It is important to identify suitable parameters to measure and assess the quality of physical education. This paper aims to understand such measuring tool by focusing on professional perceptions and areas of concern of quality physical education (QPE). The research survey includes data gathered from 799 professionals in 11 cities in Asia. These professionals had experience working at primary schools (n = 155), secondary schools (n = 249), and universities (n = 395). To examine professional perceptions of quality physical education, at the preliminary stage of this study, 65 potential items were identified; of these, 48 items on 8 dimensions were retained, following an exploratory factor analysis. The 8 dimensions covered skill development and bodily awareness (α =.935), facilities and norms in PE (α =.932), quality teaching of PE (α =.923), plans for feasibility and accessibility of PE (α =.824), social norms and cultural practice (α =.825), governmental input for PE (α =.859), cognitive skills development (α =.920), and habituated behaviour in physical activities (α =.933). These factors indicated excellent internal consistency and model fit, enabling the construction of highly relevant statements to measure professional perceptions of QPE.

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A Chinese version of the Attitudes Toward Research scale was originally developed by Hui and Li (2005) in measuring the attitudes which Hong Kong curriculum leaders have toward action research. Apart from identifying the dimension of perceived ability for doing research (AB), the scale was meticulous in distinguishing between the two senses of the significance of research: a communal sense of the significance of research as a means for professional development (CS) and a pedagogical sense of the significance of research as a means to provide solutions for teaching and learning deficiencies (PS). With the assumption that an understanding of these attitudes helps to assess the development of curriculum reform in Hong Kong, the present study therefore aims to validate the scale with the original 2003/04 cohort of 209 curriculum leaders and a new 2008/09 cohort of 126 curriculum leaders. Following multidimensional scaling, structured scale reduction procedures and structural equation modeling, a 10-item 3-factor curriculum leaders' attitudes toward research (CL-ATR) model was resulted. The work reported here contributes to gaining an understanding of how to nurture research attitudes for curriculum development and school improvement.Keywords: attitudes toward action research/ curriculum leadership /curriculum development and school improvement