Teaching team sports and games: a plethora of approaches based on the understanding of gameplay in the scientific literature

Researchers and practitioners from the field of team sports and games (TSG) teaching consider that a skill-centred approach is not appropriate to foster students’ understanding of this type of sport activities. The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of game-understanding based approaches (GUBAs) on teaching-learning settings and portray their shared characteristics to better understand what promotes students’ learning and affective experience in TSGs. A literature review was used to clarify concepts and definitions of GUBAs and draw an overall picture of compelling data relative to their operationalization as applied to teaching TSGs. Databases were looked at, without limits in publication dates and written either in English or French. A sorting was performed based on pre-selected inclusion and exclusion criteria. Seven models related to game-understanding approaches were identified and briefly described. These models have similar characteristics such as using the game, or related forms, and reflective sessions as primary learning activities instead of essentially focusing on developing students’ technical skills. This study on GUBAs showed that participants cannot be efficient and improve in gameplay without developing a fair understanding of it. Moreover, one cannot consider such understanding without a considerable practice of gameplay and reflection on it.