Including Critical Thinking and Problem Solving in Physical Education

Developments in curriculum frameworks around the world have formalised a rationale for critical thinking, problem solving and creativity in PE as elements in both curriculum design and in the wording of student achievement standards. McBride (1999) suggested that if PE teachers deliberately structure lessons with the need for critical thinking and creativity in mind, students will learn the cognitive skills and the dispositions that support them will be reinforced.

Critical and creative thinking skills are developed in PE through learning environments that encourage experiences that direct students to answer questions posed by the teacher and, beyond that, encourage students to pose questions, develop solutions, challenge ideas, reflect and suggest reasoned and defensible decisions, and develop personal and social skills (Mawer, 1995; McBride, 1991a; McPeck, 1981). Critical, creative and problem solving skills are thus developed in environments that do more than enable critical thought, as the cognitive resources involved include personal and social as well as cognitive skills (Lai, 2011). 

Critical thinking can be learned. Students in PE can be taught to better use their cognitive resources to decide more quickly, decide more creatively, spend more time analysing content or the structure of a problem, be more flexible and willing to alter decisions based on new information, and be able to more effectively explain, defend and transfer thinking to other situations (Lodewyk, 2009). The ability to think critically and creatively is also distinct from the motivation and/or disposition to do so (Lai, 2011).

Cleland’s (2011) depiction of an enriched learning environment in PE should be considered together with McBride's (1991b, 1997) suggestion that PE teachers need to use teaching styles that promote inquiry, in addition to creating movement contexts and activity environments designed to foster the dispositions that support thinking processes. McBride (1991b, 1997) described these teaching styles as ones that initiate questions to require students to defend ideas and movement solutions, set up movement problems and debrief the learning intentions of the session. Mosston and Ashworth’s spectrum of teaching styles (2008) can provide assistance in this area of teacher decision-making through a framework for PE teachers to consider the cognitive behaviours they desire students to use during movement processes. For example, the guided discovery style can be used when the teacher wants the student to discover a previously unknown concept, rule, relationship, principle, cause or effect (Mosston & Ashworth, 2008), or when the student reaches a point where they do not seem to understand why a principle or strategy is needed. Another teaching style described by Mosston and Ashworth (2008) that requires learners to inquire or search for answers beyond what they already know is the convergent discovery style. The difference between guided discovery style and convergent discovery style is essentially the move from the teacher asking the questions (in guided discovery) to search/discover, to the students asking the questions in their search for or discovery of the single correct answer or principle. The role of the teacher is to state the major objective of the episode in the form of a problem to be solved by employing logic or reasoning. For example, this could occur in a 3 versus 3 keep-away game in a square where the students in each group of three may be asked to discover a principle that makes keeping possession easier, or principles that make interception easier.

A further example of a teaching strategy that can be used to create an environment that requires the production of knowledge and creativity is divergent discovery style (Mosston & Ashworth, 2008). This style differs from convergent discovery style in that it now requires the student to create or produce multiple solutions or responses to a single question or stimuli (such as a task card). The other important characteristic of this teaching style is that it usually emphasises that no single correct answer is being sought (Mosston & Ashworth, 2008). Teaching episodes in a divergent discovery style are designed to expand the imagination of students and not limit their experiences to the replication of known skills, movements and strategies (Mosston & Ashworth, 2008).

Research has confirmed that both convergent discovery style and divergent discovery style have a positive effect on students’ ability to produce new movement ideas (Cleland & Pearse, 1995).

Findlay (1982) described a games teaching approach from a movement framework with students as directors of activity who were required to think critically about the basis and application of movement. Possibly the most well-known of the models that direct attention to critical thinking and problem solving in games based teaching is teaching games for understanding (TGFU; Bunker & Thorpe, 1982) and its sport-focused derivative, the game sense approach (Australian Sports Commission, 1996). These models emphasise teachers well considered use of questioning strategies.

Image from Pill, S. (2010). Using tactical games. Sport Coach, 31(1), available here 

This blog is extracted from the paper 

Shane Pill & Brendan SueSee (2017) Including Critical Thinking and Problem Solving in Physical Education, Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, 88:9, 43-49

For further reading on this topic, please see the paper available here