Teaching Games for Understanding: A Situated Perspective on Student Learning.

This paper presents an interpretation of student learning from a situated learning perspective, seeking to enhance approaches already employed in teaching games for understanding (TGfU) research. The analysis was designed to help identify three specific dimensions of situated learning in physical education: the perceptual-physical, social-interactive, and institutional-cultural, which have implications for the pedagogy of TGfU. The study describes what happened when a TGfU approach was implemented as part of a regular eighth-grade physical education program in basketball. Three vignettes based on critical incidents generated from observation, interview, and diary data illustrate various aspects of the situatedness of learning. Analysis of the vignettes showed that the constructs employed in cognitive, motor behavioral, and ecological approaches remained useful, but by themselves they provided incomplete explanations of learning to play games. Reworked within a situated perspective, the constructs provided theoretical tools for providing a more targeted approach to the pedagogy of TGfU. (Contains 27 references.) (SM)