Study on Reform of Public Physical Education Management in Chinese
Universities
Lin-zhou Gao
Division of Physical Education, Zhejiang University of Science and Technology, Hangzhou, China
glz0214@163.com
Abstract - With the spreading of the ideas of “safety
first” and “sunshine sports” in universities, college sports
are constantly in-depth reforming. The task of physical
education is also varying and innovating. The standard,
innovation and science of the management of physical
education have become the important work of physical
education project. In this paper, we study the management
system of public physical education. By using literature
study, data analysis, and survey research as the main
methods, we analysis the major problems existing in the
management system of public physical education, and
propose suggestions for further reform and improvement, in
order to establish an effective system of physical education
and improve the physical education to be advanced,
scientific, standardized and institutionalized.
Keywords - University, physical education, management
system, reform
I. INTRODUCTION
In the period of social transformation, accompanying
with major changes from exam-oriented education to
quality education in Chinese education system, society
needs high-quality people with good physical health,
mental health and a certain technology expertise. The
continuous improvement of the modernization gives birth
to the lifestyle changes. Physical activity is no longer a
single means of keeping fit. It has become one of the
ways of entertainment and interpersonal communication,
and it is also one of the hallmarks of civilized and healthy
modern life [1-3]. Teaching is the central task in the
universities. Physical education is an important part of
teaching, and is also the most basic activities of school
teaching [4]. With the ongoing of the “safety first” and
”sunshine sports” in universities, college sports are
constantly in-depth reforming. The task of physical
education is also varying and innovating. Because of the
subjective and objective reasons, the concept, educational
system, structures, personnel training mode, content and
teaching methods of education is lagging behind, which
affects the overall development of students and personnel
training, and also the national quality. The formation of
current quality education, innovative education, lifelong
education, people-oriented ideas and new concepts, is
driving the training mode of physical education in
universities and the corresponding reform of management
system of innovative teaching. Thus, to adapt the needs of
the age, it is inevitable to carry out the study of the
management system of physical education and its reform.
II. PROBLEMS EXISTING IN MANAGEMENT
SYSTEM OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION
A. System is Excessive Rigidity, Lack of Human Care
Establishment of a "people-oriented" teaching
management system plays an important role in
maintaining quality of teaching and training innovative
talents. The flexible teaching management performed in
universities should include abolition of repetition, flexible
educational evaluation, the credit system, elective system
and so on. Students are free to choose learning courses.
The original aim is to desalinate process management and
strengthen management and so on. But the implementing
process hasn’t achieved such objectives. Some managers
do not establish a "people-oriented" thinking. Managers
often misunderstand the objectives, thus the formulation
and implementation of the system are often carried on in a
wrong way, e.g. one-sided emphasis on goals, objectives
and results, regarding people as the opposite of the
system, and emphasis on human constraints and
management, so that the result is often counterproductive.
The reason why many systems exist in name only and
cannot effectively play its role is closely related to the
starting point of "governing people " [5][6].
The present physical education management system
is based on the thought of "scientific management", and is
a set of manager-based, teaching-centered ideas. The
biggest loss of the system is the excessive rigidity and
lack of human care, resulting in limit of students’ freedom
of physical study. The so-called freedom of study is that
students are free to choose subjects of interest, which is an
important right of students. However, some requirements
in the current management system of public physical
education are not reasonable. Students are not enough
respected for interests and hobbies. For example, for the
elective course for the sports, some courses are not
opened when the number of students is less than a certain
one; the half-way switch is not allowed. This situation
shows that in the crucial stage of learning sports skills,
many students in universities can’t choose their favorite
sports. Some students select a course that they do not fully
understand, and want to switch to another one after they
realize that they are not suited to this project after learning
for a while. However, in many colleges and universities,
the half-way switch is not allowed. For the considerations
of saving and ease, the universities harm the interests of
students’ physical education.
B. Lack of Service Consciousness
Understanding of the Subject
and
the
The starting point of existing physical education
management system is to ensure the so-called "normal"
teaching order, i.e. no or less of “trouble”. It has been less
considered to allow students to grow lively with full
freedom to develop. The “National Guidelines for
Physical Education” demonstrates that students should be
free to choose courses, teachers, and class time. However,
now most universities cannot meet this requirement. In
the operating systems of physical education, support to
teaching is not perfect, and managements’ awareness of
services for teachers and students is weak.
these measures do not form a formal system, and haven’t
influenced physical education teachers, thus actual results
are unsatisfactory. Second, physical education teachers
have low coefficient hours than teachers of other subjects.
Such a phenomenon exists in many universities. Third,
more attention has been paid on scientific research but
less on teaching. The job-classification, evaluation and
salary of teachers in universities emphasis on the research
capacity and achievements, while ignores the teacher's
teaching ability and effectiveness, so that some physical
education teachers focus on their research and publishing
articles, while they neglect the physical education [8].
C. Emphasis on Score Managements
Score is an important tool to evaluate academic
achievement and teaching quality, but it has been
considered as the absolute in current teaching. Scores
should be used to improve the student learning and
teaching work, but it has become the tools to control the
students and teachers, deviating from the values of
teaching. The "power-oriented” system still dominates in
universities. School management cannot exist without
power, but the "power first" goes against the thrust and
mission of education [7]. Management authority serves the
mission of universities, which is to train and educate
people. Any power deviating from this mission will
destroy the education, the spirit, and the culture. The
"power-oriented” system forms a teacher-centered
teaching mode, in which teachers are in the commanding
position. In the existing physical education system,
teachers are accustomed to the idea of "teacher-led", not
"students-centered". The methods of teaching push out the
dignity and power of teachers, but suppress the students’
passion and initiative. Management model emphasizes
unity of teaching. A unified curriculum, content, methods,
standards, progress and a single means of teaching
evaluation greatly stifle the creativity, responsibility of
teaching and the initiative, enthusiasm of students’
learning.
D. The lack of an Effective Incentive for Teachers
Sports “curriculum standards” is well developed in
educational philosophy, target system, teaching evaluation
and implementation of ways. It emphasizes the idea of
employing the education thought of “people-oriented” and
“health first” to guide the work of school sports. It
represents the direction of the development of school
physical education. However, in the specific operational
aspects, it has been considered as a unit for education
ideas, academic theory and practice. Current incentives
for physical education teachers are still lack. Main
features are described in the following aspects. First,
inadequate system of motivation in physical education is
weak. Some university administrators have developed a
number of measures to mobilize the enthusiasm of
teachers, e.g. by increasing class fees, regarding the
quality of teaching as an important standard, and
increasing the funds for physical education. However,
III. THE SUGGESTIONS TO IMPROVE THE
MANAGEMENT SYSTEM OF PHYSICAL
EDUCATION
A. To Improve the System of Physical Education
Management
Standardization of physical education is based on the
scientific rules and regulations. The quality of physical
education is difficult to be guaranteed without a system of
physical education. For perfection of the system of
physical education management, all the rules and
regulations should be strictly implemented. Based on
characteristics of physical education, various regulations
and rules should be developed. Specific and clear
requirements should be made on the education plan,
teaching operation, basic construction, teaching reform,
teaching quality, work assessment and various staff
responsibilities and so on, to reach the goal that each
teaching units has its clear rule. Thus, management
activities are standardized by the rules and regulations,
providing guarantee to improve quality of teaching.
Currently, based on the characteristics of physical
education, colleges and universities pay great attention to
develop and improve various regulations and rules for
physical teaching, and to standardize the management
behavior of the physical education. The "compilation of
teaching management rules and regulations" should be
strictly implemented. With the actual sports rules and
regulations, e.g. "annual work appraisal of physical
teachers", "physical education teaching basic norms" and
so on, job-responsibilities of categories of personnel
should be specialized. This series of rules and regulations
of physical teaching can be helpful to achieve more
standardized and improved management and to provide
guarantee for improving the quality of physical education.
B. To Establish a "Student-Centered"
Management System
Teaching
The 21st century is the century of competition for
talent and education. Promotion of quality education and
training creative people is the fundamental task of
colleges and universities. College-trained people should
have a solid foundation, extensive knowledge, innovation
and high quality features. As the socialist market
economy system and the knowledge economy era come,
innovation of knowledge has become a decisive factor in
the development of productivity. The ability to train a
large number of creative talent that meet the social needs
become the key to rapid development of countries. As the
existing mode of education is difficult to ensure the
development of individuality and creativity of students,
in-depth reform of education and the establishment of the
"student-centered" teaching management system has been
the inevitable demand to train innovative talents [9][10].
Meanwhile, in the market economy, the identity of
college students has changed, and the students have
become consumers of higher education, which requires
the concept of teaching management to meet the
"customer" needs, i.e. the system should be able to
provide the required education for students, train students
in accordance with students’ different aptitudes, and
provide students with comprehensive, high quality
service.
C. To Establish a Scientific Evaluation System for
Physical Education
The implementation of evaluation and assessment to
the physical education teachers is the main basis for
incentive and compensation of their teaching performance.
Due to problems of thinking and operation, the teaching
evaluation in practice has yet played its due role. We
consider the following aspects, which should be gradually
improved:

The evaluation should be comprehensive, e.g. the
evaluation should be performed based on many
different aspects and multiple perspectives to check the
quality of teaching in an objective and scientific way.
Because different entities in the assessment of teaching
quality activities are difficult to avoid their own
limitations, in the implementation, one should make
good use of students’ evaluation and peer-evaluation of
teachers.

Evaluation tools and the choice of methods should be
diversified. The combination of quantitative and
qualitative evaluation should be adhered to. It is also
necessary to strengthen dialogue in the evaluation
process, and teachers should not be entirely in a
passive position.

To build a scientific evaluation system, we believe that
when constructing index system for teaching quality
evaluation, one should consider the combination of
curricular and extracurricular, the combination of
process and effect, the combination of teaching and
research, and should make the evaluation specific, rich,
with high discrimination, which should also have
strong feasibility and credibility.
One should make the rational use of evaluation
results. The evaluation of physical education teaching
aims at improving the teaching activity of physical
education and promoting the teaching task with highquality. Therefore, in the use of the results of teachers’
job-evaluation, one should focus on whether evaluation
results help physical education teachers to achieve these
goals.
D. To Further Improve the Quality Monitoring System
for Physical Education
With the deepening of higher education reform and
the continuing to promote quality education, it has been a
general trend for physical education to implement
scientific monitoring system. The aim is to improve the
quality of physical education and promote the sport's
status in school education, so that students can develop
the habits of physical exercise and life-long sports
thoughts, in order to fully realize the overall goal of
school sports.
Improving the quality control process, strengthening
quality monitoring system of physical education, and
promoting standardized and scientific teaching
management, are very important means to improve the
teaching quality. To strengthen the management of quality
control, one should inspect, supervise, and evaluate the
teaching conditions, teaching order, the teaching process,
teaching status, and other aspects of teaching
effectiveness [11].

Education inspection system: To improve teaching
quality, regular checks are the most basic means of
teaching. The inspection should be throughout the
teaching process. Once problems are found, they
should be solved in time. One should also perform
inductive analysis and get experiences to guide and
improve the teaching.

Teaching supervision system: Teacher who has
management experience should form a steering group,
and are responsible for the implementation of the
teaching supervision. They should inspect, evaluate,
review, guide and communicate for those that affect
the quality of teaching.

The regulation for managements lectures: Managers
should stick to the first line of teaching, to keep
abreast of teaching situation and to listen to opinions
and suggestions of management in order to ensure the
relevance of teaching and effectiveness.

Teaching evaluation system: Teaching is the bilateral
interaction activities between students and teachers.
With teaching evaluation made by students, one can
fully understand the teacher's classroom teaching and
teaching quality, which is important for improvement
of the teaching effectiveness.
IV. CONCLUSION
University physical education is a united education,
and is an important way to train highly qualified
professionals with overall development. Establishment of
the multiple teaching goals, which is to promote the
quality of student health, humanities and social quality, is
important for both physical education and social needs.
Management of physical education is still at the
exploratory stage. There are many problems needed to be
studied. The management of physical education that we
advocate should be based on the "humane" scientific
management which includes teaching, research and
management. Under the guidance of the new management
philosophy of education, we should establish the “peopleoriented” idea, respect for the academic, implement the
trinity model including knowledge, ability, quality
training, and make the physical education administration
integrated into the great international background, thus
continue innovating teaching management, and fully
realize the innovation in the management system of
physical education.
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