Old wine in new bottles: a response to claims that teaching games for understanding was not developed as a theoretically based pedagogical framework

ABSTRACT

Background: Teaching games for understanding (TGfU) has stimulated so much attention, research and debate since the 1980s that it is easy for its origins to become refracted and misunderstood. For example, in a recent edition of the Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy journal there was paper arguing a constraints-led approach (CLA) as distinctive from TGfU, where TGfU was positioned as merely an operational model without an initial underpinning theory.

Purpose: In this paper, we draw on historical records of existing literature and the memory of one the founders of TGfU to explore the various theoretical contributions to TGfU during its foundational years, which included the work of Bruner on guided discovery, and others (i.e. Stenhouse, Suits).

Findings: First, we clarify that TGfU was not developed by Thorpe and Bunker, it was developed by what we refer to as a ‘games team.’ Second, we argue that although in practice TGfU and a CLA may look alike, epistemologically they rest on very different theoretical foundations. From its inception, the epistemological development of TGfU has been from an educative perspective rather than sport science/skill acquisition like that of a CLA. Not only have these competing epistemological/theoretical descriptions led to tensions between education and sport science in the physical education and sport coaching research and literature, they also cause confusion for the practitioner. It is however, inappropriate to privilege one fields’ theoretical discourse or to create a ‘verses’ mentality to theoretical descriptions of what to the practitioner appear essentially the same pedagogical actions (Stolz, S., and S. Pill, 2014. “Teaching Games and Sport for Understanding: Exploring and Reconsidering Its Relevance in Physical Education.” European Physical Education Review 20 (1): 36–71). Notwithstanding these different epistemological foundations, we go on to ask for caution in the messages that are sent to practitioners using game-centered approaches (GCAs) such as TGfU or the CLA that simply manipulating constraints and letting the ‘game be the teacher’ is a sufficient condition for learning to occur.

Conclusions: The theoretical development of TGfU overviewed in this paper provides a historical record of several perspectives similar to the CLA – such as modifying game constraints, representation of the full game form in designer games, etc. which may render any ‘new’ GCA that has these features such as the CLA as ‘old wine in new bottles.’ We contend that the major differential in the work of TGfU and CLA authors is TGfU’s emergence from the educative perspective rather than the field of sport science/skill acquisition. From its inception, the interpretation of TGfU has been through the prism of discovery learning. It was only in the 1990s that physical education pedagogues ascribed TGfU to a constructivist approach. We believe the historical insights offered in this paper are critical to physical educators’ understanding of the theoretical development of TGfU as a pedagogical approach to games teaching/coaching.

KEYWORDS:

• Pedagogy
• discovery learning
• constraints-led approach

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge Len Almond’s (author 3’s) contribution to this manuscript. Len passed away soon after its initial submission. Without Len’s historical records and wisdom, the completion of this manuscript would not have been possible. He was a true inspiration to all individuals involved in the Teaching Games for Understanding movement.

ORCID

Stephen Harvey http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1854-4108

Shane Pill http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3970-6724

Notes

1 Note that this founder's ‘voice’ will often be apparent in the arguments outlined in this paper.

2 Terry Williamson, Bernard Dickenson, Sue Jackson, Karen Booth and Mike McNamee were major contributors to putting ideas into practice. Overseas scholars such as Sarah Doolittle, Margaret Ellis and Peter Werner played a significant contribution as critical friends and observers of what the Loughborough group we were doing in schools and on training courses. They spent a long time at Loughborough and are excellent witnesses to the development of TGFU.

3 Lawrence Stenhouse as director of the Centre for Applied Research at the University of East Anglian introduced MACOS into the UK in the early 1970s and coordinated its development in schools. He saw it as a curriculum that would engage teachers and transform their understanding of learning and enable them to learn from their practice. See also footnote 3 on page 5.

4 See www.macosonline.org for access to the archives of materials used in the course. They deserve a thorough reading together with a careful study of the Teachers’ Guides, Talks to Teachers and Seminars for Teachers which provide a comprehensive introduction to a practical implementation of Bruner's theories.

5 In this training there were two tutors – a facilitator and an observer. The facilitator posed several problems for the MACOS teachers and used the same processes that students would encounter. This enabled them to develop a thorough grasp of the processes used in tackling a problem as well as become familiar with the range of materials. The observer was there to ensure that the facilitator was true to the procedural principles of the course and to produce an account of the learning to feed back to the teachers. This was a very stimulating and illuminating process.

6 The Woods Hole conference was held in Massachusetts as a response to the Soviet Union’'s launch of the Sputnik in 1959 to identify the problems of science education and to recommend solutions. The conference marked the beginning of a reform movement that inspired a rich dialogue about learning and teaching that engaged some of the finest academic minds in the country. The result was discipline-based education and conceptual learning. It created also some alternative models for teaching and learning that are still worth examining.

7 Author 3 did a MEd at Manchester University in 1971 where their dissertation focused on Bruner's educational thinking and MACOS. It was this work and analysis of MACOS that got Author 3 a position at a College of Education to train the Curriculum Development team on Bruner's educational theory and the theoretical basis of MACOS, together with leading the training courses for teachers. This is where he met Jerry Bruner. It was running the MACOS training courses that influenced his thinking for TGfU because the ‘games team’ members tutored numerous MACOS courses during the development of TGFU throughout the 1980's.

8 See Bruner's keynote address ‘Celebrating Divergence: Piaget and Vigotsky’ (page 9) delivered in Geneva on 15 September 1996 at a joint meeting of the ‘Growing Minds’ Conference in honor of the centennial of Jean Piaget's birth, and the ‘Vygotsky-Piaget’ conference of the 2nd Congress of Socio-Cultural Research, honoring both Lev Vygotsky and Jean Piaget.