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

TLDR: In this article, the authors reviewed and revisited the TGfU premise and considered its relevance to games and sport teaching in physical education (PE), and outlined the basis for the conceptualisation of the TGFU; and argued that the TG-U 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.

Abstract: 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) advocac...