Biography

José L. Arias-Estero is a Lecturer in the Faculty of Education in Murcia at Universidad de Murcia (Spain), with expertise in Physical Education and sport pedagogy in both curricular and extracurricular contexts. He received his PhD from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in 2009 thanks to a pre-doctoral scholarship. His PhD research focused on testing an adapted ball to mini-basketball in 9-11 extracurricular basketball. As part of his PhD studies, José L. was invited to Faculdade de Desporto da Universidade do Porto (Portugal). Later, he has also developed research stays in Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and Lithuanian Sport University, while he was a Senior Lecturer at UCAM Universidad Católica San Antonio de Murcia, where he has been the Head of the Physical Activity and Sport Department for 10 years. He has taught subjects related to teaching Physical Education and sport pedagogy at university since 2010. He has been Head of the PhD programme in Sport Sciences (1 year) and member of the academic board (2 years). He has published several research papers both in Spanish and English on Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) and on Sport Pedagogy. Over the last 10 years, he has conducted numerous TGfU workshops and lectures on the topic in the PE and research Masters programmes. From his University, José L. is leading a research line on TGfU. Since 2016 he has supervised seven PhD students and more than 52 master theses on TGfU, rule modification, scaled equipment, small sided games, Sport Education, competency-based teaching and mini-basketball. José L. continues to investigate and promote TGfU from a practice reference approach. He is interested in fostering TGfU in curricular and extracurricular contexts in order to help teachers and coaches to understand the possibilities of the TGfU approach from a practical point of view. His current research interest includes the analysis of pedagogical models, teaching games for understanding, tactical learning, and rule modification, in designing learning contexts in Physical Education and youth sports.

Mission Statement

​I am a researcher interested in sport pedagogy, in general, and in TGfU in particular. Since the last decade, together with my research team, we have developed several TGfU research projects and we have gone in depth regarding how to implement TGfU from a practice-reference framework. Nowadays, four PhD students, with national scholarships, are working on TGfU related issues under my supervision. Consequently, I think we have knowledge, abilities and capacities to contribute to spread TGfU throughout Spain. In general, we could impact our country both via our relationship with universities, schools, clubs and local entities. Nevertheless, we would like to go further by means of research projects on physical activity, typical childhood games, new sports, and adherence in extracurricular sport context based on the TGfU approach. These projects would involve applying to nationals and Erasmus calls. In this way, we would obtain resources and therefore, we would increase our possibilities and our research team (for example, by means of new scholarships). In relation, we would like to promote a National TGfU Congress in Spain. From a practical point of view, the former ideas would be applied to the real context (curricular and extracurricular) working with: (a) universities and centres of in-service teachers, (b) training students, pre-service and in-service teachers, and (c) local entities, councils, and clubs, showing all of them the possibilities of TGfU. Under our opinion, it is very necessary to continue teaching coaches, pre-service and in-service teachers how to determine learning objectives, content lessons and teaching-learning units following TGfU pedagogical strategies. Furthermore, it is necessary to highlight the relevance of promoting an ongoing mentoring in the approach to improve the understanding and teaching of TGfU.

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