Game Sense Research Articles

‘Teeing’ Up Games for Understanding (TUGfU): a golf coach’s perception and application of a game-based approach

ABSTRACT Despite the global appeal of game-based approaches (e.g. Teaching Games for Understanding, Game Sense), there is a notable lack of evidence regarding target sport coaches’ perceptions and applications of these pedagogies. Using multiple qualitative methods including semi-structured interviews, video observations, coaching plans, reflections and visual images, this qualitative case study investigates a golf coach’s (i.e. David) perception and application of a game-based approach. Through qualitative content analysis, four overarching themes were developed concerning David’s perception and application of a game-based approach: 1. Biographical context; 2. Technical skill focus integrated with tactical concepts; 3. Pedagogic strategies to support learning; and 4. The joy of a game-based approach. The findings, presented as a narrative, indicate that while certain pedagogical features commonly associated with traditional game-based approaches were evident—such as the use of modified games to enhance understanding and skill development—others, like effective questioning, were less prominent. Nevertheless, the narrative suggests that David’s adept application of the GBA cultivated a positive and joyful learning environment. His ability to adapt the approach fostered enjoyment not only for his learners but also for himself as an educator. This highlights the potential of a well-executed game-based approach to create a fulfilling educational experience in the context of target sports.

Middle School Mathematics Teachers' Views on The Concept of Mathematical Game

In this study, the views of middle school mathematics teachers on the concept of mathematical games were investigated. The participants of the study consisted of 13 middle school mathematics teachers. Phenomenology, one of the qualitative research methods, was used in the study. Interviews were used for the collection of data. The data were analyzed through content analysis. As a result of the research, the teachers mostly used the expressions instructive and fun in their definitions of mathematical games. It was found that the participants explained the relationship between mathematics and games with the presence of mathematics in games and mathematics making sense of games. It was observed that teachers used mathematical games for cognitive/academic and affective purposes. In terms of the benefits of mathematical games, the focus was on the benefits for the subject, the student and the teacher. Similarly, it was emphasized that mathematical games have various effects on students' learning, attitudes toward the lesson, personal development and social development. However, it was determined that teachers experienced various difficulties during the game design/planning and teaching process.

‘That’s how we all learn to get along’ – learning in and through ball games in Swedish Physical Education and Health

ABSTRACT Ball games are common content in school physical education and health (PEH), particularly in Sweden. However, criticism has been directed at ball games for focusing too much on performance and competition. In this paper, we explore the learning that occurs in ball games beyond subject-specific knowledge and skills. Data was generated through observations and interviews with four different PEH classes at an upper-secondary school in southern Sweden. Data analysis was based on Uljens’ (2023. Non-affirmative Theory of Education and Bildung (1st ed.). Springer International Publishing.) non-affirmative theory. The findings show that the students learn both subject-specific (e.g. sport techniques, skills, rules and game sense) and generic knowledge and skills (e.g. cooperation, care and providing equal opportunities for everyone) in and through ball games. The findings further draw attention to how more students participate in and learn from ball games when performance and competition is not in focus and when forms of ball games that are less known to the students are used. To conclude, the paper argues that the learning objectives in ball games need to be re-articulated to focus more on the important generic knowledge and skills that students can learn from this PEH content.

Exploring the embodied experiences of social relationships in physical education

ABSTRACT There is a need for new pedagogies in physical education that emphasise embodied learning experiences and meaningfulness [Ennis, C. D. (2017). Educating students for a lifetime of physical activity: Enhancing mindfulness, motivation, and meaning. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 88(3), 241–250; Kretchmar, R. S. (2008). The increasing utility of elementary school physical education: A mixed blessing and unique challenge. The Elementary School Journal, 108(3), 161–170; Lambert, K. (2020). Re-conceptualizing embodied pedagogies in physical education by creating pre-text vignettes to trigger pleasure ‘in’ movement. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 25(2), 154–173; Rintala, J. (2009). It's all about the –ing. Quest, 61(3), 278–288]. Social interaction is considered an integral feature of meaningful physical education [Beni, S., Fletcher, T., & Ní Chróinín, D. (2017). Meaningful experiences in physical education and youth sport: A review of the literature. Quest, 69(3), 291–312]. Previous research shows that various pedagogies of embodiment may contribute to enhancing positive social interaction [Azzarito, L., & Ennis, C. D. (2003). A sense of connection: Toward social constructivist physical education. Sport, Education and Society, 8(2), 179–197; Light, R. (2013). Positive Pedagogy for physical education and sport: Game Sense as an example. In R. Light, J. Quay, S. Harvey, & A. Mooney (Eds.), Contemporary developments in games teaching (pp. 29–42). Routledge]. This study explores pupils’ embodied experiences of social relationships in physical education. We aim to inform and further develop existing pedagogies of embodiment by expanding the knowledge about how intersubjectivity and sociality are experienced, and how these experiences affect the pupils’ movement exploration and enable them to value physical activity. By interpreting findings from a sensory ethnographic fieldwork in a tenth-grade class in Oslo, Norway, we show how pupils’ embodied experiences of social relationships revolve around establishing, confirming, maintaining, and questioning their sense of belonging to the social 'we'.

The Effect of Pedagogical Approach on Physical Activity of Girls During Physical Education

ABSTRACT Purpose: Technical approaches (TAs) such as Direct Instruction are commonly utilized when teaching games in Physical Education (PE) classes, but game-based approaches (GBAs) such as Game Sense (GS) have gained greater interest over the past 30 years. However, little is known about which approach promotes more physical activity (PA). The aim of this study was to compare the PA of girls during single-gender PE classes in an invasion games unit utilizing either a GS approach or a TA. Methods: Two upper primary school PE classes were taught invasion games using a GS approach and two classes were taught using a TA. During each of the 7 lessons students wore a wearable GPS sensor (SPT2, Sport Performance Tracking, Australia) which measured total distance, distance in each speed zone, top speed and 3D load. Results: The GS group traveled a greater distance than the TA group (+203 m, p < .001). This result was explained mostly by a greater distance covered in zone 2 speeds (0.6–1.7 m/s). The 3D load was also significantly higher in the GS group, but there were no group differences in top speed. Conclusions: Findings suggested that a GS thematic invasion unit was more effective in promoting PA levels in all-girl primary PE classes than a traditional sport-based invasion unit.

An Empirical Framework for Understanding a Player’s Sense of Agency in Games

This study investigates players’ sense of control over a game, referred to as the sense of agency (SoA). While prior research has addressed the importance of control in game interactions, understanding the factors that constitute players’ SoA remains limited. Using a mixed methods approach, we conducted interviews (n = 18) and surveys (n = 654) to gain qualitative and quantitative insights into this unique perceptual phenomenon. Multidimensional scaling analysis revealed a two-dimensional space comprising five clusters that shape players’ SoA. We then developed and tested a 12-item Game Sense of Agency questionnaire which, through exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, measures four factors: Multisensory Presentation, Feedback Reasoning, Virtual Realism and Control Smoothness. This research identifies the multifaceted nature of players’ SoA and offers practical suggestions for how it could be measured. The outcomes contribute an empirically-driven framework for understanding and evaluating the factors that influence players’ SoA in games.

The Geometry of Causality: Multi-token Geometry of Interaction and Its Causal Unfolding

We introduce a multi-token machine for Idealized Parallel Algol (IPA), a higher-order concurrent programming language with shared state and semaphores. Our machine takes the shape of a compositional interpretation of terms as Petri structures, certain coloured Petri nets. For the purely functional fragment of IPA, our machine is conceptually close to Geometry of Interaction token machines, originating from Linear Logic and presenting higher-order computation as the low-level process of a token walking through a graph (a proof net) representing the term. We combine here these ideas with folklore ideas on the representation of first-order imperative concurrent programs as coloured Petri nets. To prove our machine computationally adequate with respect to the reference operational semantics, we follow game semantics and represent types as certain games specifying dependencies and conflict between computational events. Petri strategies are those Petri structures obeying the rules of the game extracted from the type. We show how Petri strategies unfold to concurrent strategies in the sense of concurrent games on event structures. This link with concurrent strategies not only allows us to prove adequacy of our machine, but also lets us generate operationally a causal description of the behaviour of programs at higher-order types, which is shown to coincide with that given denotationally by the interpretation in concurrent games.

Principal-agent problem with multiple principals

We consider a moral hazard problem with multiple principals in a continuous-time model. The agent can only work exclusively for one principal at a given time, so faces an optimal switching problem. Using a randomized formulation and techniques from the theory of backward SDEs, we manage to represent the agent's value function and his optimal effort by an Itô process. This representation further helps to solve the principals' problem in case we have infinite number of principals in the sense of mean field game. Finally, to justify the mean field formulation, we develop the so-called backward propagation of chaos, which may carry independent interest itself.

Implementation of the concept of "game space" in the socio-cultural and linguistic picture of the world of the English ethnic group

The article deals with the ways of representing the basic concepts of the English ethnic group in English. As a kind of hyper-concept, the concept of "playing space" is analyzed, which includes the concepts of "space" and "game". The authors of the article rely on conceptual and semantic analysis, based on the development of the structural components of the "play space" hyperconcept, which are its core, representing the base layer, and the peripheral zone, which actualizes the interpretation of the concept. The hyperconcept "playing space" is formed from the concepts "space" and "game", while from the base layer of the concept "space" such concepts of the synonymous series as 'field' and 'space' can be distinguished as key ones. Further, using the semes "personal space" and "playing field", it becomes possible to isolate the concept of "game" ("player"), which is fundamentally significant for the English mentality, presenting it as defining the main ethnic and socio-cultural attitudes of the English ethnic group. Based on the analysis of the hyper-concept under consideration and its components, which are "space" and "game", we can conclude that the spatial sense of English culture is associated primarily with ideas about the playing field, the playing field, not only in the sports and actual game sense. but also in a wider social and cultural context. Thus, linguistic analysis helps to reveal the essential characteristics, mental attitudes and behavioral clichés and stereotypes of the English nation, which seems important in research both of a linguistic nature itself and in humanitarian fields of knowledge, such as cultural studies and social philosophy.

Replay the game and teach for understanding: exploring the use of video tagging in an invasion games unit

ABSTRACT Background: Combining Game-Based Approaches, video feedback, and debate of ideas (débat d'idées) constitutes an emerging field within pedagogical literature in Physical and Health Education. Nevertheless, more work is needed to understand how this digital tool can be effectively integrated into the teaching and learning process. Purpose: This study sought to further investigate the effective implementation of video tagging in games lessons with 14–15-year-old students. The central aim was to explore how a Game Sense Approach can be effectively integrated with video tagging and student-led debates. The secondary aim was to investigate the emergence of so-called ‘action rules’ (game plans) which emerge from these verbal exchanges. Participants and Setting: Game Sense pedagogy and video tagging were used as a stimulus for student-led debates during seven lessons. A pragmatic epistemological approach underpinned iterative cycles of action research using recordings from student-led debates critical collegial discussions, and teacher reflections to inform the implementation of the approach. A post-hoc thematic analysis of the PHE teachers’ reflections and content analysis of student debates were then conducted. Findings: The results of the action research process revealed that organisation and what to tag were key considerations in the successful implementation of the approach. The results from student interactions showed a high level of team-based positive action rules, with a low level of negative feedback. Conclusion: This study highlights the importance of critically considering technology integration, the content of student interactions, and their pedagogical implications. The integration of video tagging in diverse game-based situations can provide pedagogical and organisational challenges. However, key considerations of organisation and what to tag may help PHE teacher identify appropriate learning situations to use video tagging as a stimulus for the debate of ideas.

The Teacher’s Educational Psychological Game Sense (EPGS) as the Foundation of a Student’s Positive Self-Conception

This research analyzed how university students of education perceive the formation of self-conception in classroom situations. The following questions were asked: (1) Which factors have positive and negative impact on students’ self-conception? and (2) How does the teacher’s action appear in this regard? This study applied the narrative research approach. Altogether 70 students participated in the study. The data collection method used empathy-based frame stories. The data was analyzed first with the method of the analysis of narratives. In the second round of analysis, the variation between the students’ narratives were compared following the idea of the method of empathy-based stories in research. Group-related factors influencing on students’ self-conception, student-related factors influencing on self-conception and the teacher-related factors influencing the student’s self-conception are introduced as findings. According to the findings it seemed that the teacher’s educational psychological game sense (EPGS) could be named as the defining factor that lies in the intersection of the student-related factors, the group-related factors, and the teacher-related factors.

Variational Principles for Maximization Problems with Lower-semicontinuous Goal Functions

Let X be a completely regular topological space and f a real-valued bounded from above lower semicontinuous function in it. Let C(X) be the space of all bounded continuous real-valued functions in X endowed with the usual sup-norm. We show that the following two properties are equivalent: X is α-favourable (in the sense of the Banach-Mazur game);The set of functions h in C(X) for which f + h attains its supremum in X contains a dense and Gδ-subset of the space C(X).In particular, property (b) has place if X is a compact space or, more generally, if X is homeomorphic to a dense Gδ subset of a compact space.We show also the equivalence of the following stronger properties: X contains some dense completely metrizable subset;the set of functions h in C(X) for which f + h has strong maximum in X contains a dense and Gδ-subset of the space C(X).If X is a complete metric space and f is bounded, then the set of functions h from C(X) for which f + h has both strong maximum and strong minimum in X contains a dense Gδ-subset of C(X).

Combining psychology, a Game Sense Approach and the Aboriginal game Buroinjin to teach quality physical education

ABSTRACT In this research, we show how a quality teaching framework can be used with psychology, specifically self-determination theory (SDT), and a Game Sense Approach (GSA) to plan and teach a unit of work as a context-specific version of quality Physical Education. This unit of work using Buroinjin, an Australian Aboriginal traditional game, was taught to two Year 5 classes (49 students in total aged 10–11 years) at a government school in Australia’s capital city, Canberra. Following unit completion, a qualitative research design was adopted to answer our research question: To what extent do Year 5 students experience basic psychological need satisfaction by playing Buroinjin taught using a GSA? Four semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from 26 of the original students who were taught the unit. Findings suggest the unit was effective in satisfying the participants’ SDT basic needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness.

Conceptualising games and sport teaching in physical education as a culturally responsive curriculum and pedagogy

ABSTRACT The Australian Curriculum: Health and Physical Education (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (2020a) requires all teachers to include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’, culture and history where there is scope to meaningfully do so. However, there is a general absence in Australia and internationally of understanding culturally responsive pedagogy for those perspectives in teaching Physical Education (PE). This concept paper proposes an educational framework comprising Yunkaporta’s (2009) 8 Ways Aboriginal Pedagogy and the Game Sense approach (GSA) (Australian Sports Commission [ASC], 1996). for games and sport teaching in PE to move towards a culturally responsive curriculum and pedagogy. We provide an empirical argument that curricula are instruments of colonisation and explain the creation of a cultural interface through games and sport as one approach for decolonising PE. We present an opportunity to ‘close the gap’ between Western and Aboriginal knowledge through the purposeful design of engagement in reconciliation, respect and recognition of continuous living Aboriginal cultures. We use the game Parndo (ASC, 2000) to illustrate an example of how Yunkaporta’s (2009) framework and the GSA become a solution for closing our identified gap. By proposing a culturally responsive curriculum, we focus on the importance of identity for all people and how curricula must be relevant and meaningful for all Australians. Importantly, Yunkaporta's (2009) 8 Ways is a product of ‘cultural interface’, co-created through dialogue between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal educators. Our findings, although not transferable to other settings, nonetheless have relevance to other countries where there is a similar move to decolonise PE curricula.

The Complete Differential Game of Active Target Defense

In the Target–Attacker–Defender differential game, an Attacker missile strives to capture a Target aircraft. The Target tries to escape the Attacker and is aided by a Defender missile which aims at intercepting the Attacker, before the latter manages to close in on the Target. The conflict between these intelligent adversaries is naturally modeled as a zero-sum differential game. The Game of Degree when the Attacker is able to win the Target–Attacker–Defender differential game has not been fully solved, and it is addressed in this paper. Previous attempts at designing the players’ strategies have not been proven to be optimal in the differential game sense. In this paper, the optimal strategies of the Game of Degree in the Attacker’s winning region of the state space are synthesized. Also, the value function is obtained, and it is shown that it is continuously differentiable, and it is the solution of the Hamilton–Jacobi–Isaacs equation. The obtained state feedback strategies are compared to recent results addressing this differential game. It is shown that the correct solution of the Target–Attacker–Defender differential game that provides a semipermeable Barrier surface is synthesized and verified in this paper.

Book review: Developing Game Sense in Physical Education and Sport, Authors: Ray Breed, Michael Spittle, Publisher: Human Kinetics, 2020, 304 pages

Book review: Developing Game Sense in Physical Education and Sport, Authors: Ray Breed, Michael Spittle, Publisher: Human Kinetics, 2020, 304 pages

Una experiencia gamificada en Educación Física

La gamificación consiste en trasladar las características del juego a un contexto educativo-profesional, con la posibilidad de resolver problemas o mejorar el proceso de . En la asignatura de Educación Física la gamificación ha irrumpido como estrategia para dar sentido a los juegos pudiendo mejorar la satisfacción del discente y su nivel de implicación en las sesiones de educación física. Por ello,el presente artículo, persigue alcanzar los objetivos de analizar el grado de satisfacción de los estudiantes de educación secundaria de una experiencia gamificada, así como sus ventajas e inconvenientes de esta. Método: Se ha realizado una investigación cualitativa donde se analiza la información recopilada de los participantes del estudio, mediante una entrevista semi-estructurada que tuvo lugar después de la experiencia de gamificación en un instituto público de Educación Secundaria de la provincia Alicante. Resultados: Una parte de los resultados obtenidos han revelado una alta satisfacción de la mayoría de estudiantes en varias de las categorías emergentes (la diversión, cumplir misiones, trabajar en equipo y el seguimiento del progreso de su aprendizaje) mientras otras han demostrado un rechazo hacia la competición y la dificultad del contenido. Conclusiones: Se puede concluir señalando que la experiencia gamificada llevada a cabo ha sido satisfactoria en cuanto a que aumenta el interés y la percepción del estudiante y que también, durante el juego, están aprendiendo y evolucionando, siempre y cuando el contenido esté bien diseñado y su grado de dificultad sea el adecuado y alcanzable para los estudiantes.

EXTENDING GAMING DEMAND: SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCES OF COGNITIVE, EMOTIONAL, PHYSICAL, AND SOCIAL VIDEOGAMING REQUIREMENTS

Videogames directly involve players as co-creators of on-screen events, and this interactivity is assumed to be a core source of their attraction as a successful entertainment medium. Although interactivity is an inherent property of the videogame, it is variably perceived by the end user—for some users, perceived as a more demanding process, taxing their already-limited attentional resources. At least four such demands have been explicated in extant literature: cognitive (making sense of game logics/tasks), emotional (affective responses to game events/outcomes), physical (managing controller inputs and interfaces), and social (responding to human/nonhuman in-game others). Past work has reported empirical support of these concepts through validation of closed-ended survey metrics (e.g., Video Game Demand Scale). The current study challenges and extends the demand concept through an analysis of players’ own language when describing videogame demands in short essays about gaming experiences—critical given that people may experience a phenomenon in ways not accounted for in deductive data approaches. A secondary analysis of qualitative data made freely available by VGDS authors revealed both convergence with and divergence from prior work. Comporting with VGDS, cognitive demands are mostly experienced by players as ludic concerns and physical demands are mostly experienced in relation to handheld controller perceptions. Diverging from VGDS, players’ emotional demands represented both basic and complex emotional states, and social demands manifest different depending on whether or not the social “other” is human or non-human: humans are considered demanding on interpersonal terms, whereas non-humans are considered demanding as personified evocative objects.

Sports Teaching, Traditional Games, and Understanding in Physical Education: A Tale of Two Stories.

Unlike Dickens’s novel, this is not a tale of light and darkness, order and chaos, good and evil…It is, though, a story worth to be told about two standpoints about games and sports, teaching and research, physical education simply put, that have pursued similar interests on parallel tracks for too long, despite their apparent closeness and shared cultural grounds. The objective of this conceptual analysis is to try and reconcile two perspectives, namely motor praxeology and teaching games for understanding (TGfU), born in the last third of the XX century in France and England with the intention to rethink the foundations of physical education (PE) and sports teaching. Pierre Parlebas, from the French side of the English Channel, claimed in 1967 that sports make part of PE, that team sports must be considered from a specific, sociomotor point of view, and that motor conducts (i.e., the significative organisation of motor behaviour), not sports techniques, are the corner-stone of PE and sports coaching. In the early 1980s, from the English side of La Manche, Almond, Thorpe, and Bunker made a plea for a shift in the way to teach games (sporting collective duels mostly), deeply concerned by the negative impact of the traditional technics-centred approach on motivation, competence and attained level of the least able in school situations. Our conclusion is that TGfU, or game-based approaches to sports coaching and teaching, can take great advantage of the motor-praxeological rationale for three reasons: firstly, because concepts like understanding, game sense and action principles are operatively, semiotically linked to the reality of the playing process; secondly, because the inner structures of the games that constrain players and guide their motor conducts, permit to integrate games in the general system of sporting games, no matter their level of institutionalisation; finally, because any motor intervention process is better thought of and more systematically developed upon the operational concepts of internal logic and expected practical effects of game playing. This time, Paris could be the place to go to in search of solutions, not the city to run away from in hope of consolation.

A note on universal operators between separable Banach spaces

We compare two types of universal operators constructed relatively recently by Cabello Sánchez, and the authors. The first operator {Omega } acts on the Gurariĭ space, while the second one {mathbf {P}}_{{{mathbb {S}}}} has values in a fixed separable Banach space {{mathbb {S}}}. We show that if {{mathbb {S}}} is the Gurariĭ space, then both operators are isometric. We also prove that, for a fixed space {{mathbb {S}}}, the operator {mathbf {P}}_{{{mathbb {S}}}} is isometrically unique. Finally, we show that {Omega } is generic in the sense of a natural infinite game.