Complexity in Games Teaching and Coaching

A Multi-Disciplinary Perspective

Felix Lebed

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000552843
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Physical Education

Shedding new light on sport pedagogy and the teaching and coaching of games, this book shows how complexity theory can be used to improve team sport performance, coach education, and young player development.

The book draws together insights from both the humanities and behavioural sciences, including psychology, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, history, and play theory into a new educational methodology for team sports. It shows how concepts from complexity theory underpin and inform team sport dynamics, including the uncontrolled nature of live human systems; the nature of complex systems and how this shapes student and young athlete learning; self-organization and its relation to decision-making in play; and mental self-regulation and motivation.

It presents an innovative and sophisticated definition of sport pedagogy that can help teachers and coaches deepen their understanding of teaching and learning in team sports and help them develop more motivated, more effective, and more creative athletes.

Part I
What is human play? A philosophical issue

Chapter 1Play as a phenomenon and a value

DOI: 10.4324/9780429341311-3

1.1 Definability of human play: the Wittgensteinian obstacle

As I have had the opportunity to point out already (Lebed, 2020), the fundamental reason for this pre-philosophical review is to preclude the possibility that a philosophical discussion can be based on language biases. In terms of my analysis, the main example is the linguistic ‘narrow bridge’ created by the ‘Wittgensteinian obstacle’. In his ‘Philosophical Investigations’, which became the most authoritative source of postmodernist reference to the ‘indefiniteness’ of the concept of play, Wittgenstein (1945, [1953a]) uses the German word spiel and mixes meanings usually represented in English by the words play, game, and sport.

In the same manner, jeu in French is used by Piaget (1945) and Caillois (1958). Thus, for example, Piaget (1945), in his “La formation du symbole chez l’enfant; imitation, jeu et reve, image et representation”, used the word – jeu – and names the chapters in Part II (Le Jeu) in such a mixed way that the translators to English – Gattegno and Hodson (Piaget, 1951) – must mix and match both ‘play’ and ‘game’ with a seeming lack of order. This can be seen when comparing the names of Chapters 4 (The Beginnings of Play) and VI (Explanation of Play) to Chapter 5 (Classification of Games…) (Ibid.). Very often, the word jeu does not satisfy Piaget, and he uses such collocations as ‘ludic activity’ or ‘ludic incentives’ (Ibid., Part VI: 147–150). Caillois solved the language problem in the same manner. He abandoned French and instead substituted the Greek word ‘paidia’ for free unframed play and the Latin ‘ludus’ for formalized and organized games and sports with generally accepted rules (Caillois, 1958: p. 36).

I perceive the same problem of categorical duality in Huizinga’s language. From Kendrick’s (2009) analysis, Huizinga (1938) can be understood to contradict himself. On the one hand, he claims the universal presence of playing in all forms of human culture. On the other hand, he sharply negates all kinds of serious playing (like sports) because of their loose roots in a lack of serious spirit. I see this dualism as deriving from the dependence of Huizinga’s mother tongue on the Dutch Spel and the German Spiel. Perhaps, he just did not delve deeply enough to separate the categories of play and game, as was already being done in 20th-century English.

As mentioned, using the word spiel in his mother tongue, Wittgenstein (1945, [1953a]) did not and could not differentiate between play and games. Only the use of names – Brettspiele, Kartenspiele, Ballspiel, Kampfspiele (Ibid.: Section 66) – indicates that Wittgenstein was speaking about games in today’s accepted general sense (Harris and Park, 1983). Very formally, Wittgenstein relates once to spontaneous playing activities represented as a child throwing a ball at a wall and games like ring-around-the rosie (Wittgenstein, 1945, [1953b]: Section 66, p. 31). Because Wittgenstein mentions these amusements in the same vein as tennis, there is no proof or evidence that he himself generally distinguishes between spiel as play and spiel as games and sports.

In 11 paragraphs (Ibid., Subsections 66–77), Wittgenstein gives a number of visual examples proving his notion. His arguments against attempts to define human play and several of my own full contra-arguments (Lebed, 2020: pp. 9–12) are presented later.

The first Wittgensteinian obstacle (direct quotes are italicized; the word ‘play’ is given in German, as spiel or spielen):

There are very many different kinds of ‘spiel’, but also many differences: ‘board-’spielen’, card-’spielen’, ball-’spielen’, … and so on’. (Ibid., Section 66, p. 31). They all have common features: ‘ … look and see whether there is anything common to all. For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don’t think, but look!’ (Ibid.). Thus, they form only ‘family resemblances’ (Ibid., Section 67, p. 33) that cannot be considered a general definition.

The suggested contra-argument: In philosophical thought, ‘family resemblances’ might be considered an initial and important raw material, on the basis of which a philosopher should search further, look deeper and find in every one of them a small number of common core characteristics that would serve as a definition of the general concept. There is not, even superficially, any understandable reason why Wittgenstein blames his flow of thoughts for not comprehending common features of spiel and instead concentrates on differences between kinds and manifestations of playful activities. Indeed, one can successfully examine differences between all kinds of … dogs, for example. But before that, somebody has to consider what a dog is in general. And this applies for at least three possible scholarly and logical reasons: (1) to know what a dog is not, (2) to seek Plato’s ‘idea’ of ‘dogness’, or (3) to learn dogs’ core peculiarities for the simple practical reason of teaching children how to handle a dog properly. All these reasons are present in the comprehension of human play if one changes the word ‘dog’ to ‘play’.

The third Wittgensteinian obstacle:

The concept of ‘spiel’ is not bounded and cannot be bounded because it has so many family members. Therefore, almost every similar activity can be entered as part of the family. What is not bounded should not be defined: For how is the concept of a ‘spiel’ bounded? What still counts as a <spiel> and what no longer does? Can you give the boundary? No. You can draw one; for none has so far been drawn.

(Ibid., Section 68, p. 33)

The suggested contra-argument: It is correct: the bounding of a concept is its definition. This simple link leads one to the conclusion that an absence of bounds cannot be an argument against the very possibility of definition. It’s like saying: ‘lack of definition is evidence that definition is impossible’. The contrary seems more correct: what is not defined is still not bounded properly. For example, two boys run after a ball using only their feet in a one-on-one game. They feel and know they are playing football. However, they are not playing the game called ‘football’ because football is an organized competition based on accepted team rules (11 versus 11), the main part of which is possession of a ball using feet only, with the purpose of aiming to kick or head bump a goal and score. Consequently, the boys are playing a kind of football that remains outside the definition that bounds a football game. While there are differences between playing football and the game ‘football’, there are also many still undiscovered common characteristics. To overcome the ‘just family resemblance’ construct discussed earlier, one must bound an optimum number of football peculiarities so that it can include both just ‘footballing’ and the official sport called ‘football’ (in Europe).

The fourth Wittgenstein obstacle:

To understand what ‘spiel’ is, common sense is enough. It is easy to recognize ‘spiel’ from one’s personal experience. On the other hand, if one has not had such experience, there is no possibility of explaining ‘what a King is in chess’ (Ibid., Section 3, p. 15) to the uninitiated. Thus, there is no need of formal definition.

The suggested contra-argument: Generally speaking, this argument is correct and sufficient for a curious thinker. But at second glance, it seems questionable because the category of play is so complicated, ‘common sense’ is not enough if one has the professional requirements to accurately distinguish between ‘play’ and ‘not play’ (see my contra-argument against the first obstacle). The consideration of different kinds of educational, psychological, psychotherapy, or even psychiatric playful interventions in different individuals is dependent on what one considers play to be and not to be. Playing, as a tool or as an educational method, changes according to age, gender, health conditions, personal preferences, and so on. Having a common general definition of human play, one can seek sub-kinds of this species concept as well as actual details emphasizing certain properties of the intended playful activity.

The suggested contra-argument, in my opinion, meets Wittgenstein’s notion of special purpose: We do not know the boundaries because none have been drawn. To repeat, we can draw a boundary – for a special purpose. Does it take that to make the concept usable? Not at all (except for that special purpose) (Wittgenstein, 1945, [1953b]: Section 69, p. 33).

Summarizing, one should accept that the question of a definition of human play is philosophically very hard because of not only the wide diversity of play variants in life and the large number of ideas but also a popular (post-Wittgenstein) view in postmodern philosophy about the impossibility and uselessness of definition itself (e.g. Brown and Vaugh, 2010; Eichberg, 2016; Gebauer and Wulf, 1998; Spariosu, 1989).

1.2 Definition of human play

Traditionally, the development and advancement of a given issue in philosophical discussion concentrate mainly on new ideas proposed by a scholar based on the thoughts of precursors. In this way, and after more than a century of metaphysical discussions about human play, it is likely that many ‘unnecessary assumptions’ have multiplied. They complicate a clear awareness of the subject, and thus, it might be necessary to apply ‘Occam’s razor’ to reduce them substantially.

One of the means that I use for such reduction (Lebed, 2019) is qualitative content analysis. In this study, 33 conceptual ideas were identified as well as nine themes around which these ideas could be classified. The first and largest theme (19 statements) revolved around t...