Relations Between Nonlinear Pedagogy and Games-Based Teaching Approaches

This is a chapter from the 2nd Edition of the Non-Linear Pedagogy that was released at the start of the year. The first edition was an amazing book that had a massive influence on my coaching. I've only read a few chapters in the new edition but it's been amazing so far.  I've left a link at the bottom

Here are my detailed notes on the chapter

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Relations between a NLP and a Games Based Approach

🚀 Chapter in 3 Sentences

1. Looks at the TSA and the GBA and gives reasons why the approaches are used. It highlights the differences and some important things to take into consideration about the two approaches. 

2. The chapter then looks at how we can effectively teach using NLP. They then look at the concept of Principles of Play and how use them when teaching

3. The chapter finishes by discussing what we need to take into consideration when designing games programmes for players

🤝Impressions

This was a brilliant chapter that really influenced my teaching and coaching. It summarises the differences between approaches at the start very nicely and goes some very good insights into practice design. The concept of ‘’Principles of Play’ is really important and this was the best resource I have seen for this

🎾How Article will influence my coaching

- I can relate to the fact that things like behaviour issues can play a big part in the way I teach. But then if the way I'm teaching is more TSA is that why the behaviour issues are occurring?

- My schemes for teaching will be based around key principles of play rather than focusing on a particular ‘skill’ every week. This learning will be more likely to transfer to other games that have similar principles of play.

- Initial practice is all about giving the players a chance to ‘educate their intentions’ to the overall goal or intention of the game. This could be scoring more than opposition

- Overall goal of teaching/coaching is helping young learners to become more intelligent performers who can effectively utilise their skills in context

- It's important that coaches starting out with NLP are given guidance an support when first starting out.

- The principles of play are based around the basic requirements to win the game. The coach will need a good knowledge of the game to design sessions around the principles.

- In tennis all our actions are based on "how can I manoeuvre my opponent(s) around the court to enable me to hit a winner or force an error?’. The principles of the game in tennis are all going to be based around this question.

- The attacking and defensive concepts are two sides of the same coin. A key point around principles are that they 'exist together' (see Rob Gray ep 335). Attack and defence need to be trained together.

- We should start with activities that work on improving an individual's relationship with their environment before moving onto developing their ability to coordinate their movements with others.

- With task simplification you need to have a good knowledge of what successful performance in the sport is underpinned by. You then 'create' the slices of the games in an accessible way for the players

- The sessions intentions are a very important factor when designing it. These will

- Starting with lots of work on helping the individual engage better with the problems before moving on to how they can engage with others. Lots of chances to explore in 1 vs 1 etc.

- A key factor is how we assess our students. How we does do from an Ecological Dynamics perspective will be a lot different.

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🥇Top Quotes

💡 The overarching strategies that are used to achieve these goals are known as the principles of play and are the theoretical ideas that need to be put into practice to achieve the goals irrespective of the strengths and weaknesses of any opponents ( Ward & Griggs, 2011) . 

💡 In games, we suggest that intelligent play occurs when we see individuals and teams demonstrate effective implementation of the principles of play in attack and defence, when observable behaviour has clearly taken individual and collective abilities into account when choosing the ‘solution’ ...In essence, the tactics adopted would be based on what I or we can do in relation to what you or they can do. However, intelligent actions would also need to take into consideration the situational task constraints (e.g., the time left in the game and the score) in interaction with environmental conditions (e.g., surface, wind)

💡 From the perspective of the teacher or coach, judging intelligent performance is therefore predicated on ‘knowing’ the individual’s action capabilities and needs to take place by observing the individual in appropriately designed games, that is, ones that have purpose and consequence and beyond drills designed to develop perfect technique that ‘looks good’.

💡 It is only through playing games that players can learn to attune to one’s own action capabilities, such as how far they can pass a ball, and learn to recognise the opportunities provided by the movements and action capabilities of teammates and/ or opponents. 

💡 Practice needs to allow learners to initially ‘educate intentions’ and ‘attention’ through exploration and then exploitation of affordances to execute solutions to the problem they have been set ( Button et al., 2020) 

💡 teachers can systematically construct games programmes that are built on the principles and ideas of Nonlinear Pedagogy implemented through adopting practices that focus on intentions, purpose and consequences, representative learning design and repetition without repetition (Renshaw et al., 2019 ). 

Here's a link to the book. 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nonlinear-Pedagogy-Skill-Acquisition-Introduction-ebook/dp/B09ML3S9FS/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?crid=39BGRFDI4P4J5&keywords=non-linear+pedagogy&qid=1650645410&sprefix=non-linear+pedagogy%2Caps%2C190&sr=8-2

Reference

Chow, J. Y., Davids, K., Button, C., & Renshaw, I. (2022). *Nonlinear Pedagogy in Skill Acquisition: An Introduction*. Routledge.