Why the Constraints-Led Approach is not Teaching Games for Understanding: A Clarification

Renshaw, Duarte Araujo, Chris Button, Jia Yi Chow, Keith Davids, and Brendan Moy

The Big Idea

First off, let’s set the context for this commentary paper.  As is the norm in most any profession, there are both historical and continuing aspects to its practice.  In the profession of teaching physical education, such is the case.  Two of the more popular approaches are Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) and the Constraints-Led Approach (CLA).

Of the two, TGfU is older, having its origins in the 1960s.  TGfU is a learner-centered approach to teaching games.  The teacher’s role is to design modified games with the goal of developing the student’s understanding and appreciation of tactical strategies.

CLA, on the other hand, evolved out of the more recent 21^st Century practices of nonlinear pedagogy (NLP), itself arising out of the ecological dynamics movement.  It, too, is learner-based.  But in designing a learning environment, CLA is much broader in scope.  By way of it, practitioners are invited to identify and modify interacting constraints, such as task, environment, and learner.  This approach has been adapted for re-learning environments in PE, sport, and movement therapy.

As our PDP reader might imagine, this commentary is designed to do a few things.  Its intent is to review the differing histories of these approaches to PE, to note the similarities and differences between them, and to point the way for continuing the empirical research on possible complementary ways these two approaches are juxtaposed pedagogical dimensions of learning design.

But most importantly, this paper challenges the claim that TGfU and CLA are one and the same approaches.  This misconception is found in the growing body of research literature.  The primary aim of this commentary, then, is to sustain the harmonious intents of each approach, while at the same time demonstrate how unlike they are with regard to breadth of impact: “. . . while TGfU is essentially a games-based model, the CLA has the capacity to be more than ‘just’ a games-based model.”  While the TGfU model (and its Southern Hemisphere sport-coaching Game Sense derivative) has developed as an operational practice for physical education teachers, these authors argue that CLA is a theoretically grounded approach to skill acquisition and motor learning that crosses into exercise, health, physical education, physical activities, and sport performance.

Takeaways

• There are two popular pedagogical frameworks within the profession of physical education: Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) and the Constraints-Led Approach (CLA).
• These approaches are in the same family, but are from different generations.
• And while harmonious, these approaches do differ—they are not identical.
• Their similarities are that they are both holistic, learner-based, and are relatively “hands-off” from the standpoint of the teacher or coach.
• TGfU arose through the work of practitioners, whereas CLA is theoretically based.
• TGfU depends on learning through modified small-game lessons, whereas CLA functions under the umbrella of non-linear pedagogy (NLP), which itself functions under the theoretical framework of ecological dynamics.
• The CLA is a broader-framed approach using modifications of interacting constraints (such as task and environment); whereas TGfU is linear, progressive, and procedural.
• And yet they are in harmony given their emphasis on the learner, not the teacher.
• The concluding clarification suggests that TGfU can be considerably improved if it were to rely more on the deeper footprint of CLA with regard to its empirical model of the learner and the dynamic learning process.

The Research

Key similarities between TGfU and CLA

Before these authors actually discuss the key similarities between these two approaches to learning, the interested PDP reader will benefit from looking over their detailed discussion of the histories of TGfU and CLA.  We have excluded these histories in this review chiefly because of their length.  But it is easy to see from their histories that the two are seriously family-related, but remarkably different generations of pedagogy.

Here are some of the similarities between TGfU and CLA in terms of their family resemblances.  For the sake of space if not clarity, this brief outline touches on these resemblances.

• Holistic skill acquisition
  • Both holistically engage learners on physical, cognitive, and emotional levels.
  • Both use task simplification to guide discovery.
  • Both use appropriate solutions in self-organizing which is based on constraints (rule changes, pitch sizes) introduced by the teacher.
  • Both therefore strive to capture discovery learning.
  • Both have also been criticized for the longer times for success to be seen and verified.
• Individual differences
  • Both focus on matching task demands to the capabilities of the learner.
  • This means that both models focus on individual differences, for all learners.
  • Both are faced with the challenge of serving all levels of ability and interest in the same lesson.
  • While both do focus on the individual learner, NLP is based on ecological dynamics and hence is a learner-environment-centered approach, not a learner-only-centered approach.
• Role of the teacher
  • For both, the role of the teacher is to facilitate discovery.
  • Students are expected to explore and take responsibility for their learning.
  • In this sense, the games act as the teacher since the teaching is “hands-off.”
  • Yet both approaches demand much more of the teacher who is now responsible for designing effective self-directed/organizing learning environments.
  • Both, therefore, build in a feeling by the teacher of being in less control during the interactions.
  • In addition, both are plagued by the predicament of designing “new” teaching approaches that might be inconsistent with standardized PE syllabus teaching content and expectations.

Key differences between TGfU and the CLA

• Pedagogical principles based on motor learning theory
  • TGfU pedagogy was not initially based on theoretically derived motor learning principles even though its practices are supported by many motor learning principles.
  • CLA is based on NLP key pedagogical principles which in turn are based on multi-disciplinary theories (from such sciences as dynamic systems, ecological psychology, complexity sciences, evolutionary biology, and non-linear physics).
• Goals
  • The goals for TGfU include both opportunities to learn games for intrinsic motivation toward continued success, and for getting better at playing the games.
  • TGfU goals therefore are declarative and procedural.
  • For CLA, the primary aim is to achieve the task outcome goal, including acquiring knowledge of a performance environment vs. knowledge about a performance environment.
• Explaining learning
  • For TGfU, the aim is to improve performance through changing, constructing, or enriching knowledge structures or cognition with the understanding located in the mind (or brain).
  • For CLA, the aim is to change or adapt the nature of the learner-environment system; in other words, to improve the quality of the individual—environment system, as the environment changes so too does the learning.
• Use of questioning as a pedagogical tool
  • In TGfU, the aim is to let the game pose the question and be the teacher.
  • In CLA, the verbal approach (or non-verbal) is just one of many constraints to trigger learning. Reflection is but one way to constrain emergent learning behaviors.
• Use of progressions
  • TGfU is progressive, linear-like and cyclical. The teacher makes modifications to the starter game.
  • CLA, on the other hand, is based on a three-stage model of learning with different perceptual-motor learning rates:
    • Searching requires exploring degrees of freedom and intentions to achieve a task goal.
    • Discovering demands exploring task solutions and strengthening them.
    • Exploiting deepens perceptual-motor degrees of freedom.
  • Development of individual and group synergies
    • Even though both approaches empower learners to actively explore, TGfU is better at games play than CLA because it emphasizes generic tactical concepts.
    • But CLA is better on energizing synergies within and between individual learners, thereby helping them devise more functional performance solutions.

The upshot of the comparisons between TGfU and CLA

So, what is the overall conclusion of the comparisons between TGfU and CLA?  Somewhere along this comparison one researcher claimed that the perfect TGfU lesson would exclude any verbal communication, and instead would be realized by the lessons of playing the game itself.  But, as this researcher continues, “in reality, our games are not well enough designed to allow this to happen and we need to supplement our teaching with questioning.”

The conclusion of this comparison between approaches to teaching and coaching games is based on this predicament.  That is, the concluding section of this clarification paper suggests that basing TGfU lesson designs on the basic principles of Nonlinear Pedagogy (NLP) (and hence, CLA) could lead to the construction of more effective games.  Accordingly, they retrieve five aspects of answering this question:  Does TGfU work?  They do this by using the perceived five most-critical challenges in the TGfU approach.

• When can we play a game? Both CLA and TGfU use small-sided and conditioned games to facilitate improved perception-action development.  It is best for TGfU approaches to also follow key learning principles consistent with NLP.  For example, to better learn the technical skill of travelling with a ball in invasion games, a teacher or coach could design specific 1 vs. 1 sub-phases within the context of a 4 vs. 4 team game using artificial rules as task constraints.
• The failure to meet and enhance intrinsic interest of children for playing games and not exploiting this intrinsic motivation. The teacher or coach can design small-sided and conditioned games that meet the psychological needs of each class member, such as competence, relatedness, and autonomy.  That way it is more likely that all class members will be self-determined and intrinsically motivated.
• Traditional lessons are failing both less and most able players. The teacher or coach can design a wide variety of skill-related tasks to allow players to self-select the tasks most related to the skill levels.  There are nearly unlimited ways tasks can be designed and modified to include the range of class member interests and abilities.  Changing up the constraints (equipment, pitch size, player number, rules) can be incredibly useful in challenging all class members to succeed no matter their diverse abilities or interests.
• Missing the entire element of perception and decision-making. To better couple perception and action, teachers and coaches can create useful and real simulations to game situations.  For example, “by facing real bowlers in simulated game scenarios, cricket batters can learn to make decisions to solve game-based problems using appropriate information-movement patterns, rather than inappropriate ones acquired by playing against ball projection machines.”
• Coach/Teacher dependency. Above all, with both approaches (TGfU and CLA), using representative game forms is imperative.  This “hands-off” design is to a great extent the difference between these two approaches (that they are learner-based) and other approaches are primarily teacher/coach-based.   The learner is better off being an “empowered collaborator” during practices and other learning opportunities.  What makes this approach create a class member less reliant on the teacher or coach, however, is the extent to which the learner has confidence that the “other collaborator” (teacher/coach) thoroughly understands the game itself.