Steven A. Stolz

Teaching games and sport for understanding Exploring and reconsidering its relevance in physical education

Over 30 years ago the original teaching games for understanding (TGfU) proposition was published in a special edition of the Bulletin of Physical Education (Bunker and Thorpe, 1982). In that time TGfU has attracted significant attention from a theoretical and pedagogical perspective as an improved approach to games and sport teaching in physical education (PE). It has been particularly championed as a superior alternative to what Kirk (2010) and Metzler (2011) described as a traditional method. Recently, however, one of the TGfU authors suggested that the TGfU premise needs to be revisited in order to explore and rethink its relevance so that pedagogy in PE again becomes a central and practical issue for PE (Almond, 2010), as it has not been as well accepted by PE teachers as it has by academics. In order to review and revisit TGfU and consider its relevance to games and sport teaching in PE this paper outlines two areas of the TGfU proposition: (1) the basis for the conceptualisation of TGfU; (2) advocacy of TGfU as nuanced versions. The empirical-scientific research surrounding TGfU and student learning in PE contexts is reviewed and analysed. This comprehensive review has not been undertaken before. The data-driven research will facilitate a consideration as to how TGfU practically assists the physical educator improve games and sport teaching. The review of the research literature highlighted the inconclusive nature of the TGfU proposition and brought to attention the disparity between researcher as theory generator and teacher practitioner as theory applier. If TGfU is to have improved relevance for teachers of PE more of an emphasis needs to be placed on the normative characteristics of pedagogy that drive this practice within curricula.

Phenomenology and Physical Education

Abstract Physical education is often justified within the curriculum as academic study, as a worthwhile activity on a par with other academic subjects on offer and easy to assess. Part of the problem has been that movement studies in physical education are looked upon as disembodied and disconnected from its central concerns which are associated with employing physical means to develop the whole person. But this, Merleau-Ponty would say, is to ignore the nature of experience and to consider the cognitive aspects of our perceptual experience in isolation from the personal meaning gained when looked at from the ‘inside’ or participatory perspective of the moving agent. In this sense, physical education has lost meaning for some students because our embodied relationship with the world is not an external or contemplative one. Phenomenology, according to Merleau-Ponty, is significant for physical education because it highlights what it is like to be embodied and recognises the role corporeal movement and embodiment plays in learning, in, by and through physical education. What makes this account educationally significant for physical education is that the whole person should benefit by the experience, as it includes an emphasis on all three educational domains (the psychomotor, the cognitive and the affective), rather than as separate physical and mental qualities that bear no relation to each other.

A genealogical analysis of Peter Arnold's conceptual account of meaning in movement, sport and physical education.

We write as critical theorists who share an interest in how conceptions of physical education are taken forward in policy and practice. In this respect, we are particularly intrigued by Peter Arnolds conceptual account of meaning in movement, sport and physical education, and the subsequent ways in which his ideas have informed national curriculum ambitions. Despite the prominence of Arnolds influence, we are concerned that there has been an insufficiently rigorous and robust review of his theorising to date, particularly in relation to where his ideas originated from. Accordingly, we critically discuss the merits of adopting a genealogical approach in order to support a detailed analysis of Arnolds conceptual account of meaning in movement, sport and physical education; one which especially focuses on learning ‘about’, ‘through’ and ‘in’ movement. We conclude by questioning a number of the complex strands of Arnolds work in the expectation that greater lucidity and purpose can emerge. This it is argued will be beneficial in terms of providing clarity on aim or aims statements in physical education, which in turn can secure greater policy coherence and practice gains.

A narrative approach to exploring TGfU-GS

This paper uses a narrative approach in the form of a fictional dialogue between a physical education teacher educator (PETE) and an enquiring physical education teacher (EPET) in order to both contextualise the problem posed by Almond, that Teaching Games for Understanding-Game Sense (TGfU-GS) has been better accepted in academia than in the ‘natural setting’ of physical education (PE) teaching, and to intentionally provoke change about how TGfU-GS is positioned as a highly conceptualised ‘instructional model’ for games and sport teaching. Drawing on research by Green that PE teachers operate from ‘everyday philosophies’ and not necessarily from highly conceptualised curriculum or pedagogical models, this paper proceeds from the premise that competing descriptions of PE teaching found in the literature and its applications are problematic to the PE teacher because teachers do not necessarily see or want to see the same boundaries between pedagogical models as researchers do as theory generators. It is argued, that the tension suggested by Almond exists in part because of contextual and operational differences leading to each viewing the teaching of PE differently. The EPET is concerned about the praxis of teaching that is theoretically informed by pedagogical knowledge and made real through the experience of teaching; whereas, to the PETE, PE is viewed with a more nuanced interpretation of the complex, non-linear dynamics of the classroom, nature of learning and the need for theoretical informed practice. However, some similarities exist between the EPET and PETE which revolves around bringing order to the essentially unpredictable learning environment by adapting the environmental and task characteristics so that learning may occur. Consequently, we argue that the tension between the EPET and PETE is inevitable because each privilege certain ‘everyday philosophies’ about the design and enactment of PE teaching.

The philosophy of G Ryle and its significance for physical education Some thoughts and reflections

Physical education has long suffered low status within educational institutions, due to the assumption that practical knowledge or ‘knowing how’ is somehow set apart from cognitive development and anti-intellectual. This dualistic conception of mind and body is challenged using Ryle’s conceptual account of ‘intelligent performance’, which provides a more positive account of ‘knowing how’ and in the process, dispels with an intellectualist account of education that privileges theory over practice, mental skills over physical skills. Since physical education predominantly deals with practical knowledge, the interest to physical educators is significant, because one’s knowledge of how to do something, in most cases, is a legitimate matter of evaluation. Consequently, to take intelligent performance seriously, we need to be able to ascribe know(ing) how to someone, particularly when we appraise their actions.

Embodied Learning and School-Based Physical Culture: Implications for Professionalism and Practice in Physical Education.

ABSTRACT We write as critical theorists, who consider that in terms of scoping out robust conceptual elaborations which are suitable for contemporary schooling, that physical education has ground to make up connecting theory with practice and practice with theory. We advocate that aspects of existentialism and phenomenology can provide a theoretically sound basis on which to argue that embodied learning should be the foundational cornerstone of physical education programmes. To avoid embodied learning becoming overly learner centric and insular, we advance Merleau-Pontian informed ideas on how learning could flourish when an individual and embodied focus merges with a school-wide physical culture agenda which is underpinned by social and moral theorizing. In developing our focus on merging embodied learning and physical culture, we draw upon MacIntyrean views on the goods which are internal to practice and extend thinking on how these goods could merge with the diverse aims and intentions informing the culture and ethos in schools. In pursuing these ambitions, we outline the constructive activist-based benefits of teachers working within subsidiarity-based school communities where pedagogical decisions are made at a level consistent with realizing whole schools aims. This is in spite of our acknowledgement that the lack of career-long professional learning adds to the difficulty of achieving these aims. In conclusion we argue that if physical education is to become a pivotal component of realizing a diverse range of whole school aims there is a need for greater professional engagement with pedagogical approaches that attempt to derive greater meaning from learners movement experiences and which help learners to understand better both their own identity and the ethos of the school context and environment they share with others.

David Kirk on Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy: In Dialogue with Steven Stolz (Part 2).

Forming the first of two articles, this dialogue begins from the dilemma posed in the writings of David Kirk that physical education is in crisis because the dominant practice of physical education as ‘sport-techniques’ is resistant to change. In order to make sense of crisis discourse, the discussion explores the potential for change in physical education by examining current practice and practices, and concludes with some remarks that physical education is part of a historical tradition that is dynamic and endlessly evolving due to ongoing and continuous debates surrounding what physical education is or ought to be.

Telling physical education teacher education tales through pedagogical case studies

This paper analyses two pedagogical case studies (PCS) from a multidisciplinary perspective to highlight the problems of theoretical knowledge in tertiary physical education teacher education (PETE) programmes, school-based physical education (PE) practice and continuous professional learning (CPL) in PE. We argue that a critical view of tertiary PETE and PE teacher educator CPL practice or practices is particularly important if PETE programmes want to develop future PE and current teacher practitioners who are transformative agents. In setting up the pedagogical case study accounts, we recall common conversations about the bodies of knowledge in tertiary PETE programmes that have been positioned as problematic. The accounts highlight the existence of an artificial divide between PE educators as theory generators and both pre-service PE teachers and school-based PE practitioners as theory appliers. We suggest that part of the reason why this divide exists can be attributed to a general misunderstanding of theoretical and practical knowledge that have been wrongly compartmentalised into ‘theory’ and ‘practice’, and hence erroneously taught as isolated entities without any connection or direct link with each other, or the former considered to be less relevant and perhaps even irrelevant in practice.

MacIntyre, rival traditions and education

This paper critically discusses MacIntyres thesis that education is essentially a contested concept. In order to contextualise my discussion, I discuss both whether rival educational traditions of education found in MacIntyres work – which I refer to as instrumental and non-instrumental justifications of education – can be rationally resolved using MacIntyres framework, and whether a shared meaning of education is possible as a result. I conclude that MacIntyres synthesis account is problematic because the whole notion that there are rationally negotiable ways in which to compromise or harmonise opposing justifications of education found in instrumental and non-instrumental forms of education is troubling – the reason being that these are cultural disagreements about human flourishing that are not neutral-free, and due to a lack of care distinguishing between the common uses of the term ‘education’, and its looser usages to mean something like school learning that embraces a range of aims and goals that are often incompatible. In this light, it is argued that the contestability card has been unnecessarily overemphasised, and brings to our attention the complex ways in which we interpret education and what it means to be educated.

MacIntyre, Managerialism and Universities.

Abstract MacIntyre’s earlier work and concern with social science enquiry not only exposes its limits, but also provides an insight into how its knowledge claims have been put to ideological use. He maintains that the institutional embodiment of these ideological ideas is the bureaucratic manager who has had a negative role to play in social structures because managerialism revolves around a notable absence, or at least marginalisation of conflict since the nature of rational debate and conflict is unpredictable and unmanageable, and hence would seriously undermine the perception trying to be projected of a competent technocrat in control of their organisation. MacIntyre, in lamenting the place of contemporary universities in society, highlights how most universities have become business corporations and irremediably fragmented and now serve purposes so alien and foreign from their initial conception as sites of constrained mutual rational debate and conflict. As a result, MacIntyre’s account of how managerial authority is justified in bureaucratic institutions and its social role and character is scathing and particularly apt for explaining the malaise of contemporary universities. In order to overcome this malaise, I want to struggle against the corporatisation of universities by revitalising and extending upon MacIntyre’s argument that a university is set up for constrained disagreement and imposed participation in conflict, and also highlight the importance of reason or wisdom and its development because it enables us to see the interconnectedness and interrelationship between different forms of knowledge that can lead us to truth and of the good.