Models Based Practice: Games Education

 In a recent conversation on a games-based approach for physical education, I was asked about game categories as a model for conceptual or thematic curriculum. Game categories as a model for PE curriculum planning is a core feature of the TGfU idea. In addition to the four game categories common to game-based models, I have long argued the need for a category: Competing, to account for athletics, swimming, rowing (for example) and other sports that don't fit into the common games category of Invasion (or Territory), Net/Court, Striking/Fielding and Target...but that conversation is for another blog.

While many PE teachers will now be familiar with the 6-step TGfU instructional (pedagogy) model, the Games Education curriculum model is absent from much of the contemporary models based practice discourse. The figure below shows an example of the curriculum for games teaching based on the Games Education Model - Game Categories.

Game categories was not an idea new to TGfU. In a previous blog I looked at Mauldon and Redfern's Game Teaching: A New Approach, first published in 1969 (see here). It included game categories as a curriculum model for PE. The categories were:

Category 1. Net games: games in which players are concerned mainly with striking, where the territory is divided by a net, and the sides are of equal number. For example, tennis and volleyball.
Category 2. Batting games: games in which one side is concerned with wholly striking while the other team is wholly concerned with fielding (collecting, throwing and catching). For example, baseball and cricket. The games all involve a batter striving to send the ball into spaces not covered by a fielder.
Category 3. Running games: games in which both teams are engaged in striking or throwing, catching or collecting, and carrying or propelling. For example, hockey, basketball and soccer. The games all involve passing and eventually, a shot at a target.

Examining further the three categories, we see that:
In net games, gaining possession does not occur;
In batting games, gaining possession is only the concern of the fielders; and
In running games, gaining possession is the concern of all players.

The three-category Games Education model supported the idea of transfer of understanding across games within a category as the 'logic of play' involved complimentary principles of play (principles of play are an example of an 'advanced cognitive organiser:  advanced in the sense that the pattern recognition or 'priming' that comes from the principles of play is thought to help the player to organise their decision-making faster and more 'accurately' or 'effectively' as while unique to the moment as the moment is itself unique, the decision-making is at the same time is 'familiar' as the player has a heuristic (a 'rule of thumb' a 'mental shortcut' - the principles of play). 

 

Werner and Almond (1990) suggested that Mauldon and Redfern's model was focussed on developing technical skills. This is not the impression I got from reading their book. While skill development was clearly stated as an outcome focus, the pedagogical emphasis seemed to be on player thinking, and in particular awakening curiosity and problem solving. The lesson structure suggested was: 

                                Game - Investigate and Examine - Practice - Game

In 1983, Margaret Ellis proposed a games teaching framework based on four categories: 

    Territory: Goal or line scoring

    Target: Opposed or Unopposed

    Court: Divided or Shared

    Field: Fan or Oval Shaped

In Ellis's model, the game categories are more clearly defined, including sub-categories within the four main categories providing for more 'fine grained' understanding of technical and tactical game elements.

Almond suggested all games in some way involve gaining 'Territory', and so proposed the category be called 'Invasion' as all games in this category involve 'invading' or penetrating space in order to score. Almond also thought 'Court' could be confusing - for example, basketball is a territory game played on a court. He therefore proposed Net/Wall games as the alternative.

Almond's 1984 TGfU curriculum model for games teaching was:

    Invasion: Open Ended Target (goal) or Closed Target (goal)

    Net / Wall: Net-racquet, Net-hand, Wall

    Fielding/Run Scoring

    Target

A few years back, Steve Stolz and I undertook a comprehensive review of the idea of teaching games for understanding in PE (see here: Teaching games and sport for understanding: Exploring and reconsidering its relevance in physical education). We found a wide body of research on the tactical vs technical 'flip' of TGfU from the traditionally common practice-before-play behavourist framing of games teaching to a 'tactical first' orientation inherent in the 6-steps of the TGfU instructional model. However, the literature was lacking in research consideration of the curriculum model of Games Education. I suggested at the International game Sense Conference in Adelaide in 2017 the need for a 5th game category to take in sports like rowing, sailing, bike riding, which I called Competing.

There seems to be a clear need for empirical work on the curriculum model for Games Education from the work of Mauldon and Redfern and further development by Ellis, Almond and Werner, as part of the game-based/game-centred teaching area. If this interests you, let me know: you can find me via https://www.flinders.edu.au/people/shane.pill and perhaps we can look at a project.