Once more with feeling: affect and playing with the TGfU model

Abstract

Certainly, the process of decision-making and problem-solving in a shifting playing environment lies at the core of the Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) model. What is not clear is how, at the time of decision-making, players' feelings or affective factors and their subsequent influence on thinking, influence these processes. Affect has a number of constitutive elements, namely feeling, choice, emotion and preference. More importantly affect is linked inseparably to cognition and because it functions simultaneously with cognitive and psychomotor learning experiences, its integrated nature can often seem affect ignored or underrepresented in educational literature. While the TGfU model has achieved almost axiomatic status in the field of sport pedagogy, relatively few modifications or refinements have been suggested. Like any model, TGfU is a tool for thought, an invitation to try new ideas, propose new arguments, offer alternative dimensions. Perhaps most importantly, it can advance our understanding of student learning in sport or physical education contexts. TGfU cannot, and should not, be reduced to tactical or cognitive competence. TGfU has the potential to confirm the humanness of physical education and sport through the ways in which it highlights human interaction and the affective dimensions of games. While the intellectual aspects of learning in TGfU are important we must not neglect other features of learning and achievement, including affect, as important aspects of humanness.