Over the past decade, the interest in the quality of school physical education has increased, following an extensive amount of scientific research on the possible benefits (e.g., Dale & Corbin, 2000; Le Masurier & Corbin, 2006) and the discrepant day-to-day reality of the subject (e.g., Brettschneider et al., 2006; Egger, 2001; Hardman & Marshall, 2000; Laws, 2002, 2003; Pühse & Gerber, 2005; Stegeman, 2007). Next to this, an increased general interest in the functioning and actual realized quality of education (Devos et al., 2000; Hendriks, 2001), the growing quality awareness of parents and pupils (Hendriks, 2001; Vertommen, 2000), the need to rationalize or respond more efficiently to the ever changing expectations of contemporary society (Cremers-Van Wees et al., 1996; Vanwing, 2000), the pursuit of lower educational costs (Smolders & Jegers, 1994) and the deregulation of the educational scenery (Liket, 1992; Olthof, 1993; Vanhoof & Van Petegem, 2006) have, among others, pressured the Flemish educational government to change to a pedagogic-didactical approach for assuring educational quality (Devos et al., 2000; Peeters, 2002; Standaert, 2001). An important characteristic of this reform is a shift in the locus of control from government towards school level. As a consequence, Flemish schools have become more autonomous but also more accountable for the quality and performance (effectiveness) of the education provided (De Medts, 2006). To come to terms with this increased responsibility and independence, schools have to develop and systematically implement an internal quality assurance policy, attuned to the principles of contemporary performance and quality management. In order to help schools with this task, different research projects, with regard to the identification and/or listing of critical success factors, have been generated and many types of school self-evaluation instruments have been developed to analyze different elements of the educational setting (e.g., staff, physical setting, organization and controlling of processes) (e.g., Cremers-van Wees et al., 1996; Deckers & Jacobs, 1994; Devos et al., 2000; Gallegos, 1994; Hendriks, 2001, 2003; Voogt, 1995). In line with the former initiatives and conform with the Total Quality definition of Dahlgaard, Kristensen and Kanji (1995) (i.e., continuous improvement in which everyone actively participates), Van Cauwenberghe (2003) and Van Cauwenberghe, Vergauwen and Behets (2003, 2004) stressed that the school physical education department and the individual P.E. teachers also have an important role to play in assuring educational quality, and more specifically school physical education quality. To achieve this, it would be helpful to provide these P.E. teachers with a guiding tool that makes them aware of quality (assurance) management and convinces them to install a well-organized and successful subject. However, contrary to the multitude of evaluation instruments for schools (e.g., Berckmoes, 2007; Durieux & Ongenaert, 2005; Van Petegem & Cautreels, 2003; Van Petegem, Brandt & Jacobs, 2006), to date there appear to be no suitable course-specific tools that can help departments and/or teachers with the unavoidable process of professionalization. Considering the foregoing argumentation, the objective of the present study - as part of a larger research project on the quality of school physical education in Flemish secondary schools (De Knop et al., 2004; Huts, De Knop & Theeboom, 2005; Huts et al., 2007) - was twofold, namely implementing a multifunctional (self)evaluation instrument for physical education in a sample of Flemish secondary schools (N=100), while simultaneously obtaining a preliminary picture of the subjects’ product and process quality. Following the total quality framework of van Bottenburg, van ‘t Hof and Oldenboom (1997) school physical educations’ product and process quality can be considered as adequate when the course fulfils the criteria laid down by experts (product quality) and is organized effectively and efficiently (process quality).

Instruments A prototype of the course-specific (self)evaluation instrument IKLO (i.e., Instrument for quality analysis of school physical education) and a written questionnaire were applied to respectively gather data on the process/product quality of school physical education and on the functionality/applicability of the IKLO-instrument. The development of the IKLO-instrument was carried out in four consecutive phases corresponding to the experimental design of Van Hoecke (2000) (i.e., selection of a conceptual model, exploration phase, operationalisation phase, evaluation phase) and resulted in the selection of 232 objective, course-specific quality standards/criteria, related to 20 sub-dimensions and divided over six general dimensions, namely (i) organizational structure (e.g., analysis of organisational charts), (ii) strategic planning (e.g., analysis of strategic documents such as school mission, departmental vision, SWOT-analysis), (iii) facilities and equipment (e.g., analysis of general and rational management procedures), (iv) physical education as core product (e.g., analysis of the course-specific, didactical documents), (v) internal and external communication (e.g., analysis of teacher/pupil feedback procedures), (vi) human resources management (e.g., analysis of P.E. teachers’ job descriptions). Data collection A standardized procedure was followed to collect data in a sample of Flemish secondary schools (N = 100). These schools were recruited at random and stratified by educational network (e.g., catholic or community school) and number of pupils (i.e., n ≤ 300, 300 < n ≤ 550 or 550 < n). First permission to conduct the study was gained from the school principal and the P.E. teacher. Next, a researcher visited the school and completed the different IKLO-checklists based upon document analysis, school observations (e.g., available material) and a meeting with the P.E. teacher(s). This procedure was opted for in order to increase the objectivity of the process/product quality analysis. Afterwards, a questionnaire for the functional evaluation of IKLO was administered. The latter questionnaire could be filled in at the P.E. teachers’ convenience and returned to the researchers later (degree of response: 82.0%). Data analysis The IKLO-data were analyzed descriptively by means of the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPPS 15.0). Frequency and percentage were calculated per indicator, while mean, median, minimum and maximum scores were figured out per quality (sub)dimension. Subsequently, two-tailed Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney analysis with Bonferroni adjustments were computed to estimate differences between school size, school location and educational network (Field, 2006). In this context, the alpha level for significance was set at 5%. To analyse the data obtained with the IKLO-assessment questionnaire, descriptive statistics (i.e., frequency, percentage) were generated for the closed-ended questions, while inductive procedures were opted for to classify the open-ended answers into interpretable and meaningful key themes and categories (Glaser & Straus, 1967).

Process and product quality of school physical education As illustrated in Table 1, the mean scores of the school audits suggest that the process and product quality of physical education in Flemish secondary schools can be considered as adequate (all mean scores exceed 50.0%). However, considerable variations exist between the different schools (e.g., 66.0% of the participating schools fail on one (27.0%), two (18.0%) or even more (21.0%) quality dimensions). Table 1: Descriptive statistics with regard to the scores on the 6 dimensions of IKLO. N = 100 ORG STR FAC PEC COM HRM Mean (%) 66.9 52.9 83.8 76.5 65.6 55.3 STD 23,3 22.7 12.8 18.6 15.7 21.6 Max(%) 100 98.4 99.9 100 100 97.9 Min (%) 4.5 4.0 41.1 16.3 22.6 11.2 Median 65.3 51.5 88.1 82.6 67.1 52.2 < 60.0% 43.0 58.0 8.0 16.0 33.0 58.0 < 50.0% 22.0 49.0 1.0 10.0 17.0 48.0 Note. ORG (Organisational structure), STR (Strategic planning), FAC (Facilities and equipment), PEC (Physical education as a core product), COM (Internal and external communication) and HRM (Human resources management). Generally, the lowest scores are encountered on the dimensions ‘Strategic planning’ (52.9%) and ‘Human resources management’ (55.3%). In fact, almost half of the research sample does not obtain a score above 50.0% for either of these dimensions. The low scores on ‘Strategic planning’ are mainly due to the lack of a formal departmental vision, the inexistence of long or short term goals, and the absence of a long and/or short term estimation of course-specific costs. With regard to ‘Human resources management’, the gathered data identify the lack of formal job descriptions, the internal evaluation of P.E. teachers (e.g., frequency and/or nature) and the absence of regular departmental meetings as most common weaknesses. Moderate mean scores are found on the dimensions ‘Organizational structure’ (66.9%) and ‘Internal and external communication’ (65.6%). Reoccurring characteristics within the dimension ‘Organizational structure’ are, among others, the lack of a formal departmental task description, the absence of a departmental organization chart and/or P.E. teachers that perform school organisational tasks (e.g., class teacher), but who are seldom member of a school consultative structure (e.g., advisory committee). Next to this, the moderate score on ‘Internal and external communication’ is generally due to a high score on internal communication (76.4%) (e.g., teacher/pupil feedback, course specific code of conduct) and lower scores on, respectively, external communication (55.3%) (e.g., presence of P.E. on open school days, on the school website or in the schools’ info brochure) and collaboration with other organisations (54.5%) (e.g., sport organisations, other schools). Finally, the highest mean scores are registered on the dimensions ‘Facilities and equipment’ (83.8%) and ‘P.E. as core product’ (76.5%). In all, the present study suggests that the provision of quality school physical education is in essence restricted to initiatives and agreements that directly influence the personal class room setting, while general quality management principles and/or initiatives (e.g., strategic planning), aimed at assuring and/or improving the subjects’ overall professionalism, status and/or situation within the school setting are at present in many schools underdeveloped. Soltani, van der Meer and Williams (2005) emphasize that this may be due to a lack of strong leadership, problems of convincing staff to take ownership of quality and/or insufficient employee engagement because of lack of knowledge and/or recognition of Total Quality Education principles. Especially, in the smaller schools (i.e., with one or two P.E. teachers) the importance and or attainability of these class exceeding initiatives appears to be questioned. Contrary, the larger schools in the research sample already appear to acknowledge the need and/or added value of formalizing and professionalizing the school physical education subject. Functionality, applicability and user-friendliness of the IKLO-instrument Besides a preliminary insight into the process and product quality of physical education in some Flemish secondary schools, the second aim of this study was to implement a multi-functional, course-specific management tool. In general, the respondents labelled IKLO as a potential (46.3%) or certain (48.8%) asset for the future of school physical education because it can (26.8%) or will (63.4%) help improve the subjects’ quality. However, the P.E. teachers also acknowledge that the actual benefits to be derived from IKLO (e.g., drive internal quality improvement processes, help prioritize the remediation of course-specific weaknesses objectively illustrate quality related efforts and/or quality progress in school physical education) are strongly dependent on the P.E. teachers’ motivation and discipline, the P.E. departments’ willingness to consider the instrument and the school principals’ sense of responsibility. An important strength in this context is the fact that a large majority of the participating P.E. teachers exhibit great interest in and appreciation for the IKLO-instrument (e.g., user-friendliness, objectivity, validity, completeness). Other important strengths are among others: (i) the conceptual and scientific basis used to determine and structure quality determining factors, (ii) the measurement of tangibles and formal documents in order to obtain an objective and reliable result and (iii) the fact that, at present, the instrument offers a unique frame of reference for conducting course-specific (self)evaluations in school physical education. Contrary, IKLO can also be misused, for instance, when the instrument becomes the objective instead of the tool for performing quality evaluations (i.e., shift in the evaluators’ focus from diagnostic self-assessment to the collection of scores). In practice, this may lead to: (i) schools that develop formal documents but never really implement them, (ii) schools that consider a maximum score as the end-point for their internal quality assurance policies and (iii) schools that merely apply the instrument to formally prepare for official school inspections in order to obtain a more positive score. The IKLO-instrument also has its weaknesses, as there are, the uncertainty about a causal relationship between the IKLO-score and the actual effectiveness/performance of the course, and the fact that possibly important intangible/informal variables are not being measured (i.e., rounding off error). However, based upon the experiences and comments gathered in this study, some adjustments have already been made in order to counter these weaknesses and further improve the applicability of IKLO. For example, in order to pay more attention to intangible and informal aspects, the scoring method was altered from a nominal (i.e., available/unavailable) to an ordinal (e.g., available in good quality/available/not available) level. By doing so, the researchers hope to obtain an even more accurate picture of the process and product quality of school physical education (i.e., mapping of oral agreements and/or quality of utilized material) and consequently provide a more realistic and encouraging end result. Additionally, to even further increase the comprehensibility, user-friendliness and validity of the instrument, clarifications with practice related examples were added to the sub-dimensions and some standards/criteria. To conclude, all final scores were recalculated to percentages instead of effective scores. A specific framework to set up a concrete action plan and a structure to separately evaluate different facilities were added. A manual with examples of good practices is currently being developed. Future research will focus on testing the sensitivity and specificity of the IKLO-instrument by, for example, comparing IKLO-results with those of the official school inspectorate. Next to this, the fascinating relationship between the IKLO-score and the actual effectiveness/outcome of the course, as well as the possibility of yet adding a seventh performance related dimension will be investigated. Finally, after having completed the latter research topics, the IKLO-instrument will be used to obtain a picture of the quality of school physical education in a broader and representative sample of Flemish secondary schools.