Thoughts from a Trial Game 2 - Thinking and Movement Education

What is the relationship between cognitive processing involved in understanding games and sports and the teaching of games and sports?
We all learnt at University that there are three components to quality Physical Education: the psychomotor component (of which PA is just a part), the affective component and the cognitive component, an area that I believe, has been neglected in our teaching for a number of years. It seems that PE teachers certainly like students to learn motor skills and, of course, fun is supposedly obligatory, but we don’t seem to teach the students how to approach elements of game play in a cognitive way. However, do the people we teach view this as important or needed? Perhaps not.



This question was very evident in this example from the trial. Each batting pair was set the task of scoring 24 runs in 18 deliveries (3 overs). A ring field of 10 fielders was set beyond markers positioned at about 30m from the bat. The target was overly tough, probably unachievable with the depth of the field and I think it was set to see how the players reacted under pressure. I also assume that the coaches felt at this level, the players should have the ability to solve, considering it was a representative trial. What I found interesting was that the players themselves seemed to have no idea of how to achieve what was asked apart from movement execution in batting and tried to solve the issue on the run in the middle. I decided to conduct a mini experiment and asked a series of players I knew how they tried to get the 24 runs when batting(can you work out the solution?). It was of interest (to me at least) to gauge what they thought they had to do. The common reaction was ‘ get 8 an over‘. When asked how they would achieve this, most said ‘Get a two every over’ (not enough of course). However, when I annoyingly suggested that this was a mathematical formula, the common reaction was ’This is not school so I don’t want/have to think about this, I only do this in school' (and probably not in PE). Therefore, even at this early age (12 years) there seemed to be evidence that when we try to get students to recognise that there are strong cognitive links associated with movement and how they problem solve through movement (which is what many games are), it is them who create the resistance on many occasions to this. They do just want to 'play' in a context that demands more than this.

Thus it appears from the observations at the trial if we want to create an environment for change in PE, we have to change the culture of both the students. our expectations of students and how we approach the teaching of games and sports.

Regards

Greg