The Methodology of Organising Physical Education and Sports Sessions

This article substantiates a methodology of organising physical education and sports sessions upon the thesis that the organisational form is not an administrative frame surrounding content but the mechanism determining the dose actually delivered. Two sessions with identical plans, exercises and prescribed loads may differ severalfold in the work each participant performs, the difference produced entirely by the manner in which the group is arranged. The author profiles the principal organisational forms against four parameters — motor density, supervisory control, capacity for differentiation and equipment demand — and establishes that these trade against one another, the form affording the greatest visible control delivering the least work. Its persistence is explained through an asymmetry of institutional incentive: injury is visible, attributable and punishable, whereas insufficient density is invisible and attributed to no one. A selection rule and a system of organisational indicators are proposed. The polemic between D. Bunker and R. Thorpe and the advocates of direct instruction is subjected to critical examination.