Unpacking Games Teaching: What Do Teachers Need to Know?

This article, designed for teachers and teacher educators, discusses three essential elements of pedagogical content knowledge that teachers need in order to teach games. First, teachers must know their content. This includes common content knowledge, such as techniques and game sense (i.e., using tactics, rules and communication to play the game). It also includes specialized content knowledge such as the instructional progressions of the sport-specific content, how to represent it, and the potential difficulties that students might face as they learn the content. Second, teachers must know games pedagogy that embeds learning of sport movements within the context of developmental small-sided games. Third, teachers must know their students — their experiences and individual personalities, but also prior knowledge that is influenced by their gender, language, social class, family (including race and ethnicity) and community.