A comparison between the old and the new using student-designed games

Games Making: �A Comparative Study

Ashley Casey, Peter Hastie and Steve Jump

�A Comparative Study?

Traditional

An inch deep and mile wide” “Built on curriculum programmes that are

]Multi-activity programme [

“Busy, Happy and Good”

Placek, 1983

That aspires for children to be

Games

“To those looking in from the outside, the playing of games and sport within physical education would seem the raison d’eˆtre of the subject.”

Casey & Hastie, 2011

“the experience of a number of students in game contexts has seen significantly negative responses with feelings of alienation and embarrassment”


“to the extent that authors such as Ennis (1996) have suggested more than apologies are necessary.”


“Physical-Education-as-sport-techniques”

Kirk, 2010

“Nothing short of a complete reconceptualisation of what Physical Education is and does is needed”

Kirk, 2010; Lawson, 2009; Locke, 2000; Siedentop, 2002; Tinning, 2011

�A Comparative Study

Traditional

Games

Games Making �

Games Making? �

�

So long as a child supposes that everyone necessarily thinks like himself, he will not spontaneously seek to convince others, nor to accept common truths, nor, above all, to prove or test his opinions.”

“Piaget (1975, 33)

“Physical-Education-as-sport-techniques”

Kirk, 2010

�

Student-designed games ‘freed’ children to define competition at their own developmental level.”

“Casey & Hastie, 2011

�

The student-designed games provided a forum that allowed students to develop a more sophisticated understanding of game structures and game play”

“Casey, Hastie & Rovegno, In Press

�

as teachers, we should encourage our students to challenge their personal constructions of meaning.”


�Study

�Methodology

to be ever suspicious of our assumptions about how the world appears to be.”

“ Burr (2003)

used social constructionism

The idea of learning-by-making. Constructionism shares ‘constructivism’s connotation of learning as “building knowledge structures” irrespective of the circumstances of the learning’ (p. 1).”

“ Harel and Papert (1991)

Such development of learning occurred ardently in situations where students are meaningfully engaged in building something in the public domain.”

“ Harel and Papert (1991)

Shareable artefacts” “

Harel & Papert (1991)

used social constructionism

Traditional

Sandcastle

Theory of the Universe

�

We should encourage our students to challenge their personal constructions of meaning.”


Games

�Methods

Study Site

Comprehensive School in Southern England

Two teachers

Traditional Curriulum

50+ students

streamed

Two classes

selected based upon their results in maths, English and science in

end of key stage 3

One higher and one lower in

terms of academic ability

�A Comparative Study

3 lessons a week for 7 weeks

No experience of pedagogical

models

Data Gathering

Wiki

Interviews

Observations

Teacher reflections

Analysed into themes and subthemes

Results

re-‐organising learning re-‐organising learning

1

re-organising learning

3

2 4

Changing motivation

understanding rules

‘clever’ = better games?


1

re-organising learning

Previously when we taught them, it’s a case of we telling them everything they need to know about the game…but with this, they’ve had to dissect again and build it back up and I think that’s been beneficial to a lot of them.”

Male Teacher

“

They’re not particularly sporty, competitive, or particularly good …to spend the next two years …where we’re saying ‘you need to get better at netball… I think they’re intelligent enough to know ‘why would I want to do that? I don’t particularly enjoy it’ so I think it’s a good change”

Female Teacher

“

it’s like your own idea and you’re not doing something that you were told to do”

Female Student

“

there wasn’t really any boundaries with the game that we could design, so we could be creative and choose whatever we wanted”

“ Male Student

The beginning bit, when we had to come up with something from scratch, that was quite hard”

Female Student

“

I think there’s more of a challenge for the children than there was previously in their lessons, so more of a direction, more of an aim and I feel they’ve got more of a focus in their lessons rather than previously.”

Male teacher

“


2

Changing motivation

I think PE has been a time to mess about for the whole time I’ve been at school”

Male Student

“

Usually in PE it’s just like...sport and you just play”

Male Student

“

I don’t think we were familiar with the situation. Before we were split in to ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ in normal PE but then we got used to it, we knew we needed to work together to achieve.”

Male Student

“

It’s like much more fun because in normal PE you have to something and go by your teacher’s rules, this time you can play by your own rules”

Female Student

“

“I have seen some positive stuff, I’ve seen a few girls that I wouldn't have expected to come forward and not necessarily take them on and take the lead, but are coming up to me and saying, “Miss, I’ve got a really good idea, why don't we do this ...?”

Female teacher

“

This half-term’s been good because I can look forward to PE now”

Female Student

“


3

understanding rules

They’ve gained knowledge, an understanding of games and how games are created and what makes up a game.

Male Teacher

“

Creating a game, thinking of everything and then because it didn’t work, we had to create a new one and that was even harder.”

Female Student

“

It’s not just you’re told a game and you do it. You actually have to think more about it ...”

Male Student

“

There’s bits we had to make up – rules – and if it doesn’t really, like when you score a goal, you had to make it easier to score goals so the game didn’t slow down and get boring and it was quite hard…”

Female Student

“

I think it was really difficult because before we just played a game, we got taught how to play the game and we played it whereas this time you’d got to think more about why other games are like, why other games are good so you’ve got to try and make your game good.”

Female Student

“

Learned that it was more than just a game because you had to put more concepts and stuff, and there were more detailed rules as in what would you do if the ball went off the court or something that. You had to get over that and more detailed stuff…”

Male Student

“


4

‘clever’ = better games?

most of the games we’ve made up have all been based on netball so it’s like every lesson we’re doing kinda netball with a twist, which isn’t great for some people”

Female Student Lower Ability Class

“

Yeah, it’s really hard not to copy other games because the game that we had was a mix between some games, it was a really good game but it was too much like the other games.”

Female student

Higher Ability Class

“

We had to completely think out of the box ‘cause we were thinking of some games and then we were like ‘oh no, that’s too much like football’ or ‘that’s too much like netball or something’ so we did have to think about that.”

Female student

Higher Ability Class

“

�Conclusion

The pupils acknowledged that they were now being challenged to consider games in a new way

This was "much better" than their prior experiences of physical education.

The staff felt that the pupils were able to demonstrate a greater range of ability rather than just as performers.

“strengths in either the games making or the changing the game, the playing the game or the explaining the game.”

Students demonstrated

Male Teacher

“We’ve also found that there is a new game that we can play and nobody else knows about it but us, so kind of makes use special.”

As one of the students concluded

Male Student

“Nothing short of complete reconceptualisation is needed”


And in answer to the suggestion that…

“Nothing short of complete reconceptualisation is needed”


And in answer to the suggestion that…

Games Making �

“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less”

General Eric Shinsek US Army Chief of Staff (ret.)

Burr, V. 2003. Social constructionism. London: Routledge.

Casey, A. & Hastie, P.A.2011. Students and teacher responses to a unit of student-designed games, Physical Education & Sport Pedagogy, 16: 3, 295 — 312

Casey, A., Hastie, P.A. & Rovegno, I (In Press). Student learning during a unit of student-designed games, Physical Education & Sport Pedagogy. Harel, I., and S. Papert. 1991. Constructionism. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Kirk, D. 2010. Physical education futures. London: Routledge.

Piaget, J. 1975. The child’s conception of the world. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.

Placek, J. H. 1983. Conceptions of success in teaching: Busy, happy, and good? In T. Templin and J. Olsen (Eds.). Teaching in physical education. (pp. 45-56). Illinois: Human Kinetics.

References

Slide 3, 14 – Back to school by STEFANOLUNARDI on iStockPhoto

Slide 7, 15 – old fashioned basketball court by ryanmcginnisphoto on

flickr

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Slide 31 – Free image on computer

Slide 33 – Personal Image

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