This master’s program is offered to physical educators who are ready to move up a gear by refining and expanding their ideas of teaching, learning and knowing. Using Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) as a catalyst for thinking about ontological and epistemological issues in physical education, teachers will start to explore constructivist, student-centered and holistic approaches as possibilities for their own practice.
They will also examine their position on continuums of belief from inclusion to elitism, transaction to transmission, integration to dualism, tactical understanding to skill acquisition, discovery to representation, concepts to techniques and finally between demonstration and creation of understanding rather than mastery.
It has long been argued that research by teachers about their own classroom and school practices functions as a powerful mechanism for professional change, as it generates new ways of thinking about practice. The first cohort (2009-2011) focused on TGfU research and published an edited book titled ‘Reconceptualizing PE through TGfU’ (2012) made up of condensed versions of their final graduating projects.
This has started a change that should generate health and sustainable programs of teacher research, distributed across schools, teacher groups, school-university partnerships and regional and national forums. This master’s program focusing on physical education is advertising the third cohort to begin in June 2014.
Our internationally known program instructors have built upon the practical ideas, shared research, and reflections that presenters brought to the 2008 International TGfU Conference at UBC. Courses and texts will examine current teaching perspectives, constructs of ability, and curriculums, move into analyzing TGfU from pedagogical and learning theory perspectives, and finally, consider, define, and implement developmentally appropriate TGfU activities.
