Model-Based Practice

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A models based practice is an approach to pedagogy which involves identifying desired learning goals and subsequently devising a curriculum and teaching style in order to achieve these targets. Metzler (2005, p.15) describes a model as ‘A comprehensive and coherent plan for teaching that includes a theoretical foundation, a statement of intended learning outcomes, teacher’s content knowledge expertise, developmentally-appropriate and sequenced learning activities, expectations for teacher and student behaviours, unique task structures, measures of learning outcomes, and mechanisms for measuring the faithful implementation of the model itself’. This idea of having a model to work around is favoured by many teachers worldwide, particularly in…show more content…
The multi-activity model is a prime example of a widely used models-based approach and is seen to be beneficial but also restrictive in a number of ways. It is an approach designed to give children an experience of a variety of different sports or physical activities, with the main focus being the development of fundamental skills, sporting skills and tactical awareness. The multi-activity approach differs to other practises as it is based on periods which are solely focused on a particular sport, rather than planning targets for individual sessions such as the improvement of specific skills. However, it could be argued that it is in fact possible to set targets for each session as clearly sports have individual, empirically and quantitatively measureable skills therefore this approach…show more content…
Firstly, due to the fact a wide range of sports are being incorporated into the teaching, it is likely that the teacher will have certain sports they are not of a high standard at or at least not an expert in, which is ultimately not conducive to optimal learning and effective practice as the learners may not receive the right information or might not be fully engaged. It also puts more of a strain on the teacher who will have to increase their level of preparation for lessons and also may not feel comfortable teaching certain sports, ultimately upsetting the dynamic of the pedagogical dimensions. Lastly, this models based approach could be argued to be counterproductive to the production of high level athletes in particular sports from a grass roots level as the learners only experience each sport for a short time. A learner may find they are highly skilled in a specific sport however this approach does not allow for them to elaborate on this and they may not be able to follow it up otherwise due to cost or access, particularly if it is a more obscure or less traditional sport such as handball or certain martial arts. Although this approach is favoured by many, numerous writers echo the disadvantages above, for example Taggart and Goodwin (2000) explain that this “Sport-based PE, which remains the
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