The status of the fitness goals in physical education in the USA.: with reference to the requests by society in general since the 1980's.
Physical education professionals have become aware the role of national fitness and have tended to regard the fitness goals as more important in the USA since the 1980's. The purpose of this study was to discuss the status of the fitness goals in physical education by looking at the social factors which influenced their status, the Standards for Physical Education, and reviews by various reserchers. The results were as follows;
1. Educational reforms since the 1980's have given rise to the tendency of adding importance to academic subjects and have brought the decline of the level of physical education. “Physical” is recognized as the identity of physical education and increased attention is again being focused on this word in order to resolve the crisis.
2. The issues of health and fitness have been recognized as serious, nation wide problems. Several Surgoen General reports and recomendations by related academies called for an increased positive role of physical education.
3. The National Standards for Physical Education published by NASPE in 1995 strongly focused on fitness standards. Psycho-moter, cognitive, physical, affective and social development have been traditional goals of physical education, with the addition of physical activity, itself now being realized as a primary goal.
4. Various reserchers regard fitness as important. This change in understanding about the needs of fitness and of social changes have placed a new level of responsiblity on the role of fitness. Further more, various reserchers suggested fitness programs have changed their emphasis from high level fitness training to improvement in attitudes about the needs of fitness, knowledge base and the requirement of independent ongoing physical activities related to fitness throughout our lifetime.

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The purpose of the paper is to examine the effectiveness of teacher's initiative in physical education classes. The questionnaire of 2 categories (‘determination of learning goal and content’ ‘determination of learning method’) was prepared for making clear teacher's initiative and applied to teachers who have physical education classes from 3rd to 6th grade (278 classes). And formative evaluation by Takahashi et al (1994) was applied as learning product variable.
Main findings are as follows.
1) ‘Determination of learning goal and content’ was divided into 4 types physical education classes. As a result of the investigation, the subjects were divided into ‘teacher-centered’ type 33.5% ‘task selected’ type 14.7% ‘task created’ type 34.2% and ‘child-centered’ type 17.6%.
2) ‘Determination’ of learning methods' was divided into 4 types of physical education classes. As a result of the investigation, the subjects were divided into ‘direct teaching’ type 16.5% ‘direct orientated’ type 32.2% ‘indirect orientated’ type 36.6% and ‘spontaneous learning’ type 14.7%.
3) The relations between ‘learning goal and content’ and formative evaluation were analyzed. The results revealed that ‘teacher-centered’ type of physical education classes were evaluated lowest by pupils. On the contrary, physical education classes which evaluated highest were ‘task selected’ type.
4) The relations between ‘learning goal and content’ an formative evaluation were analyzed. The results revealed that ‘direct teaching’ type of physical education classes were evaluated lowest by pupils. On the contrary, physical education classes which evaluated highest were ‘indirect orientated’ type. As for ‘total’ ‘way of learning’ ‘cooperation’ in the formative evaluation, there are significant relationships between ‘learning goal and content’ and them.

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The purpose of this study was to develop the scales for physical education class evaluation and the diagnostic standards of physical education at the whole school stages.
The subjects consisted of 3, 044 elementary school children, 2, 172 junior high school students, 3, 023 high school students and 1, 325 university students. The scales which contained 20 items on the instructional objectives included affective, psychomotor, cognitive and social behavior domains. According to D. Siedentop, B. Crum and T. Takahashi, these were considered to be the major objectives. Moreover these items were consistent with previous research (Takada et al., 1999). Factor analysis with principal factor solution and varimax rotation, and a reliability analysis with coefficient alpha technique were performed.
As a result, the evaluation scales covering all school stages for physical education class consisted from four common factors that were the same structure reported by the precedence studies. Reliability of the scales was statistically confirmed and the diagnosis standards of each factor and synthesis factor were made at the all school stages.

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The purpose of this study was to examine teacher initiative effect to the learning product, by applying to ‘program-process-product research system’.
Each of the units had a different teacher and teacher initiative. Unit A applied ‘Stepping-up style’, where the teacher provided clear tasks for children, and used two games developmentally. Unit B applied ‘Stage style’, where the teacher respected the children's independence, and used only one game through this unit. The result of analysis showed that unit A got higher learning product than unit B.
In conclusion, by applying ‘program-process-product research system’, we obtained suggestions as follows:
1) Program had effected to learning process and product.
2) Teacher initiative had an effect on the learning product through the program and process. Concretely, we found that it was important to arrange teaching materials developmentally, and to provide clear tasks for children.

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