, bringing the whole school with new development at the same time.

Building of team of teachers
There are many problems exist in colleges for building an effective team of physical education teachers.It is necessary to strengthen the ideological learning, enhance the cohesion, promote the professionalism and dedication attitude, enhance teacher's sense of honor; responsibility and mission, letting them put all their effort into teaching, training, after-school counseling and research.Combine the emotional encouragement with real prizes, with prompt prizes given in various forms.Multiple prize mechanisms will be built, such as giving teachers opportunities of further studying of professional skills and opportunities of promotion and so on.Build human resource management mechanism suitable for the development of free market economy.Reasonably arrange the human resource, allowing proper circulation and exchange of teachers.Promote the construction of sports facilities and thus the attraction of teachers.Improve the social image of physical education teachers and solve the income inequalities comparing with teachers in other disciplines.Schools should create good training environment, providing a variety of forms, multi-level, multi-thematic training programs, with secured funding, emphasis on academic echelon development and trainings of academic leaders.

Table 1 .
Statistics of college physical education electives

Table 2 .
Statistics of the form and composition of college physical education courses

Table 3 .
List of college sports theory class and Statistics