Developing Game Sense in Physical Education and Sport provides coaches and teachers with practical instructions to help learners develop the skills and understanding they need to effectively play games and sports. It offers instruction in invasion games, striking and fielding games, and net and wall games.

Using a pedagogical concept similar to game-based approaches such as Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) and Game Sense, this book explores the teaching and learning of modified games in physical education and sports. It includes examples of innovative games designed to create a rich learning environment. The book presents a pedagogical model that structures game design to fit the needs of every specific group of students, enabling physical educators and coaches to design their own games and teach within a game-based approach. The book focuses on eight sports – soccer, basketball, handball, rugby, volleyball, badminton, softball and cricket – and for each sport it introduces a series of learning conditions that gradually increase in technical and tactical complexity. These conditions are supported with commonly seen game play scenarios, providing meaningful opportunities for developing awareness of technical and tactical solutions. Game-Based Pedagogy in Physical Education and Sports is a vital read for students of physical education teacher education (PETE), sport coaching, and sports pedagogy. It is also a valuable resource for physical educators and coaches.

This book offers new perspectives on game-based coaching (GBC), one of the most important practices for session design and instructional delivery in sport coaching. GBC emphasises the sport coach as educator and the development of ‘thinking players’, and this book demonstrates what that means in practice. It brings together leading and innovative thinkers and practitioners in coaching pedagogy, and aims to stimulate reflection by the reader on their own coaching practice. Reviewing recent theoretical developments and current research in GBC, the book provides in-depth examples on how research can be applied in practice, including the use of digital video games, immersive scenario-based coaching narratives, and the Game Sense approach as ‘play with purpose’. Representing the most up-to-date and engaging introduction to the theory and practice of GBC, this book is invaluable reading for all students of physical education and sport coaching, as well as practising coaches and coach educators.

Game Sense is an exciting and innovative approach to coaching and physical education that places the gameat the heart of the session. It encourages the player to develop skills in a realistic context, to become more tactically aware, to make better decisions and to have more fun. Game Senseis a comprehensive, research-informed introduction to the Game Sense approach that defines and explores key concepts and essential pedagogical theory, and that offers an extensive series of practical examples and plans for using Game Sense in real teaching and coaching situations. The first section of the book helps the reader to understand how learning occurs and how this informs player-centred pedagogy.It also explains the relationship between Game Sense and other approaches to Teaching Games for Understanding. The second section of the book demonstrates how the theory can be applied in practice, providing a detailed, step-by-step guide to using Game Sense in eleven sports, including soccer, basketball, field hockey and softball. No other book explores the Game Sense approach in such depth, or combines theory and innovative practical techniques. Game Senseis invaluable reading for all students of physical education or sports coaching, any in-service physical education teacher or any sports coach working with children or young people.

This book outlines an approach to teaching and learning in physical education that prioritises meaningful experiences for pupils, using case studies to illustrate how practitioners have implemented this approach across international contexts. Prioritising the idea of meaningfulness positions movement as a primary way to enrich the quality of young people’s lives, shifting the focus of physical education programs to better suit the needs of contemporary young learners and resist the utilitarian health-oriented views of physical education that currently predominate in many schools and policy documents. The book draws on the philosophy of physical education to articulate the main rationale for prioritising meaningful experiences, before identifying potential and desired outcomes for participants. It highlights the distinct characteristics of meaningful physical education and its content, and outlines teaching and learning principles and strategies, supported by pedagogical cases that show what meaningful physical education can look like in school-based teaching and in higher education-based teacher education. With an emphasis on good pedagogical practice, this is essential reading for all pre-service and in-service physical education teachers or coaches working in youth sport.

This book offers an overview of contemporary debates in social justice and equity within Physical Education (PE) and Youth Sport (YS). It gives the reader clear direction on how to evaluate their current PE or YS program against current research and provides ideas for content, curriculum development, implementation, and pedagogical impact. The book addresses key contemporary issues including healthism, sexism, racism, classism, heterosexism, ableism and colonialism, and it highlights the importance of positionality and critical awareness on the part of the teacher, coach, or researcher. Presenting an array of case studies, practical examples, and thought-provoking questions, the book discusses equitable pedagogies and how they might be implemented, including in curriculum design and assessment. Concise, and avoiding academic jargon, this is an invaluable guide for pre-service and in-service teachers, teacher educators, coaches, and educators, helping them to ensure that all students and young people are included within the PE and YS settings for which they are responsible.

Can we imagine a future in which physical education in schools no longer exists? In this controversial and powerful meditation on physical education, David Kirk argues that a number of different futures are possible. Kirk argues that multi-activity, sport-based forms of physical education have been dominant in schools since the mid-twentieth century and that they have been highly resistant to change. The practice of physical education has focused on the transmission of de-contextualised sport-techniques to large classes of children who possess a range of interests and abilities, where learning rarely moves beyond introductory levels. Meanwhile, the academicization of physical education teacher education since the 1970s has left teachers less well prepared to teach this programme than they were previously, suggesting that the futures of school physical education and physical education teacher education are intertwined. Kirk explores three future scenarios for physical education, arguing that the most likely short-term future is ‘more of the same’. He makes an impassioned call for radical reform in the longer-term, arguing that without it physical education faces extinction. No other book makes such bold use of history to interrogate the present and future configurations of the discipline, nor offers such a wide-ranging critique of physical culture and school physical education. This book is essential reading for all serious students and scholars of physical education and the history and theory of education.