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THE NATURE AND PURPOSE OF SPORT EDUCATION AS AN EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE
Peter Hastie
Sport Education is a pedagogical model designed to provide authentic, educationally rich sport experiences for girls and boys in the context of school physical education. Essentially, a pedagogical model provides a âdesign specificationâ which can lead to the development of a specific program in schools for their own local purposes. This design specification consists of the essential components that identify the model, which Metzler (2005) refers to as benchmarks. It is important to note Metzlerâs key point that some aspects of a pedagogical model cannot be modified, for to do so would be to fail to implement the particular model. In other words, if the design specification is changed sufficiently that it does not remain true to the original intent of the model, then it becomes something else. Examples of models that have taken some aspects of Sport Education and changed them to create new models include Sport for Peace (Ennis et al., 1999) and Empowering Sport (Hastie and Buchanan, 2000).
While it is true there are numerous ways in which Sport Education seasons can be configured, and many of the chapters in this book show creative iterations in many different contexts, there are five immutable aspects which cannot be compromised if one is to correctly describe a particular unit within physical education as Sport Education. These include (i) an extended period of time over which the unit takes place, (ii) that students remain on the same team for the duration of the unit, (iii) the inclusion of developmentally appropriate competition, (iv) the taking of various roles and responsibilities by students other than that of player, and (v) that the entire experience takes place in an atmosphere of festivity.
The genesis of Sport Education came in the 1980s when its founder Daryl Siedentop became disenchanted with the fact that many physical education programs, even when taught effectively, were not interesting or challenging enough to inspire students. To that end, Siedentop developed the format, features, and pedagogies of the model. This was followed by in-school application by teachers in Columbus, Ohio (USA), and the subsequent teacher and student responses confirmed the model has significant potential to engage students utterly and intently in their physical education experiences.
Siedentopâs criticism of the way in which sport was presented to students within physical education was that he considered those experiences to be inauthentic. That is, they did not resemble the exciting and engaging experiences that students either participated in outside of school, or watched on television. Rather, sport within physical education was characterized by a smorgasbord curriculum of short units in which any competition was ad hoc, team membership changed within lessons, and students often would not know what would transpire in a class when they entered the teaching space. Furthermore, he noted that the total experience is lacking in festivity.
Consequently, Sport Educationâs six key features were designed to mimic the authentic form of sport within the larger culture, as these were considered as essential in preserving the primary features of sport. These were listed as seasons, affiliation, formal competition, record keeping, culminating events, and festivity. A season of sport occupies an extended period of time in one activity. By consequence, a season of Sport Education (a term preferred to âunitâ) is often two to three times longer than usual, with the operational assumption being that less is more, and that this extended time promotes more in-depth understanding of the material. With regard to affiliation in Sport Education, students quickly become members of teams, and remain on the same team throughout the competition. Sport seasons are also characterized by formal competition. That is, the games that are played count toward a ranking system in which teams are categorized according to their performance. In addition, these competitions are typically interspersed with practices. Most sporting events also have some form of culminating event. These festive events (swimming carnivals, basketball championships, etc.) create the opportunity for a festival and celebration of accomplishments, a significant characteristic of play and sport. Records in sport help to define particular standards and can also serve to define local sport traditions. Finally, the festive atmosphere of sport enhances its meaning and adds an important social element for participants.
Recognizing how interscholastic and elite sport can be particularly exclusionary, together with a potential for a âwin at all costsâ mentality, Siedentop designed Sport Education not as a direct replication of interscholastic sport, but with three significant modifications that fit the purposes of an educational setting. These included (i) participation requirements, whereby through the use of small-sided teams everyone plays all the time, (ii) developmentally appropriate involvement, in which the secondary rules of games are modified and matched developmentally to the abilities of students, and (iii) students taking roles other than player, whereby students learn to be coaches, referees, trainers, safety officials, scorekeepers, managers, publicists, and broadcasters, thereby leading to a more complete understanding of sport.
The rationale for these changes was not only to give students a more equitable experience, and eliminate some of the traditional ways in which sport in physical education has served to alienate students (see Ennis, 1996), but also to provide an expanded set of curriculum goals so that students would become competent, literate, and enthusiastic sports players. By âcompetentâ we mean a student has sufficient skill to participate in games satisfactorily, understands and can execute strategies appropriate to the complexity of the game, and is a knowledgeable games player. By âliterate,â we mean a student understands and values the rules, rituals, and traditions of sport and can distinguish between good and bad sport practices as either participant or spectator. Finally, by âenthusiasticâ we mean a student participates and behaves in ways that preserve, protect, and enhance the sport culture within the class, school, and community (Siedentop et al., 2004).
To date, responses to Sport Education throughout the world have been particularly positive, particularly when one considers that many of the pedagogies adopted within Sport Education are particularly emancipating for both teachers and students. That is, much of the decision-making is turned over to students, with the teacher becoming less of a ring master and more an overseer of class events. Siedentop (1998) notes that Sport Education is best achieved through pedagogical combinations of direct instruction, cooperative small-group work, and peer teaching, rather than by total reliance on directive, drill-oriented teaching. To use a sport metaphor, the teacher becomes the commissioner of a league in which the students are both the subsidiary administrators and players, and are responsible for much of the day-to-day operations of that league.
If we were to make an executive summary of the responses of teachers and students, it could be described as follows. For students, Sport Education is a more attractive form of physical education than their previous experiences, as they perceive there is a level of curriculum ownership, with roles and responsibilities as part of a persisting team. For teachers, the model is also seen as attractive, particularly as they see students with greater interest in the subject. Teachers also appreciate the release from a direct instructional role which allows for more individual attention to students and the ability to achieve other pedagogical tasks such as assessment (Kinchin, 2006). The model has also been significantly evaluated by researchers who have produced over 60 empirical publications examining various aspects of the model.
It is the purpose of this chapter to consolidate those research findings and to relate them to the extent to which the model has been validated in achieving its goal of producing competent, literate, and enthusiastic sports players. We will begin, however, with a vignette of a Sport Education lesson in order to show the varying responsibilities of students and teachers within.
We are guests in Ms. Brownâs fifth-grade class in which the students are participating in a Sport Education season of badminton. As the students enter the gym, they go immediately to their home court and begin a warm-up led by one of their peers. Another student has collected the racquets and shuttles from the equipment area and distributes these to the team after the warm-up. Ms. Brown is completing last-minute preparations and interacting with the âStrikersâ team about some challenges they faced in their games the day before. A third student now leads the team in a short practice period prior to the upcoming competition.
At some point, a signal is given to begin the dayâs first competition, which is a mixed-doubles format. Each team will have decided which team members make up the two-person teams that compete in the name of the larger team. These competitions are often âgradedâ in the sense that students of comparable skill levels compete against each other. Members of two of the three teams are sent by their managers and coaches to one of the four or five small courts where games take place. Members of the third team, called a duty team, are organized to referee and keep score and statistics at the various courts.
All the games start on the same signal. The game itself is a modified version of badminton, emphasizing basic tactics and skills relevant to the game. All games end at the same time and there is a short transition to allow students from the duty team to move to courts to compete in the second game, and for members of one of the initial competing teams to transition to duty team responsibilities. Scorekeepers and statisticians leave their sheets in an assigned place so that they can all be collected at the end of the class by the students from each team that had the ongoing role of team statistician.
You will notice that an attractive bulletin board not only has the seasonal schedule and the dayâs schedule, but also up-to-date team standings and statistics for all players. A third game is played to ensure that all students both play and do duty team chores that day. A brief reflective period ends the class, with the teacher recognizing students and teams that show tactical improvement as well as examples of fair play. This two-versus-two competition eventually yields a team winner (all individual games count toward overall team points) and the class will then move to a single competition where more advanced tactics and skills will be introduced. The season culminates with a further team competition, with an overall class winner determined by participation, competition results, and fair play points.
(Adapted from Siedentop, 2002)
The development of competence
As noted above, competence encompasses the elements of skill execution, the execution of strategies, and knowledge of games.
Skill improvements
Reports of skill improvement in Sport Education come in two forms. The first, characteristic of the earliest studies, relates to student self-perception of skill development, while the second relates to pre-test/post-test scores on skill and game play tests. With regard to perceptions of skill improvement, there are numerous studies in which students comment on how they believe their skills improved during a particular season. These include Carlson (1995) with eighth- and ninth-grade girls playing touch rugby, Pope and Grant (1996) with fifth-grade students also during touch rugby, Browne et al. (2004) with eighth-grade students playing rugby, and Kinchin et al. (2004) with ninth-grade students in soccer, rugby, and basketball. In the recent Australian study of Spittle and Byrne (2009), significant differences for perceived confidence were found between eighth-grade students who completed seasons of Sport Education or more traditional approaches on changes in perceived competence. Of interest in that study was that, while students in Sport Education showed no significant difference between pre- and post-test scores on perceived competence, there was a significant decrease on perceived competence scores for the traditional group. The general trend of students reporting skill improvements is not limited to English-speaking settings. The sixth-grade Russian students in the study of Hastie and Sinelnikov (2006) confirmed that they believed they had made significant gains in their skill and understanding of basketball. In Hong Kong, Ka and Cruz (2006) investigated soccer seasons with high-school students and teachers and reported positive effects on studentsâ learning interests.
Teachers have also suggested improvements in skill. In both the New Zealand (Grant, 1992) and Australian (Alexander et al., 1996) trials, teachers stated that studentsâ skills and game play improved more with Sport Education than with previous curricular approaches used. Nonet...
