Developing Students’ Game Competence: Situated Game Teaching through Set Plays

Sports are a central part of Grades 3-12 curricular content in school physical education. Guided by the theory of situated learning, a new curricular model called Situated Game Teaching through Set Plays (SGTSP) has been proposed to systematically teach sports to 3rd–12th graders and college students using situated set plays from a situational and relational perspective. This article introduces SGTSP and its key features and uses tennis as an example to provide guidance on how to teach sports using SGTSP. This model provides an alternative approach to develop students’ decision-making ability and game competence through authentic, meaningful, and practical real-life game scenarios, which involve a complex interplay of techniques, tactics, anticipation, responses, and interaction with the dynamic game environment. To effectively implement this model, physical education teachers need to develop in-depth content knowledge, follow five pedagogical steps, and use effective classroom management to maximize student learning in physical education.