The samples of the study included 10 schools which participated in the Hong Kong Education Department Seed Project. These schools have been trying to use the Physical Education Portfolio (PEP) approach in teaching and assessing three-month PE programmes in one or two classes, which was carried out from March to June 2002. The design of PEPs which used by the experimental classes were mainly based upon the design of Sportfolio by Melograno (1998). The sample size included 10 PE teachers, 904 students. The aim of the study tried to evaluate the effectiveness of using PEP in the experimental group, where the control group from the same grade was selected. Results showed that the students and PE teachers supported the conceptual benefits of the portfolio learning approach. They also believed that using PE portfolios in the PE programme could help students to be more involved in the generic skills, especially the skills of appreciation, communication and analysis. However, they were less positive about the benefits of using PEP in support of the affective domain relating to enjoyment and motivation. In the final analysis, students “prefer not to use PEP in the PE course”. When we evaluated students' perception of the PE aims, significant differences were found for gender (F=9.007, p<0.01), and the interactive effects between group and gender (F=11.225, p<0.01). The findings showed that, in general, boys show a more positive attitude than girls towards the aims of PE in various domains. After three months of experimental teaching in the PE course using PEPs, both boys and girls developed a similar positive attitude towards the aims of the course. There is a significant difference in attitude between the boys and the girls in the control group towards the aims of PE. In additions, the findings showed that students who have experience in using PEP in the PE programme were more positive in the status they attributed to PE as a compulsory subject (Chi-square value =8.998, p<0.05), they also gave stronger support for the inclusion of the PE mark in the year's final academic result (Chi-square value=6.464, p<0.05). The study showed that the use of PEP enhanced students learning experience in different domains, including self-awareness of their own learning process, which could improve their attitude towards the value and the status of PE.
Acknowledgement: This research was funded by Hong Kong Education Department.