The Impact of the “TGFU” Approach on Students' Sport Skills in Secondary First Course

Physical education in education is always considered to be a platform where learners develop their experiences and practice skills in various sports and physical activities. In recent decades, several methods aimed at countering decontextualised training, have suggested an integrated tactical approach to coaching. The Teaching Games for Understanding (TGFU; Bunker & Thorpe, 1982), Tactical Games (Griffin, Mitchell and Oslin, 1997), Play Practice (Launder, 2001), Tactical-Decision Learning Model (Gréhaigne, Richard, Griffin, 2005), Game Sense (Light, 2013; Zuccolo, Spittle & Pill, 2014), Games Concept Approach (GCA) (Rossi, Fry, McNeill & Tan, 2007), the GAG method, which stands for Global-Analytical-Global (Bonfanti & Pereni, 1998; Csabai et al., n.d.; “The Grassroots Soccer Session,” n.d.) and Tactical Periodization (Mendonça, 2013) are all methods intended to promote the athletes’ learning through games (tactics) within a constructivist learner-centred, inquiry-based approach (Light, 2013). The TGfU model of Bunker and Thorpe (1982), rather than being technique-centered, was intended to be grounded in a performance and learner context. Therefore, there needed to be acknowledgement of the learner's stage of learning and an emphasis on the tactics and games within the performance context. These elements provided a stark contrast to the traditional methodologies that focused solely on technique acquisition without considering the three elements of learner, context and content. Exploring how useful this developed process can be for PE teachers who engage in TGfU, Game Sense and other game-based approaches, may also be an area of research that can be explored. The purpose of this research was to investigate the impact of the "teaching games for understanding (TGFU)" approach on the athletic performance of the freshman highschool students.

Is there a significance difference between traditional and TGFU approach groups in athletic skills?

This was a quasi-experimental research with pretest-posttest and control group design. The statistical population of the study encompassed all freshman high-school students in Oromyeh city. Two classes from two typical secondary schools were selected and randomly assigned to experiment and control groups. The instrument used in the study included the Football performance test and an observation form (Mitchell, Griffin, & Oslin, 1995). After the reliability and validity of the data was verified, covariance test was used to analyze the data.

In the findings of the study, prior to the implementation of the TGFU approach, no significant difference was observed in the athletic performance of experimental and control groups. However, after the experimental and control groups were, correspondingly, trained through the TGFU and traditional approaches, the former demonstrated a significantly better performance as compared to the latter that received traditional training.

Based on the results, it can can be argued that due to its emphasis on learner-centered values, TGFU is an educational model that enables teachers, students, parents, and managers to promote general education and change the ability of children through sport education. Discussion within the paper also focused on the importance of teachers and coaches recognizing the different theoretical perspectives that underpin the use of TGFU and traditional approach as this knowledge can foster the professional development of teachers and coaches and improve the fidelity of the pedagogical approaches implemented. Future research could compare other game-based approaches to provide further inshight into them.