Influence of a hybrid Sport Education—Teaching Games for Understanding unit on one teacher and his students

Abstract

Background: Sport Education (SE) and Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) are two curriculum models that were developed to help students participate in fair and equitable ways and challenge their thinking beyond the replication of techniques and skills. Given that the general aim of both models is to employ more democratic pedagogies and provide sporting experiences which really allow students to learn how to play well, and considering both models attempt to realize this goal in slightly different ways and have different foci, it would seem logical that a coalition of the two might lead to some real pedagogical breakthroughs.

Purpose: To provide descriptive, detailed information about the researcher's experiences and the students' reactions to a unit designed following the structure of SE (seasons, formal competition and student roles), but with the skills and tactics taught using problem solving and guided discovery approaches rather than a more command style.

Participants and setting: 29 sixth-grade students (11 boys and 18 girls) at a middle class primary school in a metropolitan Australian capital meeting daily for 30 minutes over a 5-week period.

Intervention: A 22-lesson hybrid season of ‘batting and fielding games’ formed the basic content of instruction. The organizational structure of the unit was pure SE, however the main pedagogical style employed was pure TGfU.

Research design: The design followed that of a ‘teaching experiment’ having four foundational goals: (i) to examine teaching, learning and subject matters as part of a complex system, (ii) to describe the learning of subject matter as it occurs in the classroom, (iii) to identify from the teacher's perspective the issues, problems and challenges that arise during teaching, and (iv) to develop, refine or provide illustrations of theory.

Data collection: Following each lesson, each student completed a ‘critical incident reflective sheet’. Four ‘tactics quizzes’ were given throughout the season. Each team designed its own batting and fielding game using a ‘game design form’. At the completion of the season, each team participated in a group interview that explored why they chose to incorporate certain rules or equipment into their own games and how they would teach the tactics of their games.

Data analysis: Critical incidence data were sorted into thoughts and perceptions, and the frequency of thoughts and perceptions within each category and subcategory were computed. Tactical quizzes were analyzed to determine the number of students who provided an appropriate response to the scenario. Interview text was reduced to a series of thoughts and perceptions, and these were then coded and categorized using the same procedure employed during the analysis of the critical incident data

Findings: The students responded well to the myriad of problems they were asked to solve and by the unit's conclusion, were able to understand, appreciate, and execute a number of rudimentary batting, bowling/pitching, and fielding tactics and strategies and some which were fairly sophisticated. They also understood the overarching principles, rules and structures of batting/fielding games, appreciated their importance, and were able to transfer them from one game to another. Particularly impressive in this respect, was their ability to include risk/reward strategies and avoid problematic skills in the games that they invented.

Conclusions: It is important to emphasize that combining the two models did not weaken most of the structural advantages research has suggested SE has over more traditional curricula. However, combining SE and TGfU placed more emphasis on the teacher to drive and give momentum to the proceedings and, therefore, teaching was more labour-intensive. In particular, we concluded that to be successful when delivering a hybrid SE-TGfU unit, a teacher would have to possess superior content and pedagogical content knowledge.

Keywords:

• Child-designed games
• Critical incident
• Elementary physical education
• Games for Understanding
• Sport education