Play Practice: The Games Approach to Teaching and Coaching Sports presents a clear alternative to traditional approaches that will revitalize your own teaching and coaching. It replaces mindless games and mechanistic training methods with creative and enjoyable practice that improves students’ skills and enhances their tactical understanding.
This book focuses on teaching game play first instead of technique and skill—an approach that sets it apart from other games-approach texts. It provides answers to many of the problems that sports educators face, such as motivating reluctant or resistant students.
Developed by an internationally known authority on the subject, Play Practice: The Games Approach to Teaching and Coaching Sports provides both the theoretical basis and the practical plans for changing practice from drudgery to an educational experience young people look forward to. Part I introduces the innovative Play Practice approach and explains how it can lead to more effective coaching and teaching. Part II applies Play Practice to a great variety of games and describes specific approaches to improving technical ability and developing game sense. Part III discusses techniques the sports educator can use to make the Play Practice approach most effective.
The book’s 50 illustrations and 20 photos demonstrate specific approaches to games as well as ideas that can work for multiple games. These features will help you visualize how to apply the Play Practice approach with beginners as well as elite players in sports as diverse as skiing and tennis.
This book will challenge your thinking about how sports should be taught, help you reassess your own methods, and provide a new and versatile model you can apply with great success—one practice, one game at a time.
Part I. The Play Practice Approach
Chapter 1. The Social Impact of Sport
• Sport As Entertainment and the Impact of the “Third Party”
• Sport Education: An Undervalued Facet of Modern Life
Chapter 2. The Emergence of Play Practice
• Games for Understanding
• The Evolution of the Games for Understanding Approach
• The Problems of Innovation
• Similarities and Differences Between Play Practice and Games for Understanding
• The Evolution of Play Practice
• The Effect of the “Swamp of Reality”
• Play Practice and Novice Instructors
• Play Practice and Coaching
• Summary
Chapter 3. Traditional Approaches to Teaching Games
Theoretical Concepts
• The Three Commonly Used Methods of Teaching Games
• Problems With Traditional Approaches
Chapter 4. The Nature of Skill in Games
• Skill Versus Technique
• Games Sense
• Other Elements of Effective Play
Chapter 5. Play Practice: The Theory
• Three Strands of Knowledge
• Play Practice Advantages
• Summary
Chapter 6. Play Practice in Action
• Shaping Play
• Focussing Play
• Enhancing Play
• Manipulating Variables to Shape Play Practices in Other Sports
• A Framework for Play Practice
Chapter 7. The Ps of Perfect Pedagogy
• Plan
• Prepare a Protected Learning Environment
• Prepare the Learner
• Pretest
• Present the Task Efficiently
• Provide Plenty of Practice
• Pertinent Practice
• Provide Feedback
• Ensure Good Positioning and Perception
• Playful Practice
• Praise Performance
• Progressive Practice
• Paced Practice
• Personalised Practice
• Direct Versus Indirect Teaching Methods
• Culminating Activities
Part II. Play Practice Applied
Chapter 8. Play Practice in Action: An Introduction to the Practical Examples
• Developing Play Practices
• Emphasis on Games Sense and Technical Ability
• Development of Technical Ability
• Working Models of Technique
• Developing Games Sense
• Teaching Games Sense
Chapter 9. Field Invasion Games
• Soccer
• Field Hockey
• Lacrosse
• American Football (Gridiron)
• Touch (Rugby)
• Australian Rules Football
Chapter 10. Court Invasion Games
• Basketball
• Netball
• Korfball
• Team Handball
Chapter 11. Court-Divided Games
• Racquet Games
• Volleyball
Chapter 12. Striking and Fielding Games
Chapter 13. Target Games
• Golf
• Archery
Chapter 14. Individual Sports
• Track and Field
• Skiing
Chapter 15. Action Fantasy Games
• The Evolution of Fantasy Games
• An Example of the Fantasy Game Approach
Part III. Sport Educator’s Role
Chapter 16. Bench Coaching
• Eyeballing: Most Coaches’ Basic Tool
• Match Analysis
• Precepts for Bench Coaching: The Basic Truths
• The Basic Process of Bench Coaching
• Summary
Chapter 17. Sporting Behaviour
• Play Practice and Sporting Behaviour
• Dealing With Poor Sports
Postscript: The Problem of Early Specialisation
Bibliography
Index
Reference for youth sport coaches, physical education teachers, and club and elite sport coaches. Supplemental text for coaching and physical education methods courses.
Alan Launder has been deeply involved in sports for more than 50 years as a competitor, teacher and coach. In that time he has worked in Great Britain, the United States, and Australia. Since 1973, he has been a senior lecturer at the University of South Australia, where he helped to develop a four-year degree course in physical education—teacher education that became a model for programs in other countries. He won the 1992 Rothmans Prize in recognition of his ability to develop and communicate innovative ideas in sports education. The paper that won the prize, “Coach Education Towards the 21st Century,” has had a great influence on the coach education programs of many Australian sporting federations.
Alan holds senior coaching qualifications from Great Britain and Australia in soccer, cricket, basketball, track and field and table tennis. In 1984, he was a coach of the Australian track and field team at the Los Angeles Olympics. In 1986 and 1988, he was the head coach of the Australian team at the World Junior Championships. In 1991, 1993, and 1995, he was a coach of the track and field team at the World University Games. Most recently he has served as a consultant to the Australian Track and Field Coaches Association and to the Australian Lacrosse Association as they reinvented their coach education programs.
Alan regards his major career achievement to be the development of the philosophical and pedagogical principles that underpin the “Five Star Award,” an innovative approach to teaching track and field that has been adopted by more than 20 countries.
In his spare time, Alan's hobbies are sporting art, travel, snow skiing, and fine wine. He lives with his wife, Jennifer, in Salisbury East, South Australia. He has two sons, David and Richard, and three grandsons, James, Mitchell and Matthew.
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