How Would Socrates Teach Games?

A Constructivist Approach

By Joy Butler

 

Critique by Chris Coleman for PE 452

 

 

The Issue and Focus for this article

 

            Butler believes the traditional skills based approach (teaching the skills first and then applying them to the game) is failing to produce students who have a complete understanding of the games that they are playing.  Students are approaching games with skills that they do not know how, when, where, and why they should be using them during game play.  Therefore, students never really learn how to effectively play games. 

 

Butler’s Reasoning

 

            To support this argument, Butler uses Socrates’ approach to teaching and learning (the basis to which constructivism is built on) to demonstrate a more effective way of teaching games.  The ‘Socratic method’, as it is most commonly called, aims to produce an understanding of an area of interest through a rigorous and somewhat unlimited series of questions and answers.  Socrates would ask his students many “what is” questions like, “what is knowledge?”, or for our purposes, “what is basketball?” (Lavine, 1984, p. 22).  The student would answer each question in the form of a definition like, “knowledge is when we acquire, sort, and file information on a particular subject” (p. 22).  However, most often the first few answers were too narrow, too restricted, biased, or uninformed and therefore, through the guidance of a teacher, would simply produce more questions (p. 22).  This process of questioning and answering would continue until the fundamental questions on the subject area had been discovered and answered.  By this time, the student would have gained a fairly good understanding of the subject (p. 23).  However, it is important to understand that one’s understanding of a subject is never final or absolute.  An unforeseen question could come up at any time, and the process could start all over again; this is the beauty of critical thinking. 

            In this article, Butler attempts to provide a system of questioning that can be applied to games in order to help students gain a complete understanding of the games that they play.  Butler calls this system Teaching Games For Understanding or TGFU for short.  In this system students are asked to categorize games based on their components (categories like: Target, Striking, Net/Wall, and Territorial).  To do this, students would have to answer questions like, “what games have similar characteristics?”, “what games have different characteristics?”, “why did you group those games together?”, “what games share a skill?”, and so on; the questions are endless.  The idea is to have students engage in a thinking process that will expand there understanding of a game, and therefore, their ability to play the game.  Of course some guidance is needed and models would be helpful.  The models and categories that Butler uses are almost identical to the handouts we receive in class and the textbook we are using, so we can develop our questions and models from this information. 

Some Assumptions That Butler Makes

 

- most students do not have a good understanding of the games they play

- many teachers are still using a tradition skills approach to teaching games

- students would like to gain a greater understanding of the games they play

- TGFU would benefit any games teacher

- resources for this method of teaching are easily available and, time and other resources will allow the application of the TGFU method

 

Conclusion

 

            Butler effectively supports the idea that the TGFU method is beneficial and superior to the traditional skills approach.  Butler shows evidence from many studies that support her argument.  From these studies many benefits of the TGFU method are stated as support, such as:

            - more time was spent facilitating student learning and challenging students with

            questions

            - less time was spent controlling and managing the class

            - communication was not only from teacher to student, the TGFU method allows

            for teacher to student, student to student, and finally, student to teacher

            communication

            - a greater understanding of the games, the skills, and how they relate was reached

All in all, the TGFU method was proven to be an effective teaching tool.

 

Significant Information in the Article

 

The Socratic Method and how it is essentially the basis for the TGFU method for teaching games.

 

Personal Comments

 

            The idea of teaching for understanding is definitely an important concept that should be the basis for teacher’s style of teaching on or off the court.  I would also like to mention that I believe that this is something that I missed out on as a student in high school and that we have the opportunity to make some important changes in the education system and a great impact on the students that we will someday teach.  The skills learned through Teaching for Understanding can be applied to any subject area and almost any situation in life.  As Socrates would say, “to understand right action is to engage in it” (Butler, p. 46).

 

Sources

 

Butler , J. (1997).  How would Socrates teach games?  A contstructivist approach.

            JOPERD, 68(9), 42.

Lavine, T. Z. (1984).  From Socrates to Sartre:  A philosophical quest.  New York :

            Bantam Books.