What are physical education teachers being told about how to teach sport? An exploratory analysis of sport teaching in physical education

This literature review investigated current and emerging pedagogical directions indicated to physical education (PE) teachers in the research literature. The search strategy used the Google Scholar database to initiate the scan, and then extended into other databases as well as the reference lists of published papers to locate relevant studies. Criteria for inclusion of papers for this review included: 1. Published in English between 2000 to December 2015; 2. Original research published in either peer reviewed journals or text books; 3. Addresses the delivery of sport and PE within both Australian and international school aged children and young people; 4. Papers or book chapters that addressed theoretical underpinnings and concepts of delivering sport and PE. The search identified 57 papers or chapters for inclusion. The major findings of the analysis were: 1. Game Based approaches (such as Game Sense (Australia), TGfU (United Kingdom) and Tactical Games (North America) to learning in PE technical and tactical dimensions of skilled performance in game play are promoted; 2. The Sport Education curriculum and instruction model is well researched and validated as a design to provide authentic, educationally rich sport experiences for students in the context of school PE; and 3. Personal and social development is an often-cited outcome of quality PE teaching in schools. Researchers have supported the use of a “tool kit” of instructional strategies to achieve student learning outcomes in PE (Pill, 2011).