The Tactical Games Model and Game Performance Assessment

Abstract

Games remain a large part of most physical education curriculums and, as noted elsewhere in this book, it is 40 years since Bunker and Thorpe (1982) first introduced the constructivist approach to games teaching known as Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU). TGfU was the first Game-Based Approach (GBA), but several differing perspectives on the original approach emerged as TGfU was disseminated globally. One such perspective was our own work in developing what we called the Tactical Games Model (Mitchell et al., 2021). We have two aims in this chapter. First, we describe our thought processes as we sought to develop our own perspective on the original TGfU model. We proposed that ‘tactical frameworks’ could be developed for each game or game category (Almond, 1986). A tactical framework provides a process for breaking down the tactical components of gameplay so that scope and sequence (i.e., levels of tactical complexity) of instructional content can be planned. We describe and provide examples of this process. Our second aim is to outline our efforts to provide assessment tools for teachers. We recognised early in our work that instrumentation for measuring game performance was inadequate. Available instruments focused primarily on the observation and assessment of technical performance, while ignoring key tactical aspects of game performance such as decision-making and off-the-ball movement. Our goal was to develop a Game Performance Assessment Instrument (GPAI) that would yield data reflecting the entirety of game performance.