Design and Validation of a Tool for the Formative Assessment of Invasion Games

IntroductionThe general concepts of evaluation, have their basis on the division of knowledge of Habermas (1997). That distinction can be summarized in the technical rationalism and practical rationalism. Each model has specific characteristics that they carry to their evaluative approaches (Lopez 1999). In the case of technical rationalism, evaluative intention is the technical verification of the achievement of objectives and efficiency through measurement. Teachers are passive executors of measurement designed by experts. On the other hand, the evaluation under practical rationalism is not intended to measure the results but to understand them. The verification of efficacy disappears in favor of the formative value.That is, the end of the evaluation is to serve the learning. Scriven in 1967 coined this conception as "formative assessment" (Jorba and Sanmarti 2013). Although the first antecedent associated with formative assessment is in the pedagogy of Dewey (Dewey 1916) that had the precept of learning centered on experience and its subsequent thought. In short, this is the procedure that follows a formative evaluation: acting and then reflecting on the action and generate learning in a new situation. That is the sequence that develop specific strategies for formative assessment, self-assessment, and peer assessment.In the case of Physical Education (PE), the assessment has been rated as one of the most controversial aspects of the teaching-learning process in this area. (James, Griffin, and France 2005; Otero, Calvo, and Gonzalez-Jurado 2014, Tejada 2007). The export of previous models in PE in Spain has a uniform description. A first model geared towards physical performance that aims to measure the efficacy of physical student achievement through tests and standardized tests. This view does not consider the educational value of the assessment. Its intention sums up the question of Lopez (2004) "Why do we say assessment when we really mean rating?"In contrast, the model oriented towards student participation does have a high educational value. It does not assess the driving aspect, but also considers the emotional, social and cognitive dimensions through the involvement of students in the assessment (Lopez, 1999). Different studies have shown the benefits of involving the students to situations using self-assessment as well as peer or co-assessed assessments (Lamb, Lane, and Aldous 2013; Lopez et al 2007; Perez, Heras, and Hernan 2008; Vera Gonzalez, and Moreno 2009; NiChroinin and Cosgrave 2013).The reviews of different papers on assessment practices in different contexts and times reveal that while the theoretical paradigm indicates the prevalence of a formative assessment, assessment practices of teachers in PE still dominate scoring models with little involvement of the students (Lorente-Catalan and Kirk 2014; Otero 2013).Although there has been an increase in research on formative assessment in PE, there are still few studies that investigate tools such as peer assessment and self-assessment. In the same line of moderation run the formative assessment practices in PE classes despite contributions such as the Network of Formative and Assessment in Higher Education (Lopez et al. 2007).Furthermore, the invasion games which are the object of this paper, focus on PE preferences. Both physical education teachers as well as learners from different countries agree to designate them as, in the case of teachers, the most taught, and in the case of students the preferred choice (Shropshire and Carroll 1998; Hill and Cleven 2005; Gutierrez, Pilsa, and Torres 2007).In the case of invasion games there exist tools validated that involve the students in their assessment process: TSAP (Grehaigne, Boutiher, and Godbout 1997) GPAI (Oslin, Mitchell, and Griffin 1998); BOGPI (Chen, Hendricks, and Zhu 2013) and HERJ (Garcia et al. 2013). However, the fact that there are validated tools does not ensure that a formative assessment is being performed. …