Emergent Learning in Physical Education: Exploring Connections Between School Integrated Teacher Education and Inventing Games

• In Event: Situated Learning in Physical Education: Four Teaching Initiatives From Teaching Games for Understanding

Abstract

Overview
The epistemology of emergence…calls for a switch in focus for curricular thinking, away from questions about presentation and representation and towards questions about engagement and response.
(Osberg, Biesta, & Cilliers, 2008, p. 213)
This paper considers learning as an emergent and situated process, as theorized through complexity thinking (Osberg, Biesta and Colliers, 2008). We applied this theory of learning to a school integrated teacher education (SITE) course in elementary Physical Education, using a Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) approach known as Inventing Games. The paper investigates the notion of emergence as a frame of reference that engaged generalist teachers in discussion of professional practices and consequently into fresh insights and understandings.
Theoretical Context
The paper draws on the idea that learning emerges when a complex system is formed from (1) multiple agents who come together around a common intent, (2) the interaction of learners as agents of a system, the environment, and the tasks, and (3) learners’ self-organizing based on their ability to connect and adapt to the challenges in the environment. As noted by Hopper (2010), “In SITE courses, pre-service teachers…continually reflect on shared experiences from a school context through systematic observation, active participation and joint reflection on practice” (p. 12). Thus, SITE courses create authentic learning experiences, as pre-service educators observe university instructors teaching PE and lead lessons themselves, working cooperatively with peers. This study addresses the following question: “How does complexity theory frame the learning process (1) within a SITE course, and (2) in relation to two teachers working in the SITE school who have committed to teach using an Inventing Games approach?”
Methodology

Data were collected over two years from digitally recorded interviews with two teachers working with Inventing Games in the SITE school in an elementary education course. These data will be used to explore the teachers’ evolving practices in relation to complexity thinking. In addition, data from the instructor’s course notes and from student feedback will be used to explore how complexity thinking has framed development of the site course over the last 12 years.

Findings and Significance
This research is at an early stage, but preliminary findings suggest that the focus on emergent learning contributed to the effectiveness of this SITE course. Consistently, those student teachers who expressed initial reluctance about teaching PE reported that they began to enjoy the process. Initial analysis of the interviews shows that elements of complexity thinking already existed but were expanded, as teachers reflected upon day-to-day events using this focus. Teachers became more conscious of situations that they had neither planned for nor anticipated, but which offered valuable opportunities for learning. They were better able to capitalize on these opportunities for learning in their practices. The authors believe that a focus on emergence can help teachers design optimum conditions for complex learning and that, as a paradigm of human learning, complexity thinking can help us enable greater opportunities for students to be actively engaged in Physical Education classes and games outside of school.

Authors

• Timothy F. Hopper, University of Victoria

• Joy I. Butler, The University of British Columbia