Starla McCollum

The Sport Education Tactical Model

JOPERD • Volume 80 No. 9 • November/December 2009 A n instructional model is a “plan or pattern that can be used to shape curriculums (long-term courses of studies), to design instructional materials, and to guide instruction in the classroom or other settings” (Joyce & Weil, 1980, p. 1). Metzler (2005) described nine different instructional models that teachers can choose from to guide their teaching. Two instructional models that physical educators in middle and high schools often use are the sport education model (SEM) and the tactical games model (TGM). The SEM is a curriculum and instructional model that provides students with a more authentic sport experience in physical education (Siedentop, 1998). The SEM benefits teachers and students by increasing levels of responsibility and creating an environment that reinforces specific interpersonal behaviors (Hastie, 1998), increasing positive interactions and decreasing negative ones among students (Hastie & Sharpe, 1999), and providing more learning opportunities for lower-skilled students and girls (Hastie, 1998b; 1998c). Off-task behaviors also decrease (Hastie, 1996) as students get more opportunities to participate in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (Hastie & Trost, 2002). Physical educators have also reported increased game performance (Hastie, 1998c; Ormond, Christie, Barbieri, & Schell, 2002; Pritchard, Hawkins, Wiegand, & Metzler, 2008) and skill development (Townsend et al., 2004). The TGM is an instructional model that promotes playing ability through interest and understanding of how to play games (Mitchell, Oslin, & Griffin, 2006). Research on the TGM has found that teachers preferred this model and that students were motivated by it (Berkowitz, 1996; Burrows, 1986; Griffin, Oslin, & Mitchell, 1995; Mitchell, Griffin, & Oslin, 1994). Other researchers have reported a transfer of learning from one sport to another (Mitchell & Oslin, 1999; Martin, 2004). If the teacher is teaching an invasion game (e.g., soccer), the tactics used in that activity can be transferred to other invasion sports like basketball or Ultimate. For example, the same or very similar learning task and objective of moving to open spaces would be taught, and therefore reinforced for transfer of learning, in each invasion sport. The same can be said about other categories of sports that are similar in tactics, such as badminton and tennis (i.e., net/wall games). When describing the TGM, Mitchell et al. (2006) suggested using the components of the SEM to “provide an effective framework through which a tactical games model can be implemented” (p. 487). The SEM and TGM have shown positive results, so why not combine both models to form a new sport education tactical model (SETM)? The purpose of this article is to describe the SETM and how it would be implemented at the middle and high school levels in order to promote lifetime engagement.

The Personalized System of Instruction in Fitness Education

JOPERD • Volume 82 No. 6 • August 2011 P ersonal fitness courses are required in many high schools in the United States and are offered by many colleges as physical activity courses. These courses are vital for the development of lifelong personal fitness behaviors in adolescents. The importance of these courses is compounded by the fact that only 54 percent of high school students attended physical education classes in 2007 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2008). These courses usually follow one of two instructional approaches. In teacherfocused fitness courses, students often follow the teacher’s example in group activities, whereas student-focused courses generally allow the student to choose among various activities in the hope of promoting enjoyment and personal meaning. However, the typical approaches to personal fitness have not translated into positive changes in the health status of today’s youths, as the obesity rate among adolescents has increased from 6.5 to 17.0% over the past three decades (Ogden, Carroll, & Flegal, 2008), and physical activity has decreased with age (National Center for Health Statistics, 2004). This is possibly due to physical education teachers’ inability to promote, in activitybased courses, the necessary fitness concepts that might lead to permanent lifestyle changes (Ross, 1994). Personal fitness courses must result in cognitive gains as well as enjoyment and personal application in order to produce lifestyle changes in high school students. To achieve this, physical education teachers need to meet the following guidelines to promote activity among their students: (1) provide planned, sequential physical education that promotes lifelong activity, (2) develop student knowledge and positive attitudes toward physical activity, and (3) develop mastery of skills and confidence in physical activity among students (CDC, 1997). One approach that physical education teachers could take to meet these guidelines is the personalized system of instruction (PSI; Keller & Sherman, 1974). Most physical education classes focus on student learning in the psychomotor domain, since teachers aim to increase the activity levels of students (Harrison, Blakemore, Buck, & Pellett, 1996). While students may experience direct benefits from such a narrow approach, it does not promote lifestyle changes. During a personal fitness course, students must engage in physical activity and develop the knowledge, motivation, and self-confidence to engage in fitness activities outside the physical education setting. This can be done only by making personal fitness “personal.” The PSI allows students to progress “as fast as they can or as slowly as they need” (Metzler, 2005, p. 217). Increasing the personal application of fitness content and improving student learning in all domains will make students more likely to continue to participate in the activity throughout life. An instructional model used in physical education settings, the PSI has been defined as a “plan or pattern that can be used to shape curriculums (long-term courses of studies), to design instructional materials, and to guide instruction in the classroom or other settings” (Joyce & Weil, 1980, p. 1). When selecting an instrucThe Personalized System of Instruction in Fitness Education

Bowling for a Lifetime Using Sport Education.

JOPERD • Volume 79 No. 3 • March 2008 W ith adolescents becoming physically inactive as they age, one must think of other activities to teach during the middle and secondary years in physical education. Traditional team sports (e.g., basketball, fl ag football, soccer) seem not to be promoting lifelong physical activity. Why is this the case? One possible answer is that most adults do not participate in team-oriented sports as they did when they were younger. It becomes more diffi cult to play an intense sport such as basketball when one is more likely to be injured. Unfortunately, most people cannot play the sports that they did as an adolescent due to the aging factor. Several authors and researchers have promoted the teaching of lifetime activities—those that can be performed on a regular basis throughout life—in a physical education setting (Himberg, Hutchinson, & Roussell, 2003; Mohr, Townsend, & Pritchard, 2006). The hope is that such activities may increase the likelihood that students will continue to be active as they get older. Pennington and Krouscas (1999) found that students’ attitudes improved when engaged in lifetime activities. They reported that students were excited to learn nontraditional activities, and students stated that they would continue to participate in those activities beyond the school day. One lifetime activity that physical education teachers could promote is bowling, which consistently ranks as one of the most popular participatory sports, with an estimated 44.8 million participants in 2006 (National Sporting Goods Association, 2007). Bowling is an individual sport that could be taught in the gym or in a bowling alley. When asked what activities students would most likely prefer to participate in, 56.5 percent of 801 high school students stated they would prefer to learn the sport of bowling (Hill & Cleven, 2005). However, it may not be good enough to teach bowling in a traditional setting. The benefi ts of learning how to bowl will be diminished in such a setting because most physical education units are not long enough for students to learn the activity thoroughly. Teachers need to prolong activity Bowling for a Lifetime Using Sport Education