Game-Based Teaching and Coaching as a Toolkit of Teaching Styles

There are many versions of game-based approaches to sport teaching and coaching. Popular versions in PE include teaching games for understanding (TGfU; Bunker & Thorpe, 1982), the tactical games model (Griffin, Oslin, & Mitchell, 1997), tactical decision learning model (Grehaigne, Wallian, & Godbout, 2005), play with purpose (Pill, 2007), and the game sense approach (GSA; Australian Sports Commission [ASC], 1996). Although there are differences between these versions, all GBAs view playing the game (conditioned, constrained, modified, or adapted for the players’ abilities and a target learning intention as the central organisational feature of a session. The modified games create conditions/constraints that emphasise certain game features in order to develop understanding as players solve the problems they are presented with in the game (Breed & Spittle, 2011).

Game-based approaches (GBAs) have been described as a “tactical” model (Metzler, 2011) instructionally distinctive by an emphasis on guided discovery. However, it is more accurate to think of a GBA as a range of teaching styles or a “toolkit” of styles. It is helpful to view the teaching styles with a non-comparison approach (Mosston & Ashworth, 2008) rather than as a debate between a tactical style or discovery style and a technical or direct style although, the “the central instructional strategy is the use of questioning to stimulate thinking about the game” (Pill, 2013, p. 9). When using a GBA, the term “guided” does not imply an implicit “game as teacher” learning environment. Instead, it is a purposeful environment deliberately constructed and shaped by the pedagogical actions of the teacher (Pill, 2017). This purposefully constructed learning context engages the pedagogical application of game conditions/constraints/modifications to:

1. constrain/condition and shape the game behaviour of players to focus the tactical and technical learning intention;

2. prioritise practicing skills as actions within the context of games to increase the relevance and transferability of learning from practice to “match day” play;.

3. place less emphasis on the development of specified techniques and more emphasis on adaptive movement responses; and

4. focus on player problem solving and decision making to assist in the development of their game thinking (ASC, 1996; Breed & Spittle, 2011; den Duyn, 1997; Light, 2013; Pill, 2007).

Lennartsson, Lidstrom and Lindberg (2015) explained game thinking in two parts: 1) an ability to decide on a strategy for the situation, and 2) an ability to execute the chosen strategy. O’Connor and Larkin (2016) similarly explained game thinking as the observation of the interaction between tactical and decision-making skills involving the player performing a correct action at the right time. Both explanations are consistent with the GSA equation for skilled performance:

“technique + game context = skill” (den Duyn, 1997, p. 6)

In the article

Brendan SueSee & Shane Pill (2018) Game-Based Teaching and Coaching as a Toolkit of Teaching Styles, Strategies, 31:5, 21-28

available here we explore an imagined dialogue between a teacher or coach and two players being questioned after playing a 2 vs. 1 keep-away game, to show that even though questioning is being used as the teaching strategy, it cannot be assumed that the questioning is stimulating discovery or creativity thinking with the players. We show a GBA can be many teaching styles to players, which invokes the metaphor of the GBA as a pedagogical toolkit. Most of the research and scholarly literature on GBAs has focused on the pedagogical acts of the teacher or coach or on the observation of players’ game behaviours (see for example Stolz & Pill review of TGfU here and associated research). Research on concrete changes in player thinking (memory, discovery or creativity) as a product of experiencing a GBA is needed to further illuminate what it means to teach for understanding and/or to develop thinking players via a GBA.