Pages: 10

In the late 1960s, physical education (PE) practitioners were starting to explore game-based approach (GBA) concepts however, it was not until the 1982 Bulletin that there was an acceleration of interest amongst both academics, practising teachers and coaches. Since the inception of the TGfU model, GBAs have been proposed as leading practice for the design and delivery of PE sports teaching and coaching. TGfU's influence has spread across the globe, and elaboration has given rise to the development of a variety of ‘second generation’ pedagogical models stemming from TGfU. There has been a considerable body of research to advance the model that has described both a sound pedagogical underpinning and detailed tools for practical application. Despite these efforts, there has been conceptual confusion at many levels and a sense of theory vs theory and model vs model within the field of teaching games for understanding.

Pages: 11

The 1982 Spring Edition: 18(1) of the Bulletin of Physical Education contained a collection of articles with a different method to the common ‘traditional’ games and sport teaching approach, which Mosston described as Demonstration-Explanation-Execution-Evaluation and Tinning as Demonstrate-Explain-Practice. Len Almond as editor of the 1982 Spring Edition wrote that the collection of articles represented an “attempt to raise issues and questions about the role of ‘teaching for understanding’ in the games curriculum”. While the 6-step model that has come to be known as Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) is well known, perhaps less well known is the curriculum model for secondary school PE proposed by Thorpe and Bunker. Thorpe and Bunker extended the application of the model written initially for secondary school PE into primary school PE games curriculum as a ‘foundation course’ based on the pedagogy of sampling games in game categories and proposed a secondary PE games program based also on game categories.

Pages: 62

No chapter abstract available.

Pages: 15

Games remain a large part of most physical education curriculums and, as noted elsewhere in this book, it is 40 years since Bunker and Thorpe first introduced the constructivist approach to games teaching known as Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU). TGfU was the first Game-Based Approach, but several differing perspectives on the original approach emerged as TGfU was disseminated globally. Available instruments focused primarily on the observation and assessment of technical performance, while ignoring key tactical aspects of game performance such as decision-making and off-the-ball movement. Our goal was to develop a Game Performance Assessment Instrument that would yield data reflecting the entirety of game performance. Although skill and movement execution are critical to game performance, deciding what to do in game situations is just as important. Common mistakes from students in sport may originate from a lack of knowledge about what to do in the context of a given sport situation.

Pages: 8

A range of strategies has been suggested to increase the uptake of Game-based Approaches (GBA) such as Game Sense which, like many other GBA, was developed from Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU). As a models-based practice, the idea of providing a well-defined progression of steps for the implementation of TGfU by teachers or coaches enjoys significant support, but is not without its critics. Along with some others the authors have some reservation about what they suggest can be considered a prescriptive, top-down approach. Game Sense does not have a model for implementation and is generally accepted as a looser approach that is open to teacher or coach interpretation and adaptation. With this in mind, they follow Light and Light's suggestion for assisting coaches’ and teachers’ implementation of Game Sense by taking a bottom-up approach in which learning to implement Game Sense sits upon an understanding of the philosophical positions of holism and humanism as its foundation.

Pages: 11

In this chapter the author aims to deepen their ideas about Immersive Scenario-based Coaching Narratives (ISNs). ISNs are rooted in existential philosophical thinking and reflect an attempt to ‘layer’ existential principles over TGfU principles to create more authentic and meaningful experiences for participants. First, in common with Jones, the authors believe more experimental writing of this nature can yield more ‘interesting, believable and meaningful’ material, the aim of which is to assist reflection and to support the consideration of different viewpoints. Second, they believe that the dialogue helps us to articulate more clearly and simply both the philosophical principles behind ISNs and the struggle a coach might have in attempting to apply them.

Pages: 16

Creating a learning environment in which all players can gain positive experiences, improve their game skills, and deepen their understanding of game tactics and strategies, is a complex task. Especially given the considerable heterogeneity in the psychomotor, cognitive, and affective skills of students within physical education (PE) classes, there is a constant need for differentiation and modification of games to meet the abilities of individual players. Therefore, based on the philosophy and principles of the Teaching Games for Understanding concept and other game-based approaches, the Game Insight approach and the corresponding curriculum model were developed with an emphasis on acknowledging and addressing differences between players. By modifying the learning environment and playing conditions the PE teacher can implicitly shape and enforce specific player behaviour. Moreover, the modification of the constraints enables the teacher to design more complex or less complex game activities and thus address the variety in players’ abilities and needs.

Pages: 10

Play with Purpose derives from the Game Sense approach (GSA). The GSA is a game-based teaching/coaching approach founded on athlete-centred inquiry teaching styles, such as guided discovery where well-considered questioning is a characteristic. It was intended as an alternative to the traditionally dominant transmission pedagogy of directive and practice style instruction of games teaching. The athlete-centred narrative of player responsibility for learning associated with the GSA challenges traditional directive teaching of ‘sport-as-sport-techniques’ taught through demonstrate-explain-practice. In technique-based sport teaching and coaching, deviations from a prescribed common (or optimum) idea of a movement model are typically considered ‘incorrect’ requiring a teacher/coach intervention to ‘fix’. Commonly, there is an emphasis on movement cues focusing on players attaining specific body movements. Within a game and sport context, the complexity the authors refer to in the moment of play is explained as a process of continual adaptation and responsiveness to a constantly changing environment.

Pages: 88

No chapter abstract available.

Pages: 11

This chapter defines constructivist learning theory. It describes how social constructivist learning theory aligns with the game-based approach (GBA). Many scholars have supported the notion that the TGfU model is grounded in a constructivist learning theory. Scholars have made the case that instructional approaches should have at their foundation a learning theory. Understanding the learning theory allows the teacher to have a better sense of the learning process and overall expected outcomes. Therefore, aligning a GBA to constructivist learning theory gives the teacher the opportunity to examine assumptions such as why it works and how it works. The origins of constructivism date back to the time of Socrates, who contended that teachers and learners should talk with each other and interpret and construct knowledge through asking questions. Socrates was one of the earliest constructivist teachers employing a questioning approach to teaching and learning.

Pages: 10

While comparative studies employed protocols that reported the fidelity of technique and TGfU/tactical approaches to instruction, several validation protocols were based around treatment lesson structure to distinguish the pedagogical practices. In the technique approach, students may have developed some level of tactical understanding and decision-making capability from participating in game play at the culmination of their lessons and pre-test sensitisation was an additional threat to assessment of student's knowledge development in comparative research. A meta-analysis aimed at analysing both approaches on game performance variables revealed the tactical approach achieved significant improvements in game decision-making in five of seven studies. Research using a practice-referenced or teaching experiment was posited as a viable alternative to examine TGfU or tactical instruction in a school-based setting.

Pages: 9

In this chapter, the authors use The Spectrum of Teaching Styles to identify the teaching styles used to implement the six-step Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) model as a cluster of teaching styles, to show that teaching games for understanding require use of more teaching styles than guided discovery, problem solving or discovery teaching. The authors clarify TGfU as a model directed at student understanding by explaining that asking students questions may not be guided discovery, or any other type of discovery process. To identify the possible teaching styles which emerged from this game scenario, they will presume that there are students who have minimal knowledge of striking and fielding games, and some who have a large amount of experience, and therefore knowledge of the game. They will use The Spectrum to view the episode and identify the potential teaching styles.

Pages: 9

Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU), when presented in the early 1980s, was indeed a breath of fresh air in regard to how physical education (PE) teachers could make games teaching fun and engaging for school children. However, although embraced by university academics, TGfU has had limited uptake by PE practitioners in schools. In contrast to a cognitive perspective, an ecological perspective, based on the contemporary motor learning theory of Ecological Dynamics, recognises the continuous interaction between the mind, the subconscious control mechanisms of the body, and the environment in learning. An alternative PE teaching approach, the constraints-led approach, is distinguished by the grounding of its learning design in Ecological Dynamics. Ecological Dynamics is underpinned by ideas from both Ecological Psychology and Dynamical Systems Theory. Ideas pertaining to the role of affordances in guiding actions is a central concept within Ecological Dynamics.

Pages: 8

The need for Positive Pedagogy (PPed) for sport coaching or something similar can be traced back to the first publication on Teaching Games for Understanding and perhaps even further, but the seeds for the idea were planted during a lecture at Sydney University in 2008. Although there were a few similar proposals for a learner-centred approach to teaching sport in the 1960s and 1970s, Bunker and Thorpe's publication is generally accepted as the starting point for the development of game-based approach with PPed having direct lineage to it. The development of PPed began with modifying the pedagogical features that Light suggests underpins the practice of Game Sense to make them applicable to activities beyond team sport(s) and games. The pedagogical features of Game Sense encourage positive learning experiences that PPed maximises by appropriating Antonovsky's work on well-being and Positive Psychology, and in particular, its focus on happiness.

Pages: 9

The pedagogies chosen by sport teachers and coaches are a powerful way to influence athletes’ development and sense of themselves. Athlete-centred coaching has emerged as a humanistic approach developed to engender empowerment and agency within the player/athlete and enhance their performance by adopting a holistic approach to the athlete. This chapter explores game-based approach research and practice related to coaching and player development. It examines and reflects on athlete-centred coaching as an approach that promotes an educative and holistic process for players’ sporting experiences. The chapter outlines the sporting experience. It then discusses the possibilities and challenges of implementing an athlete-centred approach to coaching and player development. Being athlete-centred has been identified as central to contemporary coaching practice. Coaching is now considered ‘a relational, dynamic social microcosm' involving a community of practice, called a ‘team’.

Pages: 11

Game-based approaches (GBAs) for teaching and coaching have been advocated for use in physical education and sport across the globe. Widespread adoption of GBAs among in-service teachers, however, has been uneven. Evidence of the influence of GBAs is seen in how games are represented in national curriculum documents. This chapter explores Lesson Study as a meaningful form of professional development. It introduces an innovative Global Lesson Study initiative in physical education that has engaged more than 110 teachers in 15 countries to deepen their understandings of GBAs. Lesson Study, called ‘Jugyokenkyu’ in Japan, has attracted attention worldwide as an important opportunity to support the professionalisation of teachers. Global Lesson Study in physical education was developed by Dr. Naoki Suzuki as a means to engage colleagues from around the world in the practice of Lesson Study to improve instruction in GBAs.

Pages: 10

Game-based approaches (GBAs) are inquiry-based teaching approaches that depend on the teacher's capacity to modify instruction, content and tasks as a response to students’ learning to play games. GBAs entail a human-centred way of practice, which incorporates the teacher's thoughtful and compassionate action to step back, observe and emphasise questioning to stimulate empathy, co-creation, and iteration through players’ cooperation and interaction. This chapter highlights the circumstances under which reflection can raise instructional awareness and bring positive gains in teachers’ professional development, as part of their engagement with human-centred praxis in GBA contexts. According to Wackerhausen, ontological, epistemological and ethical perspectives challenge a teacher's ability to enact or support processes of inner dialogue that may lead to the suspension of habit and the development of new routines. From a social constructivist point of view, teaching is a dynamic form of cultural practice that cannot be easily predicted.

Pages: 9

This chapter presents a games teaching framework that focuses on gameplay design. This framework can be used as a lens to analyse the teaching practice in how to move away from a traditional skill-based approach towards a game-based approach (GBA). Today, one of the main challenges for teachers and coaches is the implementation of pedagogical principles into practice. Lesson plans, through the selection of appropriate small-sided games, contribute to structure a GBA practice. Gameplay is the emerging behaviour of players in a game. It can be seen as a complex ecological dynamical system under influence of constraints. Game Balance Analysis offers a practical observational method for analysing gameplay. Game balance refers to the ratio between offensive success and defensive success. Gameplay types express the balance between offensive complexity and defensive complexity for all players in a game. This can be determined for the specific group that plays a game.

Pages: 34

No chapter abstract available.

Pages: 11

The physical education (PE) curriculum in many countries remains a legacy of schooling as an instrument of colonisation. Decolonisation is necessary for a more just and inclusive, perhaps even restorative, games curriculum. This chapter discusses how PE teachers can promote JEDI through a GBA in lessons. A GBA offers a venue for physical educators to foster JEDI where all students are respected and feel a sense of belonging. Heather Hackman's five essential components of social justice education, one of several social justice frameworks, uses a social justice camera to introduce five lenses: content mastery, tools for critical analysis, tools for social change, tools for personal reflection, and multicultural group dynamics. Teachers need to see PE beyond just addressing the psychomotor and cognitive domains, prepare students to be able to cope with the challenges and trauma they may face in society, and to be able to work collaboratively and respectfully with others.

Pages: 10

If colonised education systems intend to ‘close the gap’, it requires the ‘coming together’ of Aboriginal and Western knowledge systems. Intersections of pedagogy and epistemologies call out for physical education (PE) educators to move away from Eurocentric PE that fails to acknowledge Indigenous perspectives and bridge this knowledge gap. A Game Sense Approach (GSA) invites students into a narrative with a game through inquiry-based learning, while Yunkaporta's 8 Ways demonstrates why narrative is critical to Aboriginal epistemology. Central to the GSA is reflection and purposeful social interaction through play, and the process of inquiry to make learning visible. Meanwhile story as pedagogy is fundamental to Aboriginal processes of learning. Place-based learning links content to local land and nature, with local land referred to by Aboriginal Australians as ‘Country’. Country is more than people and place, ‘all entities that make up Country are alive with spirit; they are all sentient.

Pages: 11

This chapter explores the varieties that exist in the most central games teaching and coaching approaches and models incorporated in different countries. The underlying reason for this initiative is the increasing segmentation of game teaching models that often serve individual or institutional goals and priorities in the field of physical education and sports. The chapter discusses this tendency and the necessity to move towards a global shift through alignment of elements in these concepts to overcome labels and definitions. It then describes the emergence of specific approaches on games teaching with respect to its primary goals and assumptions and how this further developed towards the global idea of game-based approach (GBA). The chapter also consists of an analysis of the perspectives of GBA in different countries in which the stage of development often differs with respect to the expansion of a particular pedagogical concept.