1. Games Making: !
A Comparative Study
Ashley Casey, Peter Hastie and Steve Jump

2. !
A Comparative Study?

3. Traditional

4. Built on curriculum programmes that are
“ An inch
deep and
mile wide”

5. [ ]
Multi-activity
programme

6. “
That aspires for children to be
Busy,
Happy
and Good”
Placek, 1983

7. Games

8. “
To those looking in
from the outside, the
playing of games and
sport within physical
education would seem
the raison d’eˆtre of
the subject.”
Casey & Hastie, 2011

9. “
the experience of a
number of students in
game contexts has
seen significantly
negative responses
with feelings of
alienation and
embarrassment”
Casey & Hastie, 2011

10. “ to the extent that
authors such as
Ennis (1996) have
suggested more
than apologies are
necessary.”
Casey & Hastie, 2011

11. “ Physical-
Education-
as-sport-
techniques”
Kirk, 2010

12. “ Nothing short of a
complete
reconceptualisation
of what Physical
Education is and
does is needed”
Kirk, 2010; Lawson, 2009; Locke, 2000;
Siedentop, 2002; Tinning, 2011

13. !
A Comparative Study

14. Traditional

15. Games

16. Games Making !

17. Games Making? !

18. “ So long as a child supposes
that everyone necessarily
thinks like himself, he will
not spontaneously
!
seek to convince others,
common
nor to accept
truths, nor, above all, to
prove or test his opinions.”
Piaget (1975, 33)

19. “ Physical-
Education-
as-sport-
techniques”
Kirk, 2010

20. “
Student-designed
games ‘freed’ children
at their own
!
to define competition
developmental level.”
Casey & Hastie, 2011

21. “ The student-designed
games provided a forum
!
that allowed students to
develop a more
sophisticated
understanding of game
structures and game
play”
Casey, Hastie & Rovegno, In Press

22. “
as teachers, we should
encourage our
their personal
!
students to challenge
constructions of
meaning.”
Casey, Hastie & Rovegno, In Press

23. !
Study

24. !
Methodology

25. “
used social constructionism
to be ever
suspicious of our
assumptions about
how the world
appears to be.”
Burr (2003)

26. “ The idea of learning-by-making.
Constructionism
shares ‘constructivism’s
connotation of learning as
“building knowledge
structures” irrespective
of the circumstances of the
learning’ (p. 1).”
Harel and Papert (1991)

27. “ Such development of
learning occurred ardently
in situations where
students are meaningfully
engaged in building
something in the public
domain.”
Harel and Papert (1991)

28. “
used social constructionism
Shareable
artefacts”
Harel & Papert (1991)

29. Sandcastle
Traditional

30. Theory of the
Universe

31. “ personal
to
We should encourage
our students
!
challenge their
constructions of
meaning.”
Casey, Hastie & Rovegno, In Press

32. Games

33. !
Methods

34. Study Site

35. Comprehensive School
in Southern England

36. Two teachers

37. Traditional Curriulum

38. 50+ students

39. streamed

40. Two classes

41. selected based upon
their results in maths,
English and science in
end of key stage 3

42. One higher and
one lower in
terms of
academic ability

43. !
A Comparative Study

44. 3 lessons a week
for 7 weeks

45. No experience of
pedagogical
models

46. Data Gathering

47. Wiki

48. Interviews

49. Observations

50. Teacher
reflections

51. Analysed into
themes and
subthemes

52. Results

53. re-organising learning understanding rules
1
3
re-­‐organising
learning
re-­‐organising
learning
2
4
Changing motivation ‘clever’ = better games?

54. re-organising learning
1
re-­‐organising
learning
re-­‐organising
learning

55. “
Previously when we taught
them, it’s a case of we telling
them everything they need
to know about the game…
but with this, they’ve had to
dissect again and build it
back up and I think that’s
been beneficial to a lot of
them.”
Male Teacher

56. “
They’re not particularly sporty,
competitive, or particularly good
…to spend the next two years …
where we’re saying ‘you need to
get better at netball… I think
they’re intelligent enough to
know ‘why would I want to do
that? I don’t particularly enjoy
it’ so I think it’s a good change”
Female Teacher

57.
“ it’s like your own
idea and you’re not
doing something
that you were told
to do”
Female Student

58.
“ there wasn’t really any
boundaries with the
game that we could
design, so we could be
creative and choose
whatever we wanted”
Male Student

59.
“ The beginning bit,
when we had to come
up with something
from scratch, that was
quite hard”
Female Student

60. “ I think there’s more of a
challenge for the children
than there was previously in
their lessons, so more of a
direction, more of an aim and
I feel they’ve got more of a
focus in their lessons rather
than previously.”
Male teacher

61. re-­‐organising
learning
re-­‐organising
learning
2
Changing motivation

62. “ I think PE has
been a time to
mess about for the
whole time I’ve
been at school”
Male Student

63. “
Usually in PE
it’s just
like...sport and
you just play”
Male Student

64. “ I don’t think we were
familiar with the situation.
Before we were split in to
‘boys’ and ‘girls’ in normal
PE but then we got used to
it, we knew we needed to
work together to achieve.”
Male Student

65. “ It’s like much more fun
because in normal PE you
have to something and go
by your teacher’s rules,
this time you can play by
your own rules”
Female Student

66. “ “I have seen some positive
stuff, I’ve seen a few girls that I
wouldn't have expected to
come forward and not
necessarily take them on and
take the lead, but are coming
up to me and saying, “Miss, I’ve
got a really good idea, why
don't we do this ...?”
Female teacher

67. “ This half-term’s
been good
because I can look
forward to PE
now”
Female Student

68. understanding rules
3
re-­‐organising
learning
re-­‐organising
learning

69. “ They’ve gained
knowledge, an
understanding of games
and how games are
created and what makes
up a game.
Male Teacher

70. “ Creating a game,
thinking of everything
and then because it
didn’t work, we had to
create a new one and
that was even harder.”
Female Student

71. “ It’s not just you’re
told a game and you
do it. You actually
have to think more
about it ...”
Male Student

72. “ There’s bits we had to
make up – rules – and if it
doesn’t really, like when
you score a goal, you had to
make it easier to score
goals so the game didn’t
slow down and get boring
and it was quite hard…”
Female Student

73. “ I think it was really difficult
because before we just played a
game, we got taught how to play
the game and we played it
whereas this time you’d got to
think more about why other
games are like, why other games
are good so you’ve got to try and
make your game good.”
Female Student

74. “ Learned that it was more than
just a game because you had to
put more concepts and stuff,
and there were more detailed
rules as in what would you do if
the ball went off the court or
something that. You had to get
over that and more detailed
stuff…”
Male Student

75. re-­‐organising
learning
re-­‐organising
learning
4
‘clever’ = better games?

76. “ most of the games we’ve
made up have all been
based on netball so it’s
like every lesson we’re
doing kinda netball with
a twist, which isn’t great
for some people”
Female Student
Lower Ability Class

77. “ Yeah, it’s really hard not to
copy other games because
the game that we had was a
mix between some games, it
was a really good game but it
was too much like the other
games.”
Female student
Higher Ability Class

78. “ We had to completely think
out of the box ‘cause we were
thinking of some games and
then we were like ‘oh no,
that’s too much like football’
or ‘that’s too much like
netball or something’ so we
did have to think about that.”
Female student
Higher Ability Class

79. !
Conclusion

80. The pupils
acknowledged that
they were now
being challenged
to consider games
in a new way

81. This was "much
better" than
their prior
experiences of
physical
education.

82. The staff felt that
the pupils were
able to
demonstrate a
greater range of
ability rather than
just as performers.

83. “
Students demonstrated
strengths in either the
games making or the
changing the game, the
playing the game or
the explaining the
game.”
Male Teacher

84. “
As one of the students concluded
We’ve also found that
there is a new game
that we can play and
nobody else knows
about it but us, so kind
of makes use special.”
Male Student

85. “
And in answer to the suggestion that…
Nothing short of
complete
reconceptualisation
is needed”
Kirk, 2010; Lawson, 2009; Locke, 2000;
Siedentop, 2002; Tinning, 2011

86. “
And in answer to the suggestion that…
Nothing short of
complete
reconceptualisation
is needed”
Kirk, 2010; Lawson, 2009; Locke, 2000;
Siedentop, 2002; Tinning, 2011

87. Games Making !

88. “ If you don’t like
change, you’re
going to like
irrelevance even
less”
General Eric Shinsek
US Army Chief of Staff (ret.)

89. References
Burr, V. 2003. Social constructionism. London: Routledge.
Casey, A. & Hastie, P.A.2011. Students and teacher responses to a
unit of student-designed games, Physical Education & Sport
Pedagogy, 16: 3, 295 — 312
Casey, A., Hastie, P.A. & Rovegno, I (In Press). Student learning
during a unit of student-designed games, Physical Education & Sport
Pedagogy.
Harel, I., and S. Papert. 1991. Constructionism. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Kirk, D. 2010. Physical education futures. London: Routledge.
Piaget, J. 1975. The child’s conception of the world. New York:
Rowman & Littlefield.
Placek, J. H. 1983. Conceptions of success in teaching: Busy, happy,
and good? In T. Templin and J. Olsen (Eds.). Teaching in physical
education. (pp. 45-56). Illinois: Human Kinetics.

90. Images
Slide 3, 14 – Back to school by STEFANOLUNARDI on iStockPhoto
Slide 7, 15 – old fashioned basketball court by ryanmcginnisphoto on
flickr
Slide 30 – Beach toys by Trout55 on iStockPhoto
Slide 31 – Free image on computer
Slide 33 – Personal Image
Slide 35 - School by Jibby! on Flick