Learner-Oriented Teaching and Assessment in Youth Sport

Cláudio Farias, Isabel Mesquita, Cláudio Farias, Isabel Mesquita

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781000634501
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Physical Education
• Index: Biological Sciences

This book provides sport educators with a comprehensive, learner-centred instructional toolkit to empower children and young people in collaborative, independent learning of sport and games (SGs).

The book is unique in bringing together the various pedagogical dimensions inherent to the teaching-learning process of SGs: the instructional system (teaching strategies), the social system (interactional climate), the task system (learning tasks and activities), and the assessment (for learning) system. It also shows how to effectively involve learners as active agents in promoting more democratic learning environments and equitable interactions between sportspersons. Written by a team of experts with extensive experience of using student-centred approaches as teachers, youth coaches, teacher educators, researchers, and theorists, the book introduces key concepts and evidence-based examples of best practice, with practical instructional strategies, learning tasks, and activities included in every chapter. As the chapters of the book unfold, they teach the reader how to create game-based tasks that are suited to different learner skill levels, how to align tasks, learning goals and learner needs, and feel empowered to engage young people in creativity development activities.

Covering key themes in contemporary sport pedagogy from the constraints-led approach and appropriateness to learner-designed games and the use of technology, this is essential reading for all trainee and in-service physical education teachers and sports coaches working with children or young people.

Part I Introduction to a Learner-Oriented Approach

1 Pedagogical Principles of a Learner-Oriented Approach

Cláudio Farias and Isabel Mesquita

DOI: 10.4324/9781003140016-2

What is the purpose of this book?

This book aims to help sport educators¹ find teaching and coaching solutions to the following educational quest: How can I, as a sport educator, promote the utmost motor, social, cognitive, and personal development in learners² through their experience of active participation in sport and games?³

This leading aspiration involves not only the intention to guide learners towards an ability to play the game skilfully and towards an in-depth understanding of the internal logic of games (Storey & Butler, 2013). Beyond that, it concurrently aims at learners’ active participation in the teaching-learning processes that influence their individual sport development and that of their peers (in what can be realistically expected to be the learner’s best ability to master and participate in these processes) (Hastie & Mesquita, 2016). It is, therefore, a positive approach to learning since it advocates the unlimited potential of every child and their ability to transcend themselves (Whitehead, 2007) as a result of careful (and sustained) pedagogical support that trusts in young learners and in their innate and unique developmental potential.

Simply put, learners must achieve the highest level of skilful participation in sport and games through committed and active participation in the decision-making and instructional and social processes that determine their sport development.

This book, therefore, intends to provide sport educators with a comprehensive learner-oriented pedagogical toolkit designed to empower learners’ collaborative, independent, democratic, and augmented learning of sport and games individually or as part of persistent learning teams. A specific set of scaffolding strategies and assessment activities are offered that show how sport educators can progressively and sustainably maximize the creative, meaningful,⁴ skilful, socially thoughtful, and responsible participation of sport learners in their experience of learning sport and games.

What are the main goals of this learner-oriented approach, its context of implementation, and who is it for?

The hands-on nature of the learner-oriented framework

Although the proposal we present here draws on sound evidence-based and conceptual knowledge, this proposal is eminently practical. It specifically provides sport educators with concrete pedagogical strategies based on goal-setting and instructional and social interventions to be applied in the real context of practice. Namely, in physical education, school sport, and in formal community-based or recreational youth sport institutions.

The learner-oriented proposal provides an evidence-based body of knowledge built through research in real practice contexts. This knowledge basis has been systematized and is now being returned to sport educators to assist in their daily teaching and coaching practice.

The wide-ranging context of application of the learner-oriented approach

We chose to focus this book on the context of sport and games and in the PE and youth sport setting. Therefore, this book includes examples of practical episodes and instructional situations, contexts, and learning tasks that seek to cover not only typical situations predominantly referenced to invasion games or net and wall games but also in striking and fielding games.

Nevertheless, given the transversal scope of this instructional proposal, we must emphasize that sport educators can easily apply most of the components of this book (Chapters 3–6, 9, or 10–12) in different sport fields (e.g., dance, gymnastics, athletics, Outdoor Adventure Activities) and contexts of sport practice (school, sport training), and with different age groups (e.g., adult sport).

The wide-ranging beneficiaries of a learner-oriented approach

The most obvious beneficiaries of this approach are children. The conditions are in place so that their participation in sport and games becomes a remarkable experience in their lives (Farias, Wallhead, & Mesquita, 2020). Namely, the learner-oriented approach can have a memorable impact on young people’s development in all educational domains (motor, social, and personal) and in their willingness to participate in sport activities (Silva, Farias, & Mesquita, 2021).

Sport educators will also be the most direct beneficiaries of this learner-oriented experience. This proposal can also be an appropriate tool for teacher educators and for their training of future PE teachers and for the professional development of in-service teachers. The marked focus on very practical teaching strategies can encourage both experienced teachers and novice teachers to involve students more actively in the teaching-learning process.

This proposal could be also very useful for the coach education context, i.e., for students aspiring to be coaches in academic coach-oriented training and for their teachers in the higher education courses.

Finally, researchers may have a good opportunity to put the learner-oriented pedagogical strategies provided here in action to develop new knowledge about teaching and coaching processes and their effect on the learning of sport and games.

The pedagogical features of a learner-oriented approach

The term ‘learner-oriented’ was purposely chosen for two main reasons:

1. The unique sporting, cultural, and social experience and skills of each learner are placed at the heart of the planning of children’s experience of learning sport and games.
2. Since the teaching-learning process is, as far as reasonably possible, ‘oriented’ (driven) by the learners themselves, the sport educator becomes a facilitator of learning through scaffolding strategies.

In the same way, scaffolding can be seen as a practical metaphor with a twofold purpose. On the one hand, the book offers a wide range of instructional strategies through which the sport educator can progressively support the active participation of learners in building their learning experience. This includes explicit tools for mediating the quality of social interactions taking place between learners (Chapter 5). The nurturing climate generated through such positive social interactions will impact positively on the quality of instruction to increase the potential for children to learn more efficiently from the sport educator and from each other.

On the other hand, each chapter progressively supports the professional development of sport educators in their promotion of increasingly more democratic sport learning contexts. Chapter by chapter, sports educators are ‘scaffolded’ to actively engage learners in increasingly complex learning processes (as players, peer-coaches, or as game designers). Sport educators are shown how to progress in their ability to gradually transfer decision-making power and responsibility to learners. This is a high point for teachers and coaches who wish to innovate their practices because it allows them to maintain a high sense of control and ownership of the process of sharing and transferring ‘power’ to learners.

That is, the scaffolding strategies help sport educators to progress from the ability to mediate collaborative learning among learners (Chapter 4) to the ability to promote successful peer-learning interactions or the active engagement of learners in building positive social behaviours (Chapters 5 or 11). Sport educators can also progress from the ability to design tasks for promoting game-play development through discovery-based activities (Chapter 7) and creative thinking (Chapter 8) to the ability to facilitate the construction of inventive learner-led games (Chapter 9).

What is the type of engagement and instructional dynamics in a learner-oriented approach?

This learner-oriented approach acknowledges the importance of considering the typical demands present in any adult-led site of youth development through and in sport. Even when learners are expected to have an active voice in the teaching-learning process (i.e., leadership of instructional processes such as task presentation or peer-assessment), the pedagogical goal-setting and degree of relevance of the experiences lived by learners will always need to be planned, facilitated, and monitored by the adult – the sport educator. In short, whatever the nature of the scaffolding put in place by the sport educator (e.g., through more or less explicit instruction) and the degree to which learners are more or less actively involved in this process, they will always need to have some adult guidance.

Therefore, the main pedagogical avenues for the full achievement of the learner-oriented educational experience will involve:

• – The sport educator acting as a facilitator of learning. The ultimate aim of the sport educator is to facilitate the highest development of the learner (multidimensional: motor, cognitive, social, and affective outcomes) with their highest active involvement in the construction of the learning experience.
• – The extensive promotion of peer-assisted, peer-teaching, and peer-assessment activities.
• – The extensive promotion of collaborative learning experiences (empowering learners as collective problem-solvers).
• – The extensive promotion of discovery-learning activities aimed at the development of critical thinking and high cognitive engagement.
• – The extensive participation in activities that develop sound social awareness (inclusion, acceptance of difference, empathy), inclusive attitudes, and equity in learners’ participation in sport-based activities.
• – The progressive transfer of decision-making power to learners and their increasing ownership of the learning experience (learning how to learn and teach each other sport and games).

Box 1.1 Key concept: peer-coaching

In this proposal, ‘peer-coaching’ is deemed to be a more all-embracing term than ‘peer-teaching’. Peer-coaching can be used both in PE and in youth sport contexts. Further, peer-coaching can involve more than teaching content to peers. It may include active peer counselling and mediation of social relationships between team members. In this case, the term ‘peer-leader’ is also representative.

Box 1.2 Key point: educational benefits of peer-teaching and collaborative sport-based activities

The present learner-oriented approach draws heavily on peer-coaching and collaborative learning activities. There are numerous known educational benefits of learner involvement in these pedagogies.

From a peer-leader perspective:

• Learners develop a more refined understanding of sport content because they need to interpret and verbalize sport content (e.g., the content of task cards) so that such information can be grasped, and the task can be successfully performed by their peers.
• Learners become more sensitive toward, and aware of, the diverse strengths, weaknesses, and learning needs of peers with different learning needs.
• The prolonged participation in peer-coaching activities has transformative potential in these learners, who consciously transfer to the sports club some positive leadership and sport culture behaviours that are developed during physical education lessons.

To learners, in general:

• Learners seem to benefit from participation in communication styles that are cognitively, culturally, and socially aligned with their level of und...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of boxes
• List of contributors
• Part I Introduction to a Learner-Oriented Approach
• Part II Scaffolding Mediation of Instructional and Social Interactions in Sports and Games
• Part III Designing Meaningful and Creative Learning Activities in Sport and Games
• Part IV Learner-Oriented Assessment
• Index