Keywords

1 Introduction

The profession education at higher vocational colleges, as one of the important contents of the higher vocational education exerts a unique role in the all-round development of the qualities of students and the improvement of their health. Therefore, it is one of the important tasks of the higher vocational education. As the higher vocational education has attained a rapid development in China, there are a series of problems in the physical education of higher vocational colleges. Thus, it is necessary for the physical education of the higher vocational colleges to adapt to the requirements of society, and simultaneously implement constant exploration and reform. In this paper, through the combination with the characteristics of higher vocational colleges, the author conducts an analysis on the current situation and problems of the higher vocational colleges, and subsequently puts forward the new ideas for the reforms of the physical education.

2 Current Situation of the Physical Education of Higher Vocational Colleges

Generally speaking, the physical education is educated for one year at the higher vocational colleges. Then, it can be known that the period for the physical education is too short, and the foundation of students is too bad without saying. A long time ago, the diversified patterns happened to the physical education model. However, the traditional physical education model, which is majored at the “Three Foundations”, stills takes up a significant proportion in the practices of the physical education, but this cannot be divorced from the profound influence of the traditional physical education model [1]. These can be mainly reflected from four aspects. First of all, all kinds of activities in the physical education are implemented around the impartation of the sport techniques. Second, the guiding ideologies of the physical education go to extremes to some extent, and also lay an excessive stress on the “happy sports” or “exam-oriented education”, resulting in a polarization. Third, generally speaking, what the teachers educate at schools are the contents in the examination, and therefore the students only exercise these contents, which is to the disadvantage of the all-round development of the qualities of the students. Finally, the evaluation system is still not sound. The evaluation on the physical education is implemented in accordance with the scores that the student achieved at physical educational classes, and simultaneously is centered at the competitive standards. Therefore, it lays an excessive stress on the practices and looks down on the theories, and also is difficult to stimulate the interests of the students. As a result, some students with good congenital qualities can be easy to pass the examinations of the courses in physical education without any efforts, while the others with a weak foundation are hard to achieve a relatively good result even though they make the greatest efforts. Therefore, the results from the evaluation on the physical education cannot really reflect a student’s healthy condition, self-exercise ability, sports knowledge, personality development and lifelong sports consciousness.

3 Main Problems in the Current Physical Education of Higher Vocational Colleges

According to this problem, the author conducts an investigation on over 30 higher vocational colleges all over the country, in which a questionnaire survey was implemented among 130 physical education teachers and over 2,000 students. Thus, the data which was obtained from this investigation all was first-hand, from which it can be known that the existing problems can be concluded as the following.

Backward Physical Education Ideas Due to the influence from the traditional physical education and concepts, the physical education at the higher vocational colleges always lays a one-sided emphasis on the knowledge in the traditional physical education as well as the classroom teaching of the sport techniques. However, the consequences produced from these ideas and concepts are only attaching high importance to the present interests, and giving a cold shoulder on the speculative knowledge and guiding methods supplied for the health education and scientific fitness of students [2]. At the mean time, the cultivations on the sport consciousness, ability and habit of the students are in absence, which allow them to have difficulties to form the ability and habit to persist in the physical exercises for a long time after graduation.

Insignificant Professional Features of the Physical Education System In China, the main characteristic of the training objective of the higher vocational education lies in the “pertinence”. In other words, the higher vocational education has a direct connection with an occupational position in society, and hence is of a distinct occupational orientation. Besides, the training objective attaches high importance to the occupational abilities in the positions after graduation, which is applicable for a specific occupational position group or the talents in a certain technical field, but is not directed at the talents in the ordinary junior college education. The technical, practical and application characteristics of the education of higher vocational colleges in the cultivation of the comprehensive occupational abilities make them different from the general higher learning schools. In addition, the students at the higher vocational schools will step into the front-line work positions at a fast speed after receiving a systemic learning. Thus, the obvious occupational feature is another embodiment of the education of the higher vocational colleges.

Unclear Objective and Content of Higher Vocational Education At the present time, the objective of the physical education of the higher vocational colleges is randomly classified into the “fundamental objective” and the “development objective”. Based on the conventional practices, the students with poor abilities in the sports are required to reach the “fundamental objective”, while those with powerful abilities are necessary to achieve the “development objective”. These, hence, puts forward a higher requirement on the teachers in the physical education [3]. That is to say, it is necessary for these teachers to carry out correct analyses and evaluations on the differences in the sport foundations of all students from all aspects in the teaching process, and adopt the appropriate ways to help students realize these two objectives at the same time. Through such a classification, the objective of the courses can be educated with a clear objective. However, it is a great difficulty for the teachers in the physical education to conduct specific implementations on these objectives, which require them to make constant explorations in the teaching practices.

Obsolete Physical Education Teaching Methods and Unsound Management Organizations At the present stage, a majority of the higher vocational colleges in China do not establish the special organizations to manage their physical education internally in accordance with the regulations in the national “Regulations from the School Physical Education”. As the necessary management organizations and personnel are in absence, the physical education at the higher vocational colleges is under an unmanned management [4]. As a result, it is in an unrestrained freedom, and exerts a serious influence on the normal exertion of the functions of the physical education, and prevents the physical education from developing at a higher level as well.

4 Reform Ideas of the Physical Education of Higher Vocational Colleges

Improving the Law Consciousnesses and the Conditions for Physical Education At the beginning, it is necessary to select the physical education teachers with high occupational qualities and powerful abilities to be responsible for the special management organizations for the physical education at the higher vocational colleges. This is able to make a further improvement on the work of the school physical education, and bring the initiatives of the physical education teachers into full play, and provide better services for the practices in physical education. Next, it is necessary for the leaders from all vocational colleges to arrange the sport fields, facilities and apparatus in accordance with the quota standards in the “list for the facilities and equipments in the gyms of general higher learning schools” which was issued by the ministry of education in 1992. At the mean time, for those higher vocational colleges in absence of the gym’s facilities and equipments and exerting a serious affect on the normal physical education, it is necessary to put forward measures to rectify and reform them with a time limit according to the national the requirements on the school hardware condition.

Highlighting the Occupational Characteristic of Higher Vocational Colleges, and Enriching and Developing the Contents of Physical Education As for the reform of the contents of the physical education at the higher vocational colleges, it is necessary to combine the characteristics of the higher vocational colleges, and simultaneously comply with the applicability principle, the lifelong principle and the pertinence principle. The so-called applicability principle means that the teaching materials with a strong applicability are necessary to be selected in accordance with the difference between the occupational technologies and the physical qualities required by the actual occupations, which will be in favor of the majors of the students as well as their future jobs [5]. However, the ultimate purpose of the pertinence principle is to prevent the emerging of the occupational diseases. Therefore, in the selection and compilation of the teaching materials, it is necessary to lay a stress on the pertinence principle; it is better to select the teaching materials which have the health-protection, rectification and prevention functions, so as to restrain the mistakes of the students and make up their shortcomings. At last, the lifelong principle requires the physical education teachers at the higher vocational colleges to attach high importance to those sport items with strong continuity, pragmatic function and fitness value. In addition, it is also necessary to select some teaching materials in theory, and there the lifelong physical education idea can be provided for the students from the theoretical perspective, for the purpose of allowing the students to get an understanding of the physical exercise principles and methods, the prevention of the sport injuries, the medical supervision in sports, the method of evaluating the body-building effect, etc.

Diversified Teaching Forms and Methods In view of the characteristics of the students at the higher vocational colleges, almost all kinds of forms and methods can be adopted to reform the physical education, such as the simplification of the teaching contents, the implementation of the system combining the both primary and auxiliary teaching materials, the proper increase of the number of the students at the physical educational classes, the grouping the students based on their actual physical qualities and sport foundations or their comprehensive indexes (i.e., height, weight and age). In terms of teaching, it is necessary to not only pay attention to the researches on the educational methods, but also strengthen the guidance to the learning and practicing methods of the students, with the purpose of making an enhancement to the self-study and self-practice abilities. Besides the traditional repeated practice and grouping practice, it is also necessary to widely apply the suggestive teaching, psychological teaching, small-group education mode, creative learning, audio-visual education program and other methods to the physical education. In addition, it is necessary to reinforce the extracurricular activities, making the classroom teaching and extracurricular teaching integrated together.

Reforming the Evaluation System of Physical Education First of all, the physical qualities and sport competences have a close connection with genetic factors of the students. Thus, it is necessary to establish an evaluation system which helps to encourage the students to development their physical education qualities in an all-around way on the basis of the objective of the quality-oriented education, and then a comprehensive evaluation can be implemented on the students; the evaluation indexes are able to really reflect a student’s physiological, physical, intellectual and technical states. Secondly, in the light of the requirements of the vocational education, the physical education is necessary to attach higher importance to the evaluation of the occupational abilities of the students and the promotion effect of the physical education on occupational operational skills. Furthermore, the method of combining the result evaluation and the process evaluation is necessary to be adopted to check the increasing degree of a student’s physical education scores and the seriousness to learn. Thus, a comprehensive evaluation on a student’s physical fitness, sport skills, learning attitudes, behaviors, emotions and wills, cooperation and interpersonal communication, etc.

Under the circumstances, it is necessary for Chinese people to reform the examination system of the physical education, revise the standards and methods of reforming the physical education scores of students again. The specific suggestions are dividing the evaluation of the physical education courses into the difficulty-increasing and difficulty-reducing examination on the sport skills, the sport theory examination, and the attendance of the extracurricular sport activities. The ratio among the three examinations is 50:20:30. The purposes of evaluating the extracurricular activities are driving the students to initiatively participate in the extracurricular activities, cultivating their lifelong physical exercise habits and abilities, making the extracurricular sport activities into an important extension of physical education classes, and urging the students to form the good habit to do physical exercise.