By Kanae Haneishi, Ed.D.

TGfU International Advisory Board (America)
Associate Professor of Kinesiology and Human Performance
Valley City State University, North Dakota (U.S.A)

Website: https://www.vcsu.edu/directory/kanae-haneishi/
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @Kanaehaneishi
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kanae.haneishi​
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kanae-haneishi-4998158
Researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kanae-Haneishi

By Neil Plimmer
PGA Golf Professional for over 20 years. Working in all areas of the business. The majority of his time has been focussed on coaching and during the last 10 specialising in coaching children

Blog https://jolf.golf/the-jolf-man
Twitter & LinkedIn @neilplimmer 

More information on JOLF at the end of this blog

JOLF was born in 2011. We provide children and their family’s accessible opportunities to play golf.  We do this by delivering enjoyable, engaging and appropriate experiences in schools, the community and at golf clubs.
Our approach to playing and learning golf is driven by JOLFology, our guiding principles developed through our ongoing experiences, research and critical review.

Read more about what we do at www.JOLF.golf
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​By Stefan König
University of Education, Weingarten (Germany)

​Email: [email protected]
ORCID: http://ORCID.org/0000-0002-7851-1973
Researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stefan_Koenig6
Google Scholar profile: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=IQ44XRMAAAAJ&hl=de

​Although the original concept of TGfU was published in 1982 by Bunker and Thorpe, the concept is still far from being well-known among physical education teachers in Germany. As a consequence, TGfU’s pedagogical principles and didactic approaches are scarcely implemented in the respective PE lessons. In the following four pivotal issues are described and discussed. 

Additionally, we got similar results for primary schools in Germany (Memmert & König, 2007): TGfU concepts lead to the highest effects when teaching basic tactical competencies, even with complete beginners (1st and 2nd graders).
Various studies analysing TGfU lessons and the question in how far students like or dislike such programs, brought to light that the majority of German students actually appreciate their teachers working the TGfU approach. In particular, this could be shown for 1 to 4 graders (7 to 11 years of age) who reported that TGfU lessons were interesting for them, that they felt like playing or taking part in the games all the time, and that they would prefer playing like that more often.
 
2) What is the situation in PE teacher education in Germany?
Due to a change in pedagogical conceptions and ideas, curricula in Germany have moved from the idea of prescribing traditional sport disciplines for PE to a paradigm which is more open because it only mentions movement fields, e.g. like playing. As a consequence, teacher education has also been modified; this means that lectures and seminars at university increasingly have to handle this challenge–a process which lead to more unspecific courses (e.g. racket sports) or to combination courses (e.g. basketball & volleyball). As a consequence, it might be assumed that future teachers will lack specific knowledge, a highly relevant goal for teaching TGfU lessons.
 

3) What are the most important problems for PE teachers in Germany?
Discussing strategies for teaching games in Physical Education a majority of teachers mention the following problems as focal:

• First, teaching in various pitches simultaneously, it is difficult, especially for beginners, to control the teaching process of all students. This leads to uneasiness.
• Second, recognizing typical and adequate game situations for reflecting tactical problems and questions (step 2 of TGfU process) seems to be an enormous challenge which requires teaching experience. Thus, it becomes a nearly unsolvable problem for novices.
• Third, conducting talks with students on the basis of a constructivist approach overcharges a great deal of teachers because they have not learned to do this, and because they aim at controlling the situation thus drawing the attention to themselves.

Summarizing these experiences, we can say that it is difficult for teachers to conduct TGfU lessons due to several problems. However, these problems have to be future contents in the education of teachers.
 

4) What could be done to improve the situation?
​In general, our binational project (http://www.tgfu.info/whats-happening-in-germany.html) revealed three major consequences for teacher education (Baumberger et al., accepted): PE teachers need …

• .... specific TGfU teaching experiences which emphasize the typical combination playing and exercising,
• .... adequate teaching programs for different team sports and different age groups, and
• .... a framework for planning their game teaching on the long run.

            

​By Dr Aspasia Dania and Panagiotis Stasinos
(Assistant Professor in Physical Education Teaching) and ​(PE teacher in public Greek Physical Education)

​In many countries worldwide, there are inequalities in the opportunities given to girls compared to boys for participation in Physical Education (PE). Scientific data show that while girls' biological diversity is not an obstacle to their participation in any sporting activity, social diversity undoubtedly affects it negatively. School plays a very important role in the reproduction of gender inequalities and by the time girls reach adolescence, they already behave as individuals with a socially defined gender identity. School PE in particular, is an important and dynamic space for the construction of gender identity and numerous studies have shown that female participation in PE games and/or activities becomes lower as girls move on to graduation. The existence of body, strength and ability stereotypes within PE classes result in a lack of encouragement for girls, who perceive they are not so able so as to look up to their teachers’ expectations, and thus choose to be “competent by-standers”.

The issue of youth participation in PE and sport is definitely an issue that needs to be redefined, especially in regard to equity principles and PE teachers’ role is pivotal to this direction. In many countries, in service PE teachers’ professional development on gender issues lacks theoretical understandings and practical resources, limiting thus their abilities and skills to design and implement gender-neutral classes and/or activities. The fact that within many Physical Education Teacher Education departments practical courses are taught in purely male or female groups, constraints undergraduates’ experiences and ways of understanding. Further, the establishment of mixed gender PE classes at school not only fails to reverse the above situation, but in many cases may contribute to the reproduction of stereotypes, both by novice and experts in the field.

Empowering girls and young women through PE and sport is a major educational issue that has to be resolved by starting from small-scale changes in curriculum content and instructional methods. The use of game-based instructional models could address gender access and participation imbalances within, ensuring their holistic learning and providing specific tailored support when needed. Game-based models place the student at the center of the learning process, by providing equal opportunities for participation, improvement and progress, within specifically designed game contexts that positively challenge their thinking, feeling and acting behaviors and/or habits. A positive aspect of game based model teaching concerns the way that group formation and teamwork issues are resolved (i.e. developmentally appropriate activities, small-sided games, questioning and challenges at a group level), something that can positively affect girls' participation rates and minimize feelings of helplessness or failure in a co-educational classrooms. Compared to traditional “one-size-fits all” PE classrooms, modified games can ensure fair play and multiple opportunities for participation, challenging stereotypes about which sports or activities are considered male or female.
​
Depending on our role as PE teachers and teacher educators, we advocate for the promotion of equality and social justice within our classes, so that student wellbeing is empowered regardless of their gender and abilities. Game-based instructional models could be a relevant framework for redesigning a gender-neutral PE curriculum, especially due to their emphasis on developing students’ knowledge, skills, character, and meta-learning abilities. The latter are considered as important dimensions for educating versatile 21st century learners who will effectively cope with the societal, economic and personal level challenges of the modern world with poise and resilience.

By Barry Mullane
Director and founder of Active Sports Coaching and part time PE lecturer at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick

Twitter: @barrymullane1
Email: [email protected]

I can sum up my own philosophy in these points:

• “Every pass must have a thought” – Dennis Bergkamp
• Use and receive the ball under pressure
• Repetition without repetition

Before you sit down and design your games, or your coaching session, it’s important to note that a games based approach (GBA) does not just mean 2 goalposts, 2 teams and play a match. A GBA means, using multiple goals, zones, gates, keeping possession, game based scenarios, small sided games (SSG), wide sided games (WSG), long sided games (LSG) and overload games.

Ometto et al., (2018) described a GBA and in particular using SSG as an opportunity to practice performance in a sub scaled version of the whole formal game. These games provide opportunities to experience physical, physiological, cognitive and technical demands of the sport. When designing or adapting the games, always keep in mind the demands of the sport (see Fig 1). Ask yourself the question; what will the players experience during the match? If your sport is soccer, are your players being afforded the opportunities to look up and pass under pressure? In my own coaching, my aim for each session is to ensure the players are able to make a decision with each ball they get and use the ball under pressure.
​
(Fig 1) where does your sport fit into Dave Alred’s matrix?
​

As mentioned earlier, a GBA can mean many things. Below (Fig 2) is what looks like a linear/prescriptive practice but in this practice players are using and receiving the ball under pressure and making decisions on and off the ball.
​
(Fig 2)

​The above exercise is a classic example or Bernstein’s (1967) concept of ‘repetition without repetition’. Bernstein suggested that ‘practice does not mean to mechanically repeat the same solution to a given task, but, to repeat over and over, the process of solving the task itself. For us as coaches, we must put players into situations where they can develop technically in an environment they will experience in the actual match. The repetition should be making a decision on ball just as it is in a match environment. While prescriptive activities and structure is good for tactical and skill development, chaos is essential for learning and developing players. Chaos brings a challenge to players, allows them solve problems and promotes leadership. If your training is too predictable, the teams’ performance will become predictable as well.

Types of games

Hristovski et al., (2006) discussed the ‘metastable performance region’ when highlighting that the environment you create for your players or athlete is crucial. If you place a boxer too near a punching bag, their jabs will suffer. Place the boxer too far and their uppercuts will suffer due to an over use of the jab! The same applies to coaches who constantly use the same type of game. Using SSG for the majority of a coaching session can lead to overuse injury, bad habits developing and a neglect of other technical skills.

When you are designing your games, think about what you are trying to improve. A coach should isolate the part of the game they wish to improve and then design the session/game around that. As mentioned earlier, one should not mistake a GBA as just playing SSG. A coach needs to be cognisant of lengthening or widening the playing pitch. It worth noting Gabbet, Jenkins and Abernethy’s (2009) belief that realistic improvements in fitness and performance happen when sessions stimulate the physiological and technical demands of competition.

(Fig 3)

The above games are examples of a long sided game and a wide sided game. The ‘give it long game’ is designed to improve long passing under pressure. The idea is to work on the technical aspects of the game in a match environment. Similarly in the ‘switch’ game. The pitch is made as wide as possible so players have lots of space to work on technical aspects of the game such as off the ball running, passing as well as scoring under pressure.

In my professional capacity as director of Active Sport Coaching, we teach primary school children fundamental movement skills through a GBA. Simple chasing or tag games like stuck in the mud or freeze tag can teach children the fundamentals of movement in team sports. Tag games help children learn about occupying space, evading opponents, making decisions like ‘will I run or stay? Will I help my friend or will I save myself?
​
Similarly, fun games like over the river or bench ball (Fig 4) help develop technical skills such as throwing and catching in a fun and challenging environment. Games help develop children technically, physically, cognitively and socially.

(Fig 4)

By Dr Aspasia Dania
Assistant Professor in Physical Education Teaching
​School of Physical Education and Sport Science, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece

Email: [email protected]
​Twitter: @AspasiaDania
Researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Aspasia_Dania 

​Helping Physical Education (PE) teachers to develop a sound understanding of the TGfU teacher’s role is a major challenge that goes beyond the acquisition of skills and knowledge. Focusing on the real work done at schools, it seems that even though game-based training seminars and workshops are ambiguously designed to improve, maintain and advance PE teachers as knowledgeable professionals, the final changes in students’ learning will rely on each teachers’ ability to represent game content in a meaningful way. Acting as a reflective pedagogue, the TGfU teacher has to create supportive conditions of practice and inquiry within which students will feel cognitively triggered and emotionally safe to develop tactical awareness while learning to play the game. In order to be able to establish such a culture and successfully navigate the “teaching-to-understanding” process, the TGfU teacher needs to adopt a facilitator’s role.

Effective facilitation is a difficult task since it requires teachers to transform the edges of their traditional practice and not only go around immediate lesson concerns and managerial issues.  With a focus on students and their needs, teachers have to be able to frame learning in ways that students recognize what they already know and what they have to know in order to be able to play the game effectively. Summarizing, encouraging, questioning, idea exchange and consensus building are essential facilitation skills for team-based learning. For many PE teachers, the adoption of such an instructional stance is experienced as a complex professional endeavor, one that involves changes at various levels, ranging from the use of materials for planning and delivering instruction, to the alteration of their beliefs. Dilemmas that PE teachers may face during their move to the facilitator’s position include time and resource shortages, trust and confidence in their abilities to move forward, as well as a lack of comfort to balance between the roles of the “lesson’s leader” and the “students’ follower”. Research further shows that for change to be authentic and not experienced at a surface level, the core values of prospective TGfU teachers need to be challenged. As such, substantial time for interaction, idea and resource sharing is needed.

Being part of a community or a working team of like-minded colleagues and sharing experiences of personal successes or struggles proves to be rather beneficial for teachers that want to fill knowledge deficits and pave their way to change. Community based learning provides a capacity building structure that is coherent to teachers’ needs and thus more authentic. Although labor and time intensive, community-based learning is a worthwhile endeavor for promoting teacher success, and providing opportunities for knowledge building rather than knowledge dispersing.

From the position of a committed advocate of the TGfU approach, I would strongly recommend for the establishment of regional collaborative TGfU community networks within which PE teachers could learn how to facilitate game-based instruction through social learning practices. Community based learning could involve continuous cycles of meeting, establishing direction, hands-on-work, sharing and evaluating TGfU strategies. The latter would allow PE teachers to collectively reflect on situations that arise in their practice and decide on teaching practices that are not merely technical but rather authentic and applied.

At an organizing level, the TGfU SIG could provide guidelines and standards in order to assist regional communities to plan, deliver and evaluate the impact of their initiatives. Further, a repository of shared best TGfU practices could provide points of reference for debating and comparing alternatives in usable and appropriate ways. National workshops, seminars and community publications could further raise PE teachers’ awareness on how to facilitate instruction while persevering energy and commitment to improve their TGfU teaching and personally advance within it.
​
Though the virus pandemic has put stress on PE teachers’ efforts to maintain continuity of game-based instruction, some unique challenges have arisen concerning TGfU professional development programming. From my point of view, it is a perfect time for collaboration and community networking. The launching of online workshops and initiatives could support PE teachers in a remote “learning by doing” style and provide guidance on facilitation skill development in a timely manner (i.e. sessions focusing on skills such as leadership, questioning, problem solving, management, communication, conflict resolution). Geared towards future TGfU action, such skills are definitely needed for effectively directing student learning and building high performance group instruction and course development.

By Dr Clancy M. Seymour, Ed.D.
Assistant Professor
Director of Physical & Health Education Teacher Education (P/HETE), Sport Studies, & Coaching Programs, Department of Kinesiology, Canisius College
NYS AHPERD President

Email: [email protected] 
Twitter: @DrClancySeymour
Researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Clancy_Seymour 

​As a current physical education teacher educator, I strongly support Games-Based Approaches (GBA) for K-12 physical education (PE).  In my pedagogy courses, I inform and train teacher candidates with GBA and provide authentic experiences to utilize these models.  I am also a coach educator in my institution's sport pedagogy program and pleased to see that GBA have gained traction in the coaching ranks thus creating what I call The GBA Hat-Trick.


The first goal of this trifecta occurred by chance when my wife and I registered our four young children (ages 4-5) in many beginner youth sport programs like soccer, baseball, swimming, ice hockey, golf, dance, and lacrosse.  As proud parents, the opportunity to see our children learn about new ways to be active was certainly priceless, but not without our fair share of frustrations for two physical and health educators (yes, my wife is too).  Classic errors in engagement would best describe the practices we witnessed including poor instruction, unclear teaching cues, fragmented session flow, and developmentally inappropriate tasks that could easily be rectified with key pedagogical features of GBA like representational modifications and/or small-sided games.  Indeed, many novice coaches would face similar criticism from parents trained in PE, nevertheless, my ribs are still bruised from my wife's elbow as she lamented: “Can you believe they are doing this?”; “Look at all of them standing around?”; or “These children cannot understand or play the game yet!”


Thankfully, we both survived the experience and have since moved on to a new stage of our children’s sport participation.  As a former ice hockey player/coach myself, I was proud that two of my children chose (probably forced) to play the game so near and dear to my heart.  With this decision however, also came pressure for me to volunteer and help coach.  Kicking and screaming, I agreed and have been coaching both children since. As a result and much like other youth sports in the United States, volunteer coaches in ice hockey are required to register with USA Hockey.  This association performs background checks and mandates all coaches complete a series of training workshops. During this process, I was pleased to see that USA Hockey has adopted what is called the American Developmental Model (ADM).  The ADM “is an athlete-centered, coach-enhanced, administrator-supported framework that aims to help all individuals realize their athletic potential and utilize sport as a path toward an active and healthy lifestyle” (What is the ADM?, n.d.). 


This is exciting and reinforces the work of Drs. Harvey, Light, Pill and others who have taken the original concepts of GBA in PE and applied them to the coaching sphere.  USA Hockey’s ADM is an extension of these efforts and is underpinned by the many guiding principles from GBA.  Skill fundamentals like skating, stick-handling, and shooting are embedded within open learning environments that mirror game-like conditions.  For example, all children nine years old and under are required to play cross-ice instead of the full ice version.  This is a representational modification from TGFU originators Bunker and Thorpe that provide children with more skill repetition and engagement while still preserving many aspects of the game of hockey.  As a result, cross-ice hockey allows both beginners and advanced children to experience successes and failures in a safe learning environment—a feature not only pertinent to GBA—but a fundamental premise of the physical literacy construct itself. 


At the same time, the ADM embraces other representational modifications like small-sided games (2 vs. 2; 3 vs. 3; or 4 vs. 4) that simulate many authentic components of the game of hockey.  Similarly, ADM strategies are not only for younger children, but are applicable to athletes of all ages.  Ice hockey, like many other invasion games, is often contended within smaller areas of the larger ice surface itself.  This is critical for children to learn at any age and lends to another GBA principle—exaggeration.  Constraining young hockey players within a confined space on the ice in a 3 vs. 2 or 4 vs. 3 simulation teaches the importance of movement with and without the puck in creative and innovative ways.  Coaches who also include inquiry and questioning throughout practice and/or small sided tasks (sometimes a challenge in an ice rink) provide another layer of discovery and learning for his or her athletes.


Overall, the opportunity to coach my own children (and others) the game I love while bridging my own professional interests in pedagogy has been very rewarding.  From an intentional context—goal two of the GBA Hat-Trick—resulted not only in this current piece, but also a recent publication (Seymour & Reeds, 2018) that urges coaches to adopt many key pedagogical (TGFU) principles utilized in PE. Lastly, I am excited to complete the GBA Hat-Trick by exploring new research endeavors with these models moving forward in both PE and sport pedagogy.

References
​
Seymour, C. M., & Reeds, G. K. (2018). Teaching Methods for Coaches — Coaching Methods for Teachers. Strategies . https://doi.org/10.1080/08924562.2018.1515679
​
What is the ADM? (n.d.). ADM Kids. Retrieved April 2, 2020, from https://www.admkids.com/page/show/910488-what-is-the-american-development-model-