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GAME SENSE FOR COACHING
AND TEACHING
Sport coaching has grown significantly as an area of research interest, with an

expanding number of sport coaching programs offered. The past decade or so has
also seen significant interest in games-based approaches to coaching and teaching
games. On a global level Game Sense is one of the most recognized athlete-
centred approaches for team sports, probably close behind Teaching Games for
Understanding.
Game Sense for Coaching and Teaching provides an understanding of how an
Australian approach to coaching has grown and developed as it has been taken up
across the globe. While the focus is on Game Sense, the book also offers insights
into how any coaching or physical education (PE) teaching approach changes as
it is adapted to different contexts across the world, examining the theoretical,
historical and philosophical foundations of sport coaching and teaching in
schools.
This book is particularly useful for undergraduate and postgraduate sport
coaching and PE courses but is also likely to be of interest for all practising sports
coaches or physical education teachers and lecturers.
Richard L. Light is author of Game Sense: Pedagogy for participation performance

and enjoyment (2013, Routledge) and Professor of Sport Coaching in the College
of Education, Health and Human Development at the University of Canter-
bury, New Zealand. He is a prominent international figure working in sport
pedagogy, with a focus on athlete-centred approaches. He is well known for his
research and writing on Game Sense over the past twenty years and has published
many high impact research books on sport coaching and learning. His most
recent books include Applied Positive Pedagogy in sport coaching (2021, Routledge)
and Positive Pedagogy for sport coaching (2nd edn) (2019, Routledge), both with
Stephen Harvey; Stories of Indigenous success in Australian sport: Journeys to the AFL
and NRL, with John Evans (2018, Palgrave MacMillan); and Positive Pedagogy for
sport coaching: Athlete-centred coaching for individual sports (2017, Routledge).
Christina Curry PhD is a former Head of Health and Physical Education De-
partment at a secondary school in Sydney, Australia. She completed a PhD in
2013 on the implementation of Teaching Games for Understanding (TGf U) at
an independent secondary school in Sydney. She is at Western Sydney University,
Australia, where she was Director of Secondary Education and now teaches and
conducts research on Leadership, Health and Physical Education, with a focus on
Game Sense. She is regularly invited to conduct workshops on Game Sense and
Positive Pedagogy for sport coaching, and was involved in its early development.
GAME SENSE FOR
COACHING AND
TEACHING
International Perspectives
Edited by
Richard L. Light and Christina Curry
First published 2021
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 selection and editorial matter, Richard L. Light and Christina
Curry; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Richard L. Light and Christina Curry to be identified
as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their
individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections
77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other
means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-67499-1 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-74158-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-13155-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by codeMantra
CONTENTS
List of Figures ix
List of Tables xi
About the Contributors xiii
Introduction 1
Richard L. Light
1 Game Sense: Its History, Development and Future 4

Richard L. Light
PART I
Theorizing Game Sense 13
2 Holism and Humanism: The Philosophical Foundations of

Game Sense 15
Richard L. Light and Amy L. Light
3 Reconciling Approaches: Informing Game Sense Coaching

Pedagogy with a Constraints-Led Perspective 25
Shane Pill
4 The Body and Learning through Game Sense 35

Richard L. Light
vi Contents
PART II
Game Sense and Culture 45
5 Game Sense, Culture and Learning: A Focus on Asia 47

Richard L. Light
6 The Influence of Context on Teachers’ and Coaches’

Use of GBA 56
Bianca C. de Aguiar and Richard L. Light
7 The Influence of Games and Culture on Indigenous

AFL and NRL Players’ Development of Expertise 67
Richard L. Light and John R. Evans
8 Adapting a Game Sense Approach to Coaching Rugby in Chile 75

Nick Hill
9 Ako and Indigenous Athletes: Kaupapa Māori Principles

and Game Sense Pedagogy 84
Jeremy Hapeta, John R. Evans and Graham H. Smith
PART III
Coaching and Teaching Issues in Game Sense 97
10 Teaching Decision-Making and Creativity as a Vital Issue

for Teacher Education – A Qualitative Intervention Study
with German Trainee Teachers 99
Stefan König and Daniel Memmert
11 A Bigger Picture: Aligning Game Sense with Curriculum

Standards 113
Steve Mitchell
12 Discovering Game Shape through Cooperative Team

Adventures 123
Dennis Slade
13 English and Australian Teachers’ Interpretation and

Use of GBA 135
Kendal Jarrett and Richard L. Light
Contents vii
14 What Do Children Learn from the Game? A Study of

Elementary Physical Education in Aichi, Japan 147
Kazunari Suzuki, Yutaka Nakajima, Nawata Ryota and
Junpei Yamashita
15 Applied Game Sense and Positive Pedagogy in High

School Rugby 155
Cameron Gray
16 The Utility of Game Sense for PE Teachers, Sport Coaches

and Policy Makers: A Models-Based Narrative 163
Glenn Fyall and Jackie Cowan
PART IV
The Development of Game Sense 175
17 Implementing TGf U in an Australian Independent School:

An Affective Journey 177
Christina Curry and Richard L. Light
18 The Use of Coaching Pods for Coach Education in

Croquet Coaching Pods: Possibilities for Game Sense 187
Jenny Clarke
19 What’s in a Name? The Influence of Game Sense on a

New Zealand Basketball Coach’s Practice 197
Ricardo Pimenta and Richard L. Light
20 From the Games Concept Approach to Game Sense to

Positive Pedagogy: My Pedagogical Journey 206
Mohammad Shah Razak
21 Learning from Adaptation Games in a Japanese Basketball Unit 214

Koji Murase and Hisataka Ambe
Concluding Thoughts: Game Sense for Teaching and

Coaching Globally 223
Christina Curry and Shane Pill
Index 229
FIGURES
3.1 An AFL small-sided Game Sense game. Starting positions for

the 6v6 practice are shown. The aim is to be the team that gets
the football to the target player who is positioned outside the
end of field to which the team is playing to 29
3.2 A change in environmental constraints (field shape and size)
changes game conditions 32
9.1 NZR’s ‘Player Development’ model (see Russell et al., 2016) 89
9.2 An Indigenous pedagogy – KM principles aligned with GS 92
10.1 Strategy and decision-making in sports games: systemic design
with actors and goals (Memmert and König, 2019, p. 221) 100
10.2 Tactical creativity approach (TCA) by Memmert (2015) with
the 7 Ds of creativity promotion 104
10.3 Domains in teacher education (König, 2014, p. 160) 106
10.4 Structure of the qualitative experiment 107
13.1 Conceptualisation of the framework used to guide analysis 138
13.2 A summary of elements that formulated the outcome space 140
14.1 New dodgeball example 148
15.1 The direct instruction cycle that reflects the perpetual
reproduction of coaching norms within the school 160
21.1 Result of correspondence analysis 218
TABLES
3.1 Pedagogies of a Game Sense approach and a constraints-led

perspective 28
10.1 An approach towards structuring tactics for practice
(Memmert and König, 2019, p. 223) 101
11.1 Content standards for physical education in the USA 115
11.2 Examples of Alignment of SHAPE America Middle School
Standard 2 outcomes with Game Sense content 116
13.1 Conceptions and their associated meaning 141
18.1 Session types and descriptions for pod materials ordered from
most athlete-centred to most direct delivery style 192
18.2 Coaching questions in current Pod materials and suggested
enhancements to encourage deeper thinking and discussion
among participants 194
21.1 Plan of the basketball lessons unit 217
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Bianca C. de Aguiar, PhD, completed a PhD at the University of Canterbury,

New Zealand, on games teaching in secondary schools under the supervision of
Professor Richard L. Light. She has a background in gymnastics and taught phys-
ical education in Portugal. She currently holds a two-year postdoctoral position
at Waseda University, Japan.
Hisataka Ambe, PhD, is an associate professor at Hokkaido University of Educa-

tion at Iwamizawa, Japan. He earned his PhD from Tokyo Gakugei University
and conducts research in soccer and sport philosophy.
Jenny Clarke, PhD, is a senior lecturer in sport science at the University of Can-
terbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. Her current research interests are in the
application of athlete-centred pedagogies to coaching, particularly in the sport of
croquet, and in enhancing student experience in tertiary education.
Jackie Cowan is a senior lecturer in Sport and Physical Education Curriculum

and Pedagogy at the College of Education, Health and Human Development at
the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. Her current re-
search interests are in policy and practice, specifically curriculum and pedagogy
in primary school physical education, and the influence of privatisation in and
on education.
John R. Evans, PhD, is professor of Indigenous Health Education at the Uni-

versity of Technology Sydney (UTS) and Chief Investigator on two Australian
Research Council Grants, investigating the role of sport and physical activity in
Australian Indigenous communities. His previous research has focussed on ped-
agogy in sport; Indigenous sport; and the relationship between sport, health and
xiv About the Contributors
education in Indigenous communities. John has a background in elite sport as

an athlete and coach, and continues to work with elite coaches in Australia and
New Zealand; he is deeply interested in the role of pedagogy in sport. He has
had a 20-year involvement with Lloyd McDermott Rugby Development Team,
mentoring young Indigenous rugby players.
Glenn Fyall is a lecturer in Sport and Physical Education Curriculum and Ped-
agogy at The College of Education, Health and Human Development at the
University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. His research centres
around curriculum policy conceptualisation, interpretation and aligned peda-
gogical practices.
Cameron Gray having played rugby around the world, Cameron took up coach-
ing it to supplement his income and enjoyed it enough to take it up in a serious
capacity in Sydney at St Joseph’s College, Hunters Hill in 2016. Fundamentally,
he is an advocate of game-based approaches to coaching that allow players to
think for themselves and play what they see, rather than the heavily structured
pod-reliant system that features in contemporary rugby.
Jeremy Hapeta, PhD, is Physical Education Lecturer and Research Develop-

ment Advisor – Māori at Massey University, New Zealand. A fully registered
teacher, he has taught in primary, intermediate and high schools. He also played
top-level rugby in New Zealand, Japan and France, and coached in Italy and
New Zealand. His research interests include Kaupapa Māori methodologies,
Sport for Development, inclusive Team Culture, Teaching Games for Under-
standing (TGf U) and Games Sense. He is also a member of Sport NZ’s Physical
Literacy Approach and Tertiary Sport Research academic reference groups.
Nick Hill is a physical education teacher and Athletic Development and Rugby
coach who has taught and coached in England, Chile and the USA at all levels,
including schools, universities and adult clubs. He has been using a player-
centred coaching approach for many years with many successes and challenges in
different environments and cultures. He has shared his experiences and ideas at
international conferences in Chile, Japan and the USA.
Kendall Jarrett, PhD, is a lecturer in Academic Practice at the University of

Kent, UK, and completed his PhD on teachers’ experiences of using game-based
approaches in Australia and the UK. He has 20 years of coaching experience
across a range of sports and in different countries. He has worked with teams
from junior cricket and basketball levels, through to senior elite field hockey
teams at National Championship level.
Stefan König, PhD, studied sports science and English at the University of
Tübingen, Germany. Since 2006 he has been a professor at the University of
Education in Weingarten. His main interests and fields of work are instructional
About the Contributors xv
research, science of training, team sports research and research methodology. He

is also Director of the Research Center for Secondary Education.
Amy L. Light is undertaking an honours year in philosophy at The University

of Melbourne, Australia. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts and a double
major in philosophy and French in 2018 from The University of Melbourne, she
enrolled in a Master of Business Management at a Grande École in France but
had to return to Australia. She is a former elite level junior swimmer and runner
with success at national level in Australia and the UK and at provincial level in
France.
Daniel Memmert, PhD, is a professor and Executive Head of the Institute of Ex-
ercise Training and Sport Informatics at the German Sport University Cologne
in Germany. His research is focussed on human movement science, sport psy-
chology and computer science in sports. He has received more than €7 million
in external funding, has an H-index of 47 (i10-Index 131) and has authored or
co-authored more than 100 publications in Q1 journals.
Steve Mitchell, PhD, is an Associate Dean at Kent State University in Ohio,

USA. He holds a PhD from Syracuse University and Bachelors and Master’s
degrees from Loughborough University in England. He has been a prominent
figure in the development of Teaching Games for Understanding (TGf U) over
the past few decades. Steve has authored numerous books, articles and book
chapters related to games teaching and standards-based curriculum in physical
education.
Koji Murase works in the Faculty of Education at Wakayama University, Japan.

His research focusses on physical education pedagogy and sports psychology.
Yutaka Nakajima is a primary school teacher who holds a Master’s degree from
Aichi University of Education and is interested in research on primary school
physical education.
Shane Pill, PhD, is associate professor in Physical Education and Sport at Flinders
University, Australia, and is a well-established figure and leader in the develop-
ment of athlete-centred coaching, particularly with Game Sense. He received
a 2016 Australian Government award for Outstanding Contribution to Stu-
dent Learning and is editor of Perspectives on athlete-centred coaching, published by
Routledge in 2018. Shane is regularly invited to speak and demonstrate practice
in athlete-centred coaching and was invited to the 2019 Ohio Global Coaching
Symposium.
Ricardo Pimenta, PhD, completed a PhD at the University of Canterbury on

girls’ experiences of basketball in a New Zealand school. He is currently a re-
search fellow for the JSPS ( Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) at the
xvi About the Contributors
School of Sport Sciences of Waseda University, Japan. He is currently looking

into the impact of sport on the enjoyment of young Japanese people in schools
and its potential to contribute to their well-being. Ricardo has been a basketball
coach for ten years in Portugal and New Zealand, where he coached youth and
senior school basketball (male and female) as well as basketball at university level
(University of Canterbury).
Mohammad Shah Razak, PhD, completed a PhD at the University of Canter-

bury in New Zealand on ‘Moral and Ethical learning in Sports in Secondary
Schools’ under the supervision of Professor Richard L. Light. He has an exten-
sive background in teaching physical education and coaching sport at both recre-
ational and competitive levels in Singapore over an 18-year period that includes
coaching rock climbing. He is now Head of the Physical Education Department
at Jurongville Secondary School in Singapore.
Nawata Ryota, PhD, is an assistant professor at Aichi University of Education,

where he teaches in sport science. He conducts research in biomechanics and
physical education pedagogy, with a focus on volleyball.
Dennis Slade, PhD, is an associate professor and major leader in physical educa-
tion in the School of Sport, Exercise and Nutrition at Massey University, New
Zealand. A Fellow of Physical Education New Zealand, Dennis’s expertise in
teaching has been recognized with a university teaching award. He is author of
several texts on Teaching Games for Understanding (TGf U) and Game Sense,
and is the NZ representative on the TGf U International Advisory Board.
Graham H. Smith (CNZM) is an internationally recognised academic researcher

and scholar. His areas of disciplinary interest are education, sociology of knowl-
edge and critical theory. He is a former primary school teacher. He has a back-
ground in Rugby as a player, coach and administrator – previously serving on
the NZ Maori Rugby Board. He is currently the Toi Ihorei (invited Professorial
Chair at Large) at Massey University, New Zealand
Kazunari Suzuki, PhD, is an associate professor at Aichi University of Education,

Japan. He has a background as a primary school teacher. His main research inter-
est is the use of narratives in research on teaching and learning.
Junpei Yamashita is an assistant professor at Aichi University of Education,

Japan, where he teaches sport science. He conducts research on handball, sports
science and Sport Education.
INTRODUCTION
Richard L. Light
Game Sense: Pedagogy for performance, participation and enjoyment (Light, 2013) has
had a significant influence on sport coaching as the ‘go to’ text for Game Sense
over the past eight years. This volume follows up on Game Sense for performance,
participation and enjoyment to look at the development of Game Sense since 2013.
It inquires into how it has been used across a range of cultural and social set-
tings with two more internationally known researchers working in Game Sense,
Dr Shane Pill (Australia) and Dr Dennis Slade (New Zealand) making valuable
contributions.
There are now numerous variations developed from Teaching Games for
Understanding (TGf U) or which are similar to it, such as Game Sense, Play
Practice and Tactical Games, to name but a few. They all vary in detail but are
similar in their fundamental approach to coaching (or teaching). In Game Sense
I suggested four pedagogical principles underpinning it to provide a framework
for practice. When I developed Positive Pedagogy for sport coaching (PPed – see,
Light, 2017), I broadened these same principles to make them applicable to indi-
vidual sports (Light, 2017). These were then applied to all coaching in the second
edition of Positive Pedagogy for sport coaching (Light and Harvey, 2019). Game Sense
thus forms the basis of PPed.
In response to a growing number of GBA (game-based approaches) with
minor differences between them, the coaching field has seen a move towards
using the term athlete-centred coaching as a general and inclusive description of
GBA (see Pill, 2018) that can include coaching individual sports. The increasing
use of the term suggests an inclination among coaches, those working in coach
education and researchers towards a broader, simpler and inclusive notion of
coaching that places the athlete at the centre of learning. As a loose framework
for coaching, Game Sense fits this inclusive approach. It is also one of the reasons
why governing bodies like the Rugby Football Union (UK) have chosen to use
Game Sense to inform their coaching.
2 Richard L. Light
On a global scale, Game Sense is one of the more recognized athlete-centred

approaches for team sports. This interest in it is reflected in the biennial Game
Sense for teaching and coaching conferences held in the Asia Pacific region. After
being limited to Australia and New Zealand since 2006, the 2019 conference was
convened by Dr Naoki Suzuki at Tokyo Gakugei University during December.
It was the first one held in Asia but was not just convened in Asia. It also had a
significant focus on Asia that is reflected in this book. Given its flexibility, Game
Sense is probably the coaching approach that is most easily adapted to diverse
cultural and institutional contexts, and this came through in the 2019 Tokyo
conference.
This book has a truly international perspective with contributions from
authors living in Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the USA, the UK, Germany
and Singapore. There are four chapters on coaching and teaching by Japan-based
authors with two of them being Portuguese and the authors of the other two
chapters being Japanese. The 2019 Game Sense for Teaching and Coaching con-
ference in Tokyo attracted presenters from the UK, Australia, New Zealand, the
USA, Thailand, Korea and Japan. It stimulated the idea of producing an edited
book that reflected the global use of Game Sense and adaptations of it to local
conditions. A book based on, but not limited to, presentations at the conference.
All presenters were invited to submit chapters for consideration, and we directly
asked invited speakers and keynotes. We also asked prominent scholars working
in and around athlete-centred coaching, such as Professor Daniel Memmert from
Germany and Professor Steve Mitchell from the USA, to contribute to the book.
Aims of the Book

The aim of this book is to provide an understanding of how an Australian
approach to coaching has grown and developed as it is taken up across the globe.
While the focus is on Game Sense, it also offers insights into how other coaching
or physical education teaching approaches change as they are adapted to different
contexts across the world, and how adaptable it is. The 21 chapters are written
by authors based in seven different countries, spread across Europe, the USA,
Asia and Australasia. They provide multiple perspectives on Game Sense with
nine drawing on empirical research findings. The contributing authors comprise
what we feel is a good balance of leaders in their field, those who are already well
established and a number who are emerging or early career researchers in the area
of sport and physical education pedagogy. These include two academics under-
taking PhDs, practising coaches studying part time at masters and undergraduate
levels and an honours student.
Content
Following this introduction, the book begins with an outline of the history and
development of Game Sense that also suggests its future. It is then divided into
four parts.
Introduction 3
Part I. Theorizing Game Sense. This provides the philosophical and theoretical
ideas underpinning and informing Game Sense. It begins with an overdue
examination and discussion of the philosophical positions of humanism and
holism that underpin Game Sense and most other GBA. Following this, two of
the leading figures conducting research in and developing Game Sense suggest
different theories for understanding learning in and through Game Sense.
Part II. Game Sense and culture. The five chapters in this part look at the influ-
ence of cultural context on coaching and learning. The first of these five chapters
is written from the opening keynote at the conference with a focus on Asia.
Others focus on Indigenous Australians and Māori, New Zealand and Chile.
Part III. Coaching and teaching issues in Game Sense. The seven chapters in this
part deal with a range of issues involved in implementing Game Sense. They
focus on Germany, New Zealand, Australia, the USA and the UK. Three of
these chapters report on empirical research.
Part IV. The Development of Game Sense. The five chapters in this part provide
insights into the future development of Game Sense and, by implication, other
GBA and athlete-centred coaching. Four of these chapters report on empirical
studies undertaken in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
References
Light, R. L. (2013) Game Sense: Pedagogy for performance, participation and enjoyment, Lon-
don and New York: Routledge.
Light, R. L. (2017) Positive pedagogy for sport coaching: Athlete centred coaching for individual
sports, London and New York: Routledge.
Light, R. and Harvey, S. (2019) Positive pedagogy for coaching (2nd edn), London and New
York: Routledge.
Pill, S. (ed.) (2018) Perspectives on athlete centred coaching, London and New York: Routledge.
1
GAME SENSE
Its History, Development and Future
Richard L. Light
The Idea of Game-Based Learning

Game Sense is a pedagogical approach for teaching and coaching games and team
sports that sits within a range of methods and approaches referred to as GBA
(game-based approaches). GBA vary in terms of how learning is theorized and
the epistemology they sit on, the extent to which the teaching/coaching process
is structured and what the aims of the approach are but, in practice, look very
similar. They all locate learning within games or game-like activities, empha-
sise questioning and take an inquiry-based or problem-solving-type approach
that involves dialogue and reflection. In academic debate we can all be a little
precious at times about theoretical differences such as what learning theory best
explains learning in and through GBA. At the 2017 ACPHER Game Sense for
Teaching and Coaching conference in Adelaide I made this point as provocateur,
following Ian Renshaw’s keynote on constraints-led theory. In this volume, we
have a similar difference of opinion on theorising learning in and through Game
Sense expressed by Shane Pill in Chapter 3 and by me in Chapter 4, yet at a prac-
tical level, there is not much difference between us.
In physical education and sport pedagogy, and most other disciplines and
sub-disciplines, there are very few real innovations or new ideas. Instead, they
tend to be developments or redevelopments of ideas, or reorganising of them.
This is why history is important in discussions about sport and physical education
pedagogy. This is why we always need to recognise where ideas come from and
how they have been shaped by changing social and economic conditions. My
father studied in a master-of-education program after World War II at The Uni-
versity of Sydney and was immensely influenced as a teacher by the thinking of
John Dewey, who is considered to be the most influential thinker on education in
the 20th century. His genealogical approach sits within the history of philosophy
Game Sense 5
and is shaped by Darwin’s theories and views of the world (Lamont, 1961).
Dewey strove to reconnect philosophy to the mission of ‘education-for-living’.
At the turn of the 21st century I found his perspective on learning exciting and
enlightening for thinking about sport coaching and teaching physical education.
This was many years after his death in 1952, and his work continues to influence
thinking on education, including GBA (see Quay and Stolz, 2014). The ideas
of the great thinkers in the West and the East are part of a long development of
knowledge over thousands of years.
Game Sense was developed from Teaching Games for Understanding (TGf U),
but ideas about coaching team sports by locating learning in games had been
suggested before Bunker and Thorpe’s ground-breaking publication in 1982.
For example, over the 1960s Wade (see 1967) advocated the use of small-sided
practice games in football (soccer) to develop tactical knowledge, skill in context
and improve skill execution through the increased touches of the ball in games
when compared to drills. He promoted taking a problem-solving approach in
which the teacher or coach guides the student or player towards solving the
problem without telling them what to do. He urged teachers to have imagina-
tion and to think creatively when teaching football, which I suggest is equally as
important, if not more so today. Wade (1967: xiii) suggested, ‘Clearly the teacher
who can set problems and also guide a child towards appropriate solutions has an
advantage. But any teacher with imagination can set problems and guide a child
toward possible answers’. Does this sound familiar half a century later?
The 1960s was a period of new thinking about education that challenged the
status quo with progressive education (see Dewey, 1916/97) and child-centred
teaching challenging the traditional approach. In the UK during this period
Mauldon and Redfern (1969) proposed the use of games in primary (elementary)
schools instead of drills to develop skills. These ideas on teaching and coaching
were not limited to the UK, with Mahlo (1974) taking a similar approach in
France, and it was in this context that Thorpe and Bunker, and later Len Almond
developed TGf U. In response to concerns with British universities graduating
physical education teachers with good skills but who were not good players,
Thorpe, Bunker and Almond located learning in games that were modified to
suit the learners/athletes. They were used to develop skill in game contexts,
tactical understanding, decision-making, awareness and all the other important
interacting components of game play. One of the keys to the success of TGf U in
achieving these objectives was the use of questioning as a central feature of the
approach.
Bunker and Thorpe’s response to the problems they saw was practical and rel-
atively simple, but effective. They focussed on the game itself as a whole instead
of on breaking down into core or even fundamental skills or technique and drill-
ing them in isolation from the game. Locating learning in games designed and
modified to suit the needs, experiences, skills and other abilities of the learner
gave relevance and meaning to what was learned. It also addressed their concern
with student boredom by bringing back the fun and joy that games can promote.
6 Richard L. Light
When I was developing my teaching of Game Sense and TGf U at The Univer-
sity of Melbourne from 2000 to mid-2004, this is what struck me most when
teaching pre-service teachers. It is what they most commented on and wanted
to provide for their students during practice teaching and some of our visits
to local schools to teach games. It is also something that really appealed to US
masters’ students when I was coaching at the two Global Coaching Symposia,
I was invited to in 2018 and 2019 where I lectured and ran workshops on Positive
Pedagogy for sport coaching (see Light and Harvey, 2019, 2021). Indeed, one
of the students contributed a chapter in the second edition of Positive Pedagogy
for sport coaching on his attempts to make American football training fun (see
Sneed, 2019).
Over the past two decades, TGf U has changed significantly from Bunker and
Thorpe’s (1982) proposal. Growth in attention paid to TGf U was most marked
over the course of the 1990s in the USA, where it challenged the dominance
of the ‘skill drill’ approach and stimulated a tactical versus technical debate. It
led to suggestions for changes (see Kirk and MacPhail, 2002) to the concep-
tual model of TGf U that were followed up with its development into a model
with six stages. With this approach, learners pass through six stages in a cyclical
representation that might occur across a range of levels from a single lesson or
training session to a unit of work for the term in physical education. Since then
development of TGf U into a model has seen it increasingly structured with cur-
rent interpretations significantly different from the 1982 version.
When asked about the difference between TGf U and Game Sense Rod
Thorpe said that “… I see Game Sense as incorporating more of the original
teaching games for understanding” (Kidman, 2001, p. 26). As a pioneer in the
early development of TGf U, Len Almond confirmed the extent to which TGf U
had changed over 30 years in his presentation with Alan Launder in the TGf U
symposium at the 2010 AIESEP World Congress. There he explained how, when
first conceptualised, TGf U was just a loose idea or concept, and how far its cur-
rent interpretation is from the 1982 concept. He suggested that TGf U had been
designed to be a ‘starting point’ from which improvement in student learning in
physical education could evolve. Thorpe and Bunker themselves addressed this
issue in their keynote address at the 2008 International TGf U Conference in
Vancouver, Canada. They recognised the need to develop TGf U but questioned
whether or not the current form (at the time) of TGf U had moved too far away
from the original intent and principles to still be called TGf U. In conversations
with Rod Thorpe at the 2003 Melbourne conference he suggested to me that the
current interpretations of TGf U at the time were very good, but perhaps were
not TGf U as he had conceived it.
The Development of Game Sense

Over the course of the 1990s, Rod Thorpe’s regular visits to Australia to work
with Australian coaches led to collaboration with the Australian Sports Commis-
sion (ASC) in the development of Game Sense. Game Sense is less structured than
Game Sense 7
TGf U and is very similar to the original idea of TGf U developed by Thorpe,
Bunker and Almond. The term refers to coaching that bases learning within
(modified) games and uses questioning to make it player-centred. It aims to
develop thinking players (den Duyn, 1997). Thorpe gave structure to the existing
use of game-based training by many Australian coaches, but his most significant
contribution was the emphasis he placed on questioning (Light, 2004). Ask-
ing questions instead of telling players what they should do moved the focus of
coaching from the coach to the players.
In 1997 the ASC published a valuable set of resources that comprised a book-
let (den Duyn, 1997), a video and a set of activity cards that drew on coaching
practice in Australia showing a range of modified games in each of the four game
categories. ‘Playing for Life Activity Cards’ designed for teachers and based on
the Australian Health and Physical Education (HPE) curriculum are available
on the ASC website. They are structured around the four TGf U game cate-
gories with an extra category of ‘Movement exploration’ included. At around
the same time, the late Allen Launder (2001) was developing Play Practice as a
games-centred approach to teaching a range of sport skills (Launder, 2001). The
Americans who had developed Tactical Games (TG) were helping academics
in Singapore develop a version of TG, labelled the Game Concept Approach
(GCA), specifically for the Singapore context. GCA was endorsed by the Singa-
pore, Ministry of Education in 1999 as part of its Thinking Schools, Learning
Nations policy (Rossi, Fry, McNeill and Tan, 2007).
At the time, the ASC and local coaches wanted to avoid association with
school-based physical education and being too prescriptive for coaches to en-
courage existing good practice while providing some structure for the develop-
ment of Game Sense coaching and ‘thinking players’. There is no pedagogical
model but I have suggested four core features of Game Sense (Light, 2013). From
the first publication on Games Sense (den Duyn, 1997) it has had an impact on
coaching across a range of sports in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and some
other countries (see for example, Dixon, 2010; Light and Evans, 2010). The con-
vening of the 2019 Game Sense for Teaching and Coaching conference in Tokyo
suggests expanding interest in it.
Not long after its introduction Game Sense was promoted by state and national
sporting bodies such as in touch football and soccer through professional devel-
opment and accreditation courses but also had a significant influence in physical
education teaching. When taken up in schools, the differences between Game
Sense and TGf U are often difficult to see, leading some researchers to suggest
that there is no difference (see Kidman, 2001). The two terms are often used to
refer to the same approach to physical education teaching in Australia, but there
are differences, particularly in relation to the differences between sport coaching
and teaching in school physical education (see, for example, Light, 2004; Light
and Evans, 2010).
The focus of Game Sense on sport coaching, the involvement of the ASC and
Australian coaches in its initial development and its focus on coaches instead of
teachers, led to a less prescriptive approach than TGf U that provided room for
8 Richard L. Light
coaches to adopt it for part of their coaching while maintaining other existing
practices. Even when applied in physical education classes its looser, less prescrip-
tive approach can be appealing to teachers. On the other hand, this can lead to a
misunderstanding of Game Sense as being just playing games and neglect of its
pedagogy. This is commonly an oversight on the part of governing sports bodies
that just provide a series of training games under the heading, Game Sense.
Game Sense for Sport Coaching

When applied to sport coaching, Game Sense is not used to introduce players
to a game or show them how to play it as it would be in schools. It is used to fit
into a season of competition whether for the local under nine years soccer team
or a professional rugby team. Game Sense offers an ideal approach for developing
young players who have deep knowledge and an inquiring mind who would
respond well to the expectations of more senior sport. It also offers much at the
most elite levels (see Light and Evans, 2013; Chappell and Light, 2015; Jones,
2015).
The practice games used in Game Sense typically aim at improving or chang-
ing specific aspects of the team’s play that can be very tight in the case of older,
more experienced players. This could involve tending to a weaknesses in play
identified from analysis of the previous competition match (or matches) or work-
ing on an aspect of play designed to exploit a perceived weakness in the next
opposition’s playing style, or to respond to an opposition strength. If used in
this way then coaches might find one specific training game or activity to, for
example, redress a team’s deficiency in skill execution under pressure, to improve
decision-making under pressure or to improve a tactical aspect of game play.
Using modified or specifically designed games, setting up problems to be
solved, asking questions instead of telling players what to do and encouraging
reflection and dialogue are the same as in TGf U and other GBA. However, the
focus of club or high-performance sport coaching is on improving a specific as-
pect of play rather than on learning how to play the game. This is a big difference
between teaching physical education and coaching sport.
Community-based club sport forms a distinctive feature of sport for young
people in Australia and provides very different experiences of sport and games
than games lessons in school-based physical education do. While some countries
like the UK also have a strong club sport culture for young people it is quite dif-
ferent to the sport available to them in countries where most sport is available in
schools or colleges such as in the USA and Japan.
Game Sense for Physical Education

The main difference between Game Sense and TGf U arises from its ‘looser’ ap-
proach that Thorpe suggests makes it similar to his and David Bunker’s origi-
nal ideas on TGf U (Kidman, 2001). The relationship between skill and tactics
Game Sense 9
is also a little different to the influence of the contemporary version of TGf U.

that might be due to the influence of the Tactical Games approach. In the Tactical
Games approach modified games are used for students to understand the place of
certain skills in the game through playing the game. The students then practise
these skills before returning to the game or moving to a more complex form of the
game. This has also been adopted in the GCA used in Singapore (for example see
Rossi et al., 2007). However, in Game Sense, learning is located within games as
much as is practicable, and there is no prior identification of skills to be developed.
If the skills are good enough for the game to progress (enabling skills) then they
are adequate and are improved by raising the complexity and skill demands of the
modified games used. This means they are learned and developed within game
contexts rather than being identified within and practised for game contexts.
Where necessary, a whole class, one group of students or even an individual
student or two can be given some technical coaching outside the game then
return to it without stopping the game in Game Sense as illustrated on the ASC
Game Sense video. The conception of the game as a whole entity is stronger in
the Game Sense approach. Drawing on Positive Pedagogy for sport coaching (see
Light and Harvey, 2019) allows for skill work without completely leaving the
game. Instead, the coach or teacher focusses on a skill but retains some elements
of the game that always involve awareness and decision-making. This increases
the chance of transferring improvement in skill execution from practice to the
real game. It is also worth noting the educative potential in Game Sense and its
stress on learning how to learn and becoming independent, life-long learners,
and how it meets the requirements for quality teaching (Light, Curry and
Mooney, 2014). The emphasis of its pedagogy on dialogue, inquiry-based learn-
ing, problem-solving and reflection, and how it encourages creativity, aligns well
with the pedagogy and the learning aims of educational systems focussed on the
21st century around the world.
The Future of Game Sense

The first International TGf U Conference was convened by the late Joy Butler
in 2001 and a year later an International TGf U Task Force was formed at the
2002 AIESEP World Congress in La Coruña, Spain. This was an exciting time
to develop and promote the implementation of a promising and innovative
pedagogy for sport coaching and physical education teaching. The promotion
of TGf U and interest in it continues, but it has had to become more open to
including other GBA due to the growth in variations and different interpre-
tations that includes Game Sense. The same influence is at work in this book.
Despite it being focussed on Game Sense, Christina and I have included chapters
not specifically focussed on Game Sense but which include them because they
are similar GBA. As I suggested at the beginning of this chapter, the practice of
all GBA is similar and we are all trying to develop and spread the implementa-
tion of GBA in general.
10 Richard L. Light
Since 2006 in Sydney, I have been involved in convening a series of Interna-

tional Game Sense for Teaching and Coaching conferences in Australia, New
Zealand and Japan. They are much smaller than the International TGf U confer-
ences and more low key. They focus on Game Sense but are open to presenta-
tions on other GBA, which I think this is a good development that contributes
toward promoting the idea of GBA in general, but by still focussing on a particu-
lar version or variation. The future of Game Sense depends on the answers to
the question: Should all variations of GBA morph into one approach or model,
or is that what will just naturally occur as Game Sense, TGf U, TG, Play Practice
and the range of other GBA are taken up and adapted to different cultures across
the globe?
References
Bunker, D. and Thorpe, R. (1982) ‘A model for teaching games in secondary school,
Bulletin of Physical Education, 10: 9–16.
Chappell, G. and Light, R. L. (2015) ‘Back to the future: Developing batting talent
through Game Sense’, Special issue of Active + Healthy Magazine, 23(2/3): 31–34.
Den Duyn, N. (1997) Game Sense: Developing thinking players, Canberra: Australian Sports
Commission.
Dewey, J. (1916/97) Democracy and education, New York: Free Press.
Dixon, M. (2010) ‘Game Sense as a holistic approach to soccer coaching: Perceptions of
Premiere League academy coaches’, paper presented at Tgf U Seminar, AIESEP World
Congress, LaCoruña, Spain, Oct 6.
Jones, E. (2015) ‘Transferring skill from practice to the match in rugby through Game
Sense’, Healthy and Active Magazine, 22(2/3): 56–58.
Kidman, L. (2001) Developing decision makers: An empowerment approach to coaching,
Christchurch: Innovative Print Communications.
Kirk, D. and MacPhail, A. (2002) ‘Teaching games for understanding as situated learning:
Re-thinking the Bunker and Thorpe model’, Journal of Teaching in Physical Education,
21: 117–192.
Lamont, C. (1961) ‘New light on Dewey’s Common Faith’, The Journal of Philosophy, 58(1):
21–28. DOI: 2307/2023566
Launder, A. G. (2001) Play Practice: The games approach to teaching and coaching sport, Cham-
paign, IL: Human Kinetics.
Light, R. (2004) ‘Australian coaches’ experiences of Game Sense: Opportunities and
challenges’, Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 9(2): 115–132.
Light, R. and Harvey, S. (2019) Positive pedagogy for sport coaching (2nd edn), London and
New York: Routledge.
Light, R. and Harvey, S. (eds) (2021) Applications of Positive Pedagogy for coaching: Interna-
tional coach cases, London and New York: Routledge.
Light, R. L. (2013). Game Sense: Pedagogy for performance, participation and enjoyment, Lon-
Light, R. L., Curry, C. and Mooney, A. (2014) ‘Game Sense as a model for delivering
quality teaching in physical education’, Asia-Pacific Journal of Health, Sport and Physical
Education, 5(1): 67–81.
Light, R. L. and Evans, J. R. (2010) ‘The impact of Game Sense pedagogy on elite level
Australian rugby coaches’ practice: A question of pedagogy’, Physical Education and
Sport Pedagogy, 15(2): 103–115.
Game Sense 11
Light, R. L. and Evans, J. R. (2013) ‘Dispositions of elite-level Australian rugby coaches

towards Game Sense: Characteristics of their coaching habitus’, Sport, Education and
Society, 18(3): 407–423.
Mahlo, F. (1974) Acte tactique en jeu [Tactical action in play], Paris: Vigot.
Mauldon, E. and Redfern, H. D. (1969) Games teaching: A new approach for the primary
school, London: McDonald and Evans Ltd.
Quay, J. and Stolz, S. (2014) ‘Game as context in physical education: A Deweyean philo-
sophical perspective’, in R. Light, J. Quay, S. Harvey and A. Mooney (eds), Contempo-
rary developments in games teaching, London and New York: Routledge, 15–28.
Rossi, T., Fry, J.M., McNeill, M. and Tan, C.W.K. (2007) ‘The Games Concept Approach
(GCA) as a mandated practice: Views of Singaporean teachers’, Sport, Education and
Society, 12(1): 93–111.
Sneed, T. (2019) ‘Youth American football’, R. Light and S. Harvey (eds), Positive peda-
gogy for sport coaching (2nd edn), London and New York: Routledge, 117–1231.
Wade, A. (1967) The FA guide to training and coaching, London: Heineman.
PART I
Theorizing Game Sense
2
HOLISM AND HUMANISM
The Philosophical Foundations of Game Sense
Richard L. Light and Amy L. Light
Light and Harvey (2019) outline a ‘bottom up’ approach for implementing
Positive Pedagogy for sport coaching (PPed) that guides coaches through an
understanding of its philosophical foundations of holism and humanism. Its aim
is to empower coaches to make the multiple decisions involved in coaching on a
daily basis and to be independent learners who can think for themselves. Given
that PPed has been developed from Game Sense, with very similar pedagogical
features, we see it sitting on the same philosophical foundations. Using these
concepts to guide practice requires an understanding of what they actually are
and how they can be used to guide practice and coach decision-making.
There are frequent references to athlete-centred or game-based approaches
(GBA) to coaching being holistic or humanistic in the literature. Associated with
the broad notion of, ‘the human side of sport’ (Lombardo, 1987, 1995), how well
understood are these terms? A decade ago, Cassidy (2010) expressed concern
with increasing references to humanistic and holistic coaching but without ade-
quate knowledge of their meaning. Focussed on holistic coaching, she suggested
how its use in the literature tended to be so ambiguous that it risked becoming
meaningless.
In the following section, we discuss the philosophical positions of humanism
and holism. We then look at what holistic and humanistic coaching is and finish
by suggesting how coaches can use an understanding of holism and humanism to
improve their Game Sense coaching.
Holism
Greek philosopher Aristotle claimed that whole is greater than the sum of its parts,
with the term holism first coined by Jan Smuts (1926). It refers to both a theory
and an approach that is commonly applied in philosophy. It looks at something,
16 Richard L. Light and Amy L. Light
not in isolation, but with the surrounding context and auxiliary ideas taken as
part of its ‘whole’ (Godfrey-Smith, 2009). Holism sits in direct contrast to re-
ductionism, which seeks to understand complex systems by reducing them to
the simpler, isolated and independent component parts that make up the whole
(Edmonds, 1999). Holism can be applied to many areas of knowledge, including
philosophy, psychology, language (semantic holism) and anthropology.
The Duhem-Quine thesis (see Gibson, 2000) is an example of epistemological
holism in philosophy of science. It purports that a scientific hypothesis cannot be
tested in isolation due to the fact that hypotheses are interconnected with other
background hypotheses: namely, ‘auxiliary assumptions’ (Sober, 2004, p. 221).
Meaning holism (see Pagin, 2006), also referred to as semantic holism, is a
theory in philosophy of language that sees words and sentences only having
meaning within the context of the words and sentences that they occur in. It
thus follows that semantic meaning in language is interdependent. As Hempel
(1950) states, ‘The cognitive meaning of a statement in an empirical language is
reflected in the totality of its logical relationships to all other statements in the
language’ (p. 59).
Gestalt psychology, or gestaltism (see Koff ka, 2013), is an integrative school of
thought rooted in holism that views psychological phenomena and behaviour as a
whole. Viewing behaviour as the result of dynamic interaction between conscious
and subconscious factors such as ego, id and the superego, Freud’s psychoanalytic
theory could be seen to view human behaviour through a holistic lens. It does,
however, propose that human behaviour is deterministic and the result of the
interaction of the mind’s unconscious and conscious factors (Milton, Polmear and
Fabricius, 2011). Indeed, Freud’s psychoanalysis purports that we cannot escape
the ‘prison of a deterministic past and a predetermined future’ (Buss, 1979, p. 103).
Within psychology, the sociocultural perspective adopts a holistic standpoint
as it considers individuals in the context of their sociocultural group. The behav-
iour of the group, such as obedience or conformity, is thus greater than the sum
of the behaviour of the individuals that comprise it. Likewise, abnormal psychol-
ogy has holistic underpinnings as it views the person as a whole. It sees mental
disorders as the result of the interaction of biological, cognitive and sociocultural
factors (Barlow and Durand, 2011).
In direct contrast to holism, behaviourism in psychology is a reductionist
doctrine that rejects the belief that the whole is greater than the sum of its
parts. From a behaviourist perspective, no matter how complex, all behaviour
can be reduced to smaller and simpler parts, mere stimulus-reflex links (see
Araiba, 2020). Therefore, behaviour is an observable reflex/response to certain
environmental stimuli, or a result of a person’s history which has been shaped by
behavioural reinforcement patterns.
Humanism and the Rise of Humanistic Psychology

The term humanism originates in the Latin humanitas. It can be defined as a
philosophical system of thought and a progressive societal shift in perspective
Holism and Humanism 17
that occurred predominantly over the 19th and 20th centuries. Humanism is a
holistic and human-centred approach that places emphasis on personal develop-
ment, self-actualisation, human value and free will. In part, it was a reaction to
ecclesiastical despotism (see Norman, 2013).
Humanism has its roots as far back as the Renaissance period, playing a key
role in changing and shaping European culture from the 14th to the 17th century
(see Kraye and Jill, 1996). Coinciding with the ebbing power of the Church,
Renaissance Humanism arose as a new consciousness. It was a progressive, intel-
lectual movement that, unlike ecclesiastical doctrine, promoted the idea of man’s
self-worth and his ability as a self-determining agent for personal development.
The core of Renaissance Humanism was the revival of the study of classical texts
to break free from the dominant medieval and ecclesiastical mode of thought
during the 14th century (Kraye and Jill, 1996).
Driven by humanistic psychology, the humanistic movement of the 1960s had
a powerful and lasting influence on Western culture and the formation of the
modern self (Grogan, 2013). The core years of humanistic psychology, from 1954
to 1973, fall within this movement, which was influenced by Eastern religion
and philosophical traditions (Moss, 2015). As Moss suggests, young people’s dis-
content with conservatism and the threat of nuclear warfare saw growth interest
in alternate views on, and explanations of, life such as offered in Buddhism and
Hinduism. Humanistic psychology developed as a sub-field of psychology that
emphasized personal growth and individualism (Grogan, 2013).
Within the discipline of psychology, humanistic psychology arose in the mid-
20th century in response to deterministic theories of behaviourism and Freud’s
psychoanalytic theory (Benjafield, 1996). While classical psychoanalysis and be-
haviourism were considered to be the ‘first’ and ‘second’ forces in psychology,
respectively, Maslow branded humanistic psychology as the ‘third force’ (see
Goble, 1970). He saw it as a progressive stance underpinned by individualism
and self-actualisation (Buss, 1979). This third force was a liberal movement that
Buss (1979, p. 103) compares to the liberalism promoting the ideas of freedom,
liberty and individual development during the Enlightenment period and with
the notion of individualism being very much part of the growing liberal con-
sciousness. Unlike behaviourism, which is a reductionist approach to behaviour,
the humanistic perspective is holistic. Studying human behaviour from a holistic
point of view means that psychologists do not try to understand or treat behav-
iour from a narrow, singular point of view such as looking at just the unconscious
mind, or isolating just biological factors that influence behaviour such as genetics.
Instead, it looks at the person as a whole.
While Frederick Perl’s holistic Gestalt understandings provided the under-
pinnings of humanistic psychology, American psychologist, Abraham Maslow,
is widely considered the ‘father’ of the movement. He (see 1968) theorised that
humans were inherently good and possessed a hierarchy of innate needs with
self-actualisation (the actualisation of one’s full potential) being the highest
(Schneider et al., 2014). Like the majority of psychologists preceding Maslow,
Freud adopted a pessimistic outlook to focus on abnormal behaviour and mental
illnesses, but Maslow (1968, p. 7) took a different approach. He studied healthy

individuals and adopted a positive outlook, stating that ‘it is as if Freud supplied
to us the sick half of psychology and we must now fill it out with the healthy
half ’.
Humanistic psychology gave rise to new and progressive forms of therapy
which were based on Maslow’s fundamental belief that people could change and
thus self-actualise. Carl Roger’s person-centred therapy is an example of a more
progressive therapy that emerged during the 1940s and extended into the 1980s
(Raskin and Rogers, 2005). Maslow describes humanistic psychology and its
core values as being ‘new ways of perceiving and thinking… a new philosophy
of life, a new conception of man, the beginning of a new century of work’ (cited,
Matson, 1976, p. 9).
Rogers is also associated with the humanistic movement that expanded in
influence throughout the 1970s to the 1980s. He popularized the use of the
term ‘client’ over ‘patient’, developed a person-centred therapy, also known as
Rogerian therapy. Still used today, this type of non-authoritative psychotherapy
is humanistic as it facilitates the client’s ability for self-actualisation through
acceptance, empathy and the genuineness of the therapist – also known as ther-
apist congruence (Rogers, 1957). In Roger’s own words, ‘the individual has
within himself or herself vast resources for self-understanding, for altering his or
her self-concept, attitudes and self-directed behaviour – and that these resources
can be tapped if only a definable climate of facilitative psychological attitudes can
be provided’ (Rogers, 1980, pp. 115–117).
Humanistic psychology arose over the mid-20th century in response to
perceived limitations of behaviourism and Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, the
primary paradigm in psychology (Buss, 1978). It contrasted with the more con-
servative and positivistic theories (in terms of logical positivism as a philosophical
stance) of both behaviourism and classical psychoanalysis that left no room for
contemplation on our own experience, or ability as self-determining agents to
transform our situation. Both behaviourism and psychoanalysis are grounded
in a sociohistorical condition that painted a conservative image of humanity as
being deterministic, mechanistic and even pessimistic. Commenting on Freud-
ian negativism, Buss (1979) suggests that Freudian psychoanalysis embodies this
pessimistic and fatalistic view of humanity with human nature being portrayed as
‘irrational, destructive, and unchanging in his theory’ (p. 103). In this way, Freud
saw society as being static, with no room for improvement, there being no point,
therefore, in implementing social change.
Humanistic psychology does not reduce human behaviour (no matter how
complex) to a stimulus-response pattern. The traditional world view of behav-
iourism relied heavily on comparative psychology and thus relied heavily on ani-
mal experiments in order to study stimulus-response reinforcements on behaviour
(Maslow, 2013). Comparative psychology is based on the underlying assumption
that behaviour is similar across animals and humans, and it draws upon these
cross-species comparisons in order to generalise findings from animal research to
understand human behaviour (Dewsbury, 1978). Humanistic psychology rejects

this assumption to promote the belief that humans are fundamentally different in
terms of reason, language and thought (McLeod, 2007).
Maslow (2013) proposes that unlike animal instinct, the inner nature of
humans is not strong and overpowering but, instead, subtle and shaped by culture
and habit. Buss (1979, p. 101) reinforces this idea by stating that ‘humanistic
psychology can best be understood within its cultural context’. Owing to the
holistic nature of humanistic psychology, qualitative research methods, such as
unstructured interviews, case studies and open-ended questionnaires, predomi-
nate over quantitative methods.
Quantitative research methods, such as (animal) experiments and correla-
tional studies, seek to test hypotheses by prioritising objectivity to generalise
findings beyond the study (external validity). Experiments test hypotheses in
controlled laboratory settings to eliminate unwanted (extraneous and confound-
ing) variables and to see how a dependent variable is affected by manipulating an
independent variable (Howitt and Cramer, 2007). Conversely, qualitative meth-
ods allow themes to emerge naturally and researchers mostly seek to understand
data at the individual level without seeking to generalize the findings beyond
the context of the study (McLeod, 2007). In contrast to the objective scientific
nature of quantitative methods, qualitative methods are humanistic and reflect a
holistic view.
Holistic Coaching
Holistic coaching in team sports refers to a view of individuals and the collective
entity of the game (Light, Evans, Harvey and Hassanin, 2015). Maslow’s holis-
tic approach to education and learning considers the entire physical, emotional,
social and intellectual qualities of the individual learner and how they influ-
ence learning. The emphasis of Game Sense on the whole game is diametrically
opposed to the reductionist approach of breaking team sports into fundamental
skills and techniques. It stands in opposition to reductionist beliefs that under-
standing a whole entity can be achieved by analysing its distinct, independent
and separate components. From a holistic coaching perspective, the coach’s focus
is on the game as a whole entity and not on its separate components such as tech-
nique and tactics.
We now often read or hear of coaching that considers the whole athlete but
Lombardo (see 1987) was one of the first to push for holistic coaching. He called
for coaches to focus on the development of the whole athlete and to encourage
athlete reflection on the subjective experience of participation in practice. This
was in recognition of the subjective nature of participation in sport and learning.
In his work on humanistic coaching, and later with Kidman (Kidman and Lom-
bardo, 2010), he promoted the importance of athlete development and growth
beyond physical performance, as a holistic process. This holistic view of partic-
ipation in sport and learning as a whole-person experience has been expressed
more often over the past decade in the literature on holistic coaching (see Light
et al., 2015).
Some have made suggestions for a range of dimensions of participation in
sport beyond the physical to be considered in holistic coaching. For example,
Kidman and Lombardo (2010) argue that the physical, cognitive, psychological,
social and spiritual dimensions of experience need to be considered in holistic
coaching. Along the same lines, Jones and Turner (2006) see holistic coaching
looking past the mental and physical aspects of sport to include paying attention
to the emotional, political, social, spiritual and cultural aspects of sport. With-
out getting too deeply involved in what dimensions or aspects of sport must be
included in a holistic approach to coaching, we emphasise how it considers each
individual as a whole person and the game as a whole entity.
Humanistic Coaching
The first major publication on humanistic coaching by Lombardo (1987) ap-
peared over three decades ago. It developed in response to concerns with the
dehumanization and objectification of athletes that saw them as objects to be
worked on, manipulated and fine-tuned for performance. These reductionist
approaches to coaching privilege ‘the technological, biophysical and scientized
aspects’ of coaching (Nash, Sproule and Horton, 2008, p. 530) over what it is to
be human. The humanistic approach emphasises the subjective nature of partici-
pation in sport, and how this influences participation in practice and competition
and learning.
Humanistic coaching sees athletes as thinking, feeling humans with a life
outside their sport. A life that has a strong influence on how they practise and
perform in competition and how much they enjoy sport, which is a critical con-
sideration for children and young people in sport. Humanistic coaching assumes
that, despite common experience and dispositions, every athlete is different in
some way and comes to practise with a unique set of embodied experiences that
shape his/her interpretation of coaching, and the learning that unfolds from it.
For example, swimming is a highly technical sport with biomechanically ef-
ficient stroke technique developed and taught to competitive swimmers through
drilling and repetition (Light and Wallian, 2008). Coaching from a more hu-
manistic perspective might consider how each swimmer interprets the technique
based on his or her previous experiences (see Chapter 4) and performs it in his
or her own unique way. It might also consider how the individual swimmer
connects with, and feels, the water when catching and pulling through it by
reflecting and engaging in dialogue with the coach and other swimmers (see
Light, 2014).
The humanistic approach to coaching is strongly influenced by the work of
social psychologists – Maslow (see 1968) and Rogers (see 1951) – and humanistic
psychology that we have discussed in detail. Well over four decades before the
development of Game Sense, but of much relevance to it, Rogers (1951) sug-
gested that, rather than one person being able to teach another directly, s/he can
only facilitate (our emphasis) their learning. Humanistic psychologists rejected

behaviourist explanations of learning as being reductionist. Maslow (1968) ar-
gued that experience should be the primary focus in the study of human learning
and is the case with locating learning in modified games in Game Sense. He
emphasized choice, creativity, values and self-realization as distinctively human
qualities, and believed that meaningfulness and subjectivity were more impor-
tant than objectivity.
Holistic Coaching and Game Sense

Game Sense focusses on the player as a whole person and on the game as a
complex, dynamic and whole entity. Traditional skill-drill, directive coaching
reduces players to objects that are prepared, shaped and manipulated for max-
imum performance on the field. There is little consideration of them beyond
performance. Traditional coaching tends to consider the physical and mental
dimensions of the individual athlete’s participation, but little beyond this. Holistic
coaching considers the whole person. Reference to the ‘whole person’ extends
to a widening notion of what it is to be human to include emotional, political,
social, spiritual and cultural aspects of sport and being.
The term ‘whole person’ recognizes the complexity of the individual athlete
and of the social and cultural contexts that they play and live in. A coach might
focus on physical and/or mental preparation, but they cannot be completely
isolated from the rest of our human make-up. This is evident in Game Sense
through the ways in which players are empowered to think, speak about and
contribute to what happens in training and on the field.
If the aim of training is to imbed patterns of movement and responses to cues
through repetition in the quest for perfection, there is little need for discussion
and interaction. If the aim is to engage the whole person in reflection, expression
of ideas and feelings, then interaction and productive relationships are of prime
importance. Building positive and productive relationships, purposeful dialogue,
individual and collective reflection, having a sense of belonging and commit-
ment to the team or club, and caring about each other are aspects of Game Sense.
The aspects of Game Sense that reflect consideration of the whole person rather
than seeing them as cogs in a machine.
Aristotle’s contention that the whole is more than the sum of its parts is of cen-
tral relevance for coaching any team sport. Players are not picked for a rugby team
only on the basis that each of them is the best available in that position. They are
picked in consideration of how they will contribute to the team as a whole, with
each player being a functioning part of a complex living entity. When two teams
play against each other, we have another unique and whole entity, which is that
of ‘the game’. A team can have a game plan or a set way of playing they prefer,
but this depends upon the opposition and how the game plays out.
In competitive games, players at almost any level from primary school children
to the most elite athletes enter a dynamic and constantly changing environment
that is often described as being chaotic. They cannot reduce this complexity, so
have to make sense of, and adapt to the chaos. Effective coaching must, therefore,
prepare players to make sense of the chaos instead of simplifying and breaking
the complexity of games into something that does not represent the game. Gains
made with this approach and will not transfer to the real game.
Game Sense coaching focusses on the whole game. Training sessions, or parts
of them, can reduce some of this complexity and chaos such as when focussing on
a skill or particular situation or scenario. Even so, it must always retain enough of
the game to make learning meaningful and useful. As a former rugby head coach
of Australia and Japan, and current head coach of England, this is what Eddie
Jones (2015) refers to as transferring gains at training during the week to the
game on the weekend. Game Sense coaches do not deny the importance of skill
or claim that tactics are more important than technique because these, and the
many other aspects of play, are only important as they interact in the game. The
simplistic idea that perfecting essential skills will improve game performance
ignores the complexity of most team sports. It is an attempt to reduce them to
the execution of designated skills, separate to the game. This is appealing to
many because it is easy to understand and provides a simple-to-follow coaching
procedure that empathizes effort, concentration as well as athlete obedience and
coach control.
Humanistic Coaching and Game Sense

The examples of holism we provide and discuss above all require a humanistic
approach. The team talks used in running small-sided games at practice require
the coach being sensitive to moods, body language, ways of speaking, tone, pauses
and so on to get a feel for interaction. This is needed when s/he is trying to ‘soften’
one player’s input to engage another more fully in discussions. Being aware of
the tone of chatter before, after and during training sessions might help explain
changes in relationships, moods, enthusiasm and commitment to training.
The Game Sense coach should build flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1997) over the
session through the modification and adjustment of practice games. Flow is a
state of being so immersed in the game that the athlete feels lost in the flow of it
and of optimum experience and learning. Once the session involves reasonably
well-developed games, the coach should aim for the teams to be challenged to
the point where that they are only just able to meet it (Light and Harvey, 2019).
They can then experience a state of optimal learning and experience, with the
key to this being setting and maintaining what Csikszentmihalyi (1997) calls the
‘challenge-skill balance’.
Pushing and testing athletes of any age like this requires a humanistic under-
standing of their experience, how they are feeling and learning. The efficacy of
having players care about each other, the coach caring about them and having
positive relationships is probably best illustrated by one of the most successful
sport teams in the world over the past decade – the New Zealand All Blacks
rugby union team (see Evans, 2014).
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3
RECONCILING APPROACHES
Informing Game Sense Coaching Pedagogy
with a Constraints-Led Perspective
Shane Pill
This chapter will raise questions about the instructional strategies used to develop
‘decision-makers’ in team sports like Australian football (AFL). A pedagogical
analysis of the Game Sense coaching approach with an emphasis on deliberate
game design for play with purpose and the application of the constraints-led
perspective for representative learning design is undertaken. A preface of this
chapter is that invasion games like AFL are not stable contexts. Play involves a
complex interplay of collective decision-making over time arising from a series
of contests for possession of the ball. The dynamics of the game are therefore
forever evolving over the course of play from the specific interactions of the be-
haviour of players and officials and the playing environment (Pill, 2014).
Historically, in Australia a common or ‘conventional’ coaching approach has
been recognised. It involves a reductionist understanding of skill acquisition
from which sport skills are broken into components that are assembled progres-
sively, and initially isolated from game play, to manage the information load on
players as learners (Light, 2013). Sometimes referred to as part-task training,
with more skill progressed players it involves practising game components be-
fore game performance (Davids, Kingsbury, Bennett and Handford, 2001). In
this conventional approach, game play often depends on players’ application,
aptitude and effort evident within the drill component of the training session
(Browne, Carlson and Hastie, 2004; Pill, 2014). The coach typically focusses
on technical development of optimal movement models colloquially referred
to as ‘techniques’ (Passos, Araújo, Davids and Shuttleworth, 2010; Gréhaigne,
Godbout and Zerai, 2011). Pigott (1982) referred to this as learning textbook
techniques. The practice environment is planned to decrease information loads
through decomposition of tasks into components (Davids, Araújo, Shuttleworth
and Button, 2003), which are then practised and rehearsed in situations without
26 Shane Pill
or with low contextual representation before practising the complete task in

context, i.e., game play (Davids, Renshaw and Glazier, 2005; Gopher, 2007). A
linear ‘technical to tactical’ progression is evident in this drill before play practice
design. Epistemology understanding is decomposition and linearity.
I suggest that the Game Sense coaching approach and the constraints-led
perspective connect through an alternative epistemology to the common/
conventional coaching approach, representation. Representation is the idea that
transfer from practice contexts to game day contexts best occurs when what is
done in training is like what players are faced with in the game (Worthington,
1974). I explain in this chapter that the Game Sense coaching pedagogy of con-
ditioning games through purposeful game rule modification and the constraints-
led perspective of deliberate activity design through constraints management
share the idea of manipulating relevant determining factors to guide players’
game development by representation. Both approaches aim to decrease the in-
formation load on players to assist learning while retaining the inherent logic of
the sport in designing games as practice tasks.
Game Sense Coaching: Purposeful Game Modification

The Game Sense approach to teaching and coaching games was launched in Aus-
tralia during 1996. The approach emphasised:
• Realistic contexts – the game or a game form becomes the focus of practical
sessions where skills can be practised in context
• Purposeful modification – games are modified to meet the ability of the
group and to purposefully guide players towards specific outcomes
• Purposeful use of questions – players are encouraged to take greater re-
sponsibility during play and discussions through guidance by questioning
by coaches
• Representation – games should be representative of the adult form
• Principles of play – games in the four game categories are recognised as hav-
ing common principles of play through game strategies, and player tactics
can be understood (principles of play are a dialogic tool to enable coaches to
generalise moments in play, both in and out of possession)
(Australian Sports Commission: ASC, 1996)
The equation for understanding skill development within a Game Sense approach
is Technique + Game Context = Skill (where game context refers to elements
such as decision-making, timing, space, position of players, etc; den Duyn,
1997a). Because skill is recognised as only able to be determined by performance
in the context of game play the Game Sense approach encourages coaches to uses
games as learning tools for purposefully tactical and technical skill development
outcomes.
Reconciling Approaches 27
Modifying games to emphasise tactical aspects of play are a key element of

using a Game Sense approach (den Duyn, 1997b). When using a Game Sense
approach and modifying games for an identified outcome, a coach pedagogically
uses representation of game form (ASC, 1996). Representation of ‘adult form’
of the game relies on the use of game modifications to shape and focus player
learning (ASC, 1996; Pill, 2014) in and through the game form with recognition
of the challenge point (Guadagnoli and Lee, 2004) of player ability matched to
the game form (ASC, 1996). In this way, games are simplified to meet the skill
development requirement of the game (Pill, 2014). Simplification expressed here
is the idea that different components of the game can be learned in unison when
tasks are reduced in demand on the player while retaining the internal logic
of the game (Gréhaigne, Richard and Griffin, 2005). Game modifications thus
create specific game conditions for specified patterns of game behaviour. From a
constructivist perspective, the game is an advanced organiser of information used
to assist players to learn and to retrieve information by making the information
meaningful and familiar because it is presented ‘in context’ (Pill and Hyndman,
2018).
Constraints-Led Perspective: Deliberate Activity Design

through Constraints Management
Constraints are described as the boundaries or features that influence system
expression by favouring the emergence of some features rather than others.
In a game context, player movement emerges under constraints which favour
functional states of goal directed behaviour over less functional states. A
constraints-led perspective favours discovery learning that is the exploration
of the performance constraints, where players “find and assemble their own
unique solutions to motor problems during exploratory practice” (Davids et al.,
2003, p. 32) in a practice context similar to the game performance context.
The coach management of task, performer and environment constraints occurs
to direct players’ exploration of effective motor solutions (Davids et al., 2003).
This means players perform their actions inside the boundaries created by the
constraints of the game system (Passos, Araújo, Davids and Shuttleworth, 2008).
Specific constraints lead to the formation of specific patterns of behaviour. Rep-
resentative task design is employed to sample the dynamics of the performance
context through a defined set of conditions that keep key sources of perceptual
information and actions together (Davids, Button, Araújo, Renshaw and Hris-
tovski, 2006).
Constraints are therefore postulated as determining the way players organ-
ise in a game. Designing a practice task in a constraints-led perspective means
designing an information-perception relationship between the players and the
game as a system environment. By acting within the system, the players per-
ceive opportunities for action (affordances) as they emerge from the dynamics
28 Shane Pill
TABLE 3.1 Pedagogies of a Game Sense approach and a constraints-led perspective
Realistic contexts Task simplification
Representation Representative task design

Purposeful modification of game Specific constraints manipulation
conditions
Purposeful use of questions Attentional focus using coach questioning
Understanding principles of play Attunement to principles of play
of the moment of play and organise a movement response. Thus, through the
task design it is suggested that practice environments educate player attention by
facilitating perceptual information and movement information coupling ( Jacobs
and Michaels, 2002; Pill, 2014).
In summary, the pedagogical principles of a constraints-led perspective are:
• Task simplification – scaled down versions of tasks are used to simplify the
information load on players to assist the process of information identification
and its coupling to movement behaviour
• Information-movement coupling – this occurs by specific constraints
manipulation
• Representative task design – action fidelity is maintained between the prac-
tice situation and one or all aspects of the performance context
• Attentional focus – attention is directed to an external focus or on the effect
of the action facilitated by exploratory learning using coach questioning and
session intentions as organisational constraints
• Principles of play – developing tasks that attune players to principles of play
(Davids, 2010; Passos et al., 2010; Pinder, Renshaw, Headrick and
Davids, 2014; Renshaw, Davids, Newcombe and Roberts, 2019;
Button, Seifert, Chow, Araújo and Davids, 2021)
Viewed through a Pedagogical Lens

A pedagogical lens on the above summary of the Game Sense approach and a
constraints-led perspective suggests that there exists a pedagogical familiarity
between the two approaches, but we must be mindful however that they are
‘back roomed’ by different theoretical positions. For me, the pedagogical fa-
miliarity lands on the idea that within both approaches, games are learnt by
design: In a Game Sense approach via purposeful game conditioning by modi-
fication of game rules and in a constraints-led perspective by specific constraints
manipulation. Both a Game Sense approach and a constraints-led perspective
consider contextual determinants of a game for a specific purpose. In a way,
constraints manipulation provides a heuristic for game modification in a Game
Sense approach.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Poems we all love
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Poems we all love
Compiler: Montrose L. Barnet
Release date: July 29, 2022 [eBook #68639]
Language: English
Original publication: United States: Acmegraph Company, 1911
Credits: Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS WE

ALL LOVE ***
Poems
we all
love
Collected by
Montrose L. Barnet
Published by
Acmegraph Company
Chicago
Copyright 1911
The Acmegraph Co.
Contents
Abou ben Adhem

"There are loyal hearts..."
Press On
Daffodils
Serenity
Onward
To Live
Concord Hymn
"Wouldst shape a noble life?"
"Though to-day may not fulfill"
At the End of all Desire
Judge Not
Be Strong?
"Who looks to heaven..."
Where Ignorance is Bliss
The Brave at Home
Love of Country
Fair Ines
"Be though the rainbow..."
Action
"Westward the star of empire..."
On the Prospect of Planting Arts and Learning in America
The Arrow and the Song
"The summer vanishes..."
Courage
"All is of God..."
Loss of the Royal George
Character
O, Captain! My Captain!
Forbearance
L'Envoi
"If you and I..."
Pippa's Song
Song
"The common problem..."
At Nightfall
"Ah, be not false"
"Let us love so well"
My Creed
Victory
A Prayer
A Psalm of Life
"High thoughts and noble in all lands"
"So I will trudge with heart elate"
Service
"Whichever way the wind doth blow"
Faith
The World Over
It's Raining Violets
Action
Clear the Way
"If you have gracious words to say"
How Sleep the Brave
Warren's Address
Worth
The Chambered Nautilus
"If I can stop one heart from breaking"
"He taught us"
The Task of Happiness
Three Kinds of Courage
Friendship
"O! joyous day! O! Smile of God"
Friends
"We just shake hands at meeting"
The Rosary of my Years
Mercy
Haste Not, Rest Not
Freedom
Character of a Happy Life
The Splendor Falls
Lead Kindly Light
The Rosary
The Spring of Love
Times go by Turns
Opportunity
"The star of the unconquered will"
Service
When the Birds go North Again
Balancing
"Believe not each accusing tongue"
The Inevitable
Sympathy
Come Good or Evil
"Then let us smile..."
Resolve
The Sluggard
Crossing the Bar
Young and Old
"Yes, they whose feet..."
When in Disgrace
"But in the mud..."
Mizpah
Twenty Years Ago
"'Tis not the weight of jewel or plate..."
Introduction
The poems contained in this volume have been carefully selected from
the vast storehouse of poetical works, and comprise only those that I feel
will be helpful and pleasure-giving. The poetical gems contained herein are
teeming with life and inspiration and will touch a responsive chord in all
who may read them. It is hoped that this book may become a "ready
reference" volume that will be found pleasurable in times of joy, and
strengthening in the vicissitudes of daily life. Each poem is selected with
the idea of lifting us out of the commonplace—up to the plane of higher and
better living. This uplifting influence, combined with the inspiration that
comes only from such a source, will make us better and happier men and
women. Many of these poems have long been the "favorites" of the lovers
of poetry, and it is the hope of the editor that these masterpieces of the poets
may be brought within easy reach of all—without necessitating a reference
to large and cumbersome volumes.
I hope that this book may be found by many a fountain of inspiration and
exalted pleasure—a means of sweetening solitude or animating friendly
intercourse. May it be a companion of good and beautiful thoughts that will
teach us to love and appreciate with enduring life—these our poets—who
have given us their best, that we thereby might be strengthened, encouraged
and beautified.
—M.L.B.
ABOU BEN ADHEM
Abou ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)

Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold:
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold:
And to the presence in the room he said,
"What writest thou?" The vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."
"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so,"
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerily still, and said, "I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men."
The angel wrote and vanished. The next night

It came again, with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blest,
And, lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.
—Leigh Hunt
"There are loyal hearts, there are spirits brave,

There are souls that are pure and true;
Then give to the world the best you have,
And the best will come to you.
Give love, and love to your heart will flow,
A strength in your utmost need;
Have faith, and a score of hearts will show
Their faith in your word and deed."
"It is easy enough to be pleasant

When life flows by like a song,
But the man worth while is the man who will smile
When everything goes dead wrong;
For the test of the heart is trouble,
And it always comes with the years,
And the smile that comes with the praise of earth
Is the smile that shines through tears."
PRESS ON
Press on! Surmount the rocky steeps,
Climb boldly o'er the torrent's arch;
He fails alone who feebly creeps,
He wins who dares the hero's march.
Be thou a hero! Let thy might
Tramp on eternal snows its way,
And through the ebon walls of night
Hew down a passage unto day.
Press on! If once and twice thy feet

Slip back and stumble, harder try;
From him who never dreads to meet
Danger and death they're sure to fly.
To coward ranks the bullet speeds,
While on their breasts who never quail,
Gleams, guardian of chivalric deeds,
Bright courage like a coat of mail.
Press on! If Fortune play thee false

To-day, to-morrow she'll be true;
Whom now she sinks she now exalts,
Taking old gifts and granting new,
The wisdom of the present hour
Makes up the follies past and gone;
To weakness strength succeeds, and power
From frailty springs! Press on, press on!
—Park Benjamin.
DAFFODILS
I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host of golden daffodils,
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay;
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced, but they

Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company;
I gazed, and gazed, but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
—William Wordsworth.
SERENITY
Here's a sigh to those who love me

And a smile to those who hate;
And whatever sky's above me,
Here's a heart for every fate.
—Lord Byron.
ONWARD
We are living, we are dwelling,

In a grand and awful time,
In an age on ages telling
To be living is sublime.
Hark! the waking up of nations,
Gog and Magog to the fray.
Hark! what soundeth is creation
Groaning for its latter day.
Will ye play then, will ye dally

With your music and your wine?
Up! it is Jehovah's rally!
God's own arm hath need of thine.
Hark! the onset! will ye fold your
Faith-clad arms in lazy lock?
Up, oh up, thou drowsy soldier!
Worlds are charging to the shock.
Worlds are charging—heaven beholding;

Thou hast but an hour to fight;
Now the blazoned cross unfolding,
On—right onward for the right.
On! let all the soul within you
For the truth's sake go abroad!
Strike! let every nerve and sinew
Tell on ages—tell for God.
—Arthur Cleveland Coxe.
TO LIVE
To live, that when thy summons comes to join

The innumerable caravan that moves
To that mysterious realm where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go, not like the quarry slave at night
Scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust; approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
—William Cullen Bryant.
CONCORD HYMN
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
The foe long since in silence slept;

Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.
On the green bank, by this soft stream,

We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit, that made those heroes dare

To die, or leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Wouldst share a noble life? Then cast

No backward glances toward the past,
And though somewhat be lost and gone,
Yet do thou act as one new-born;
What each day needs, that shalt thou ask.
Each day will set its proper task.
—Goethe.
Though to-day may not fulfill

All thy hopes, have patience still;
For perchance to-morrow's sun
Sees thy happier day begun.
—P. Gerhardt.
AT THE END OF ALL DESIRE
I am tired of tears and laughter,

And men that laugh and weep;
Of what may come hereafter,
For men that sow to reap:
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers,
And everything but sleep.
We are not sure of sorrow,

And joy was never sure;
To-day will die to-morrow;
Time stoops to no man's lure;
And love, grown faint and fretful,
With lips but half regretful,
Sighs, and with eyes forgetful,
Weeps that no loves endure.
From too much love of living,

From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives forever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere to the sea.
—Swinburne.
JUDGE NOT
Judge not! the workings of his brain

And of his heart thou canst not see;
What looks to thy dim eyes a stain,
In God's pure light may only be
A scar, brought from some well won field,
Where thou wouldst only faint and yield.
The look, the air, that frets thy sight

May be a token, that below
The soul has closed in deadly fight
With some infernal fiery foe.
Whose glance would scorch thy smiling grace,
And cast thee shuddering on thy face.
The fall thou darest to despise—

May be the angel's slackened hand
Has suffered it, that he may rise
And take a firmer, surer stand;
Or, trusting less to earthly things,
May henceforth learn to use his wings.
And judge none lost; but wait and see,

With hopeful pity, not disdain;
The depth of the abyss may be
The measure of the height and pain
And love and glory that may raise
This soul to God in after days!
—Adelaide A. Proctor.
BE STRONG?
Be strong!
We are not here to play, to dream, to drift;
We have hard work to do, and loads to lift;
Shun not the struggle—face it! 'tis God's gift.
Be strong!
Say not, "The days are evil. Who's to blame?"
And fold the hands and acquiesce—oh shame!
Stand up, speak out, and bravely, in God's name.
Be strong!
It matters not how deep intrenched the wrong,
How hard the battle goes, the day how long;
Faint not—fight on! To-morrow comes the song.
—Maltbie Davenport Babcock.
Who looks to heaven alone to save his soul

May keep the path, but will not reach the goal:
But he who walks in love may wander far,
And God will bring him where the blessed are.
—Henry Van Dyke.
WHERE IGNORANCE IS BLISS
To each his sufferings: all are men,

Condemned alike to groan;
The tender for another's pain,
The unfeeling for his own.
Yet, ah, why should they know their fate
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies?
Thought would destroy their paradise!
No more—where ignorance is bliss
'Tis folly to be wise. —Thomas Gray.
THE BRAVE AT HOME
The maid who binds her warrior's sash

With smile that all her pain dissembles,
The while beneath her drooping lash
One starry tear-drop hangs and trembles,
Though heaven alone records the tear,
And Fame shall never know her story,
Her heart has shed a drop as dear
As e'er bedewed the field of glory.
The wife who girds her husband's sword,

'Mid little ones who weep or wonder,
And bravely speaks the cheering word,
What though her heart be rent asunder,
Doomed nightly in her dreams to hear
The bolts of death around him rattle,
Has shed as sacred blood as e'er
Was poured upon the field of battle.
The mother who conceals her grief

While to her breast her son she presses,
Then breathes a few brave words and brief,
Kissing the patriot brow she blesses,
With no one but her secret God
To know the pain that weighs upon her,
Sheds holy blood as e'er the sod
Received on Freedom's field of honor.
—Thomas Buchanan Read.
LOVE OF COUNTRY

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Game Sense For Teaching and Coaching International Perspectives 1St Edition Richard Light Online Ebook Texxtbook Full Chapter PDF

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Game Sense for Teaching and

Coaching International Perspectives 1st

International Perspectives on CLIL (International

Making Sense of Mathematics for Teaching the Small

Making Sense of Mathematics for Teaching Grades K 2 1st

Perspectives on Athlete Centred Coaching 1st Edition

International Perspectives on Teaching with Disability

Creativities in Arts Education Research and Practice

Making Sense of Mathematics for Teaching to Inform

Bounding for Light A Children s Poetry Anthology 1st

Sport coaching has grown significantly as an area of research interest, with an

Richard L. Light is author of Game Sense: Pedagogy for participation performance

ISBN: 978-0-367-67499-1 (hbk)

1 Game Sense: Its History, Development and Future 4

2 Holism and Humanism: The Philosophical Foundations of

3 Reconciling Approaches: Informing Game Sense Coaching

4 The Body and Learning through Game Sense 35

5 Game Sense, Culture and Learning: A Focus on Asia 47

6 The Influence of Context on Teachers’ and Coaches’

7 The Influence of Games and Culture on Indigenous

8 Adapting a Game Sense Approach to Coaching Rugby in Chile 75

9 Ako and Indigenous Athletes: Kaupapa Māori Principles

10 Teaching Decision-Making and Creativity as a Vital Issue

11 A Bigger Picture: Aligning Game Sense with Curriculum

12 Discovering Game Shape through Cooperative Team

13 English and Australian Teachers’ Interpretation and

14 What Do Children Learn from the Game? A Study of

15 Applied Game Sense and Positive Pedagogy in High

16 The Utility of Game Sense for PE Teachers, Sport Coaches

17 Implementing TGf U in an Australian Independent School:

18 The Use of Coaching Pods for Coach Education in

19 What’s in a Name? The Influence of Game Sense on a

20 From the Games Concept Approach to Game Sense to

21 Learning from Adaptation Games in a Japanese Basketball Unit 214

Concluding Thoughts: Game Sense for Teaching and

3.1 An AFL small-sided Game Sense game. Starting positions for

3.1 Pedagogies of a Game Sense approach and a constraints-led

Bianca C. de Aguiar, PhD, completed a PhD at the University of Canterbury,

Hisataka Ambe, PhD, is an associate professor at Hokkaido University of Educa-

Jackie Cowan is a senior lecturer in Sport and Physical Education Curriculum

John R. Evans, PhD, is professor of Indigenous Health Education at the Uni-

education in Indigenous communities. John has a background in elite sport as

Jeremy Hapeta, PhD, is Physical Education Lecturer and Research Develop-

Kendall Jarrett, PhD, is a lecturer in Academic Practice at the University of

research, science of training, team sports research and research methodology. He

Amy L. Light is undertaking an honours year in philosophy at The University

Steve Mitchell, PhD, is an Associate Dean at Kent State University in Ohio,

Koji Murase works in the Faculty of Education at Wakayama University, Japan.

Ricardo Pimenta, PhD, completed a PhD at the University of Canterbury on

School of Sport Sciences of Waseda University, Japan. He is currently looking

Mohammad Shah Razak, PhD, completed a PhD at the University of Canter-

Nawata Ryota, PhD, is an assistant professor at Aichi University of Education,

Graham H. Smith (CNZM) is an internationally recognised academic researcher

Kazunari Suzuki, PhD, is an associate professor at Aichi University of Education,

Junpei Yamashita is an assistant professor at Aichi University of Education,

On a global scale, Game Sense is one of the more recognized athlete-centred

Aims of the Book

The Idea of Game-Based Learning

The Development of Game Sense

Game Sense for Sport Coaching

Game Sense for Physical Education

is also a little different to the influence of the contemporary version of TGf U.

The Future of Game Sense

TABLE 3.1 Pedagogies of a Game Sense approach and a constraints-led perspective