Sport Education: Promoting Team Affiliation through Physical Education

Abstract

The development of feelings of identity, the sense of belonging to a team, and the growth of social skills are experiences that sport, if properly conducted, is well placed to offer (Siedentop, 1994). Evidence suggests that some characteristics of traditional, multiactivity forms of physical education work against realizing these goals (Locke, 1992). Siedentop's Sport Education (SE) model is one attempt to overcome this shortcoming by recasting units as seasons and maintaining persisting groups as teams throughout the season. Extended units intended to foster team affiliation while promoting affective and social development are common objectives in physical education. We report on a 16-week SE unit that includes over 70 Year-5 students (9-to 10-year-olds) from one UK school. Our findings show that the opportunity to become affiliated with a team was an attractive feature of the pupils' physical education experience and that, under the framework of SE, there was an obvious investment made by the Year-5 Forest Gate students in relation to their sense of identity and involvement as members of a persisting group.Key Words: Sport Education, team affiliation, persisting groupsIn a recent article in JTPE, Siedentop (2002) noted that there is now a considerable body of research literature on Sport Education (SE), much of it indicating that this instructional model has been used successfully to assist young people to become "literate, competent and enthusiastic sports people" (p. 411). Because of the growing visibility of SE in the research literature, the key features of SE are increasingly well known, including extended seasons in place of short units of Sport Education 107 activity, formal competition, a culminating event, festivity, record keeping, and affiliation with a team.Although each of these features has been shown to be an important part of students' experiences of SE, Siedentop (1998) indicates, "The use of persisting groups (teams) is one of the model's most important features" (p. 414). A review of the general educational-research literature suggests a paucity of research on the experiences of students who remain in sustained, distinct groups or teams over long periods of time (Siedentop, 1995;Wynne & Walberg, 1994). In the context of SE, Siedentop (1995) believed that persisting groups, that is, sustained membership of a team for at least the course of a season, are not only a necessary condition for personal growth but also fundamentally important to achieving goals characteristic of the model. As Metzler (2000) explained, this extended affiliation allows team members the opportunity to work toward common goals, make group decisions, experience successes and failures as a group, and construct a group identity.Team affiliation in and through SE is not solely a matter for team sports but it is also indeed applicable to other activities in the physical education curriculum, including dance (Graves & Townsend, 2000), tennis (Grant, 1994), and gymnastics (Bell, 1994). Affiliation through the SE model is enha...

Change in Affect and Needs Satisfaction for Amotivated Students within the Sport Education Model

“…Although beyond the intent of this study an inference could be made that changes in relatedness support may have facilitated student's change in perceived enjoyment within physical education. Changes in perceived relatedness are consistent with previous studies where students feel an increased sense of belonging, and team investment (MacPhail et al, 2004).…”

“…The development of positive social relationships (i.e., relatedness) is evident within the SEM (MacPhail, Kirk & Kinchin, 2004). Clarke and Quill (2003) indicated that low-skilled students perceive a heightened sense of inclusion within the SEM due to features such as team af liation.…”

Examination of Self-Determination within the Sport Education Model

“…Achieving relatedness support occurs through features, such as team affiliation and fair play structures, within the SEM (MacPhail, Kirk, & Kinchin, 2004;Perlman & Goc Karp, 2010). Students exposed to the SEM have indicated a social connection with classmates in terms of perceiving a sense of inclusion of students who are traditionally marginalized (Carlson, 1995;Clarke & Quill, 2003;Kinchin, 2001;Perlman, 2010).…”

Sport Education, Critical Pedagogy, and Learning Theory: Toward an Intrinsic Justifi cation for Physical Education and Youth Sport

“…According to this way of conceptualizing young peopleʼs learning, a key challenge for Sport Education is the extent to which it can provide learner-players with meaningful, rich, and enjoyable experiences of sport as a community of practice in the extended sense just described MacPhail, Kinchin, & Kirk, 2003;MacPhail, Kirk, & Kinchin, 2004) and facilitate the achievement of key goals for physical education and youth sport. This concept of learning as legitimate peripheral participation in communities of practice provides a theoretical framework for understanding how Sport Educationʼs key learning outcomes of competent, literate, and enthusiastic sportspeople may be realized.…”