MEDIA REVIEW

Complete Guide to Sport Education, 2nd edition (and e-book)

Target Audience/Purpose:

The authors are writing to educators, specifically physical educators, as they detail in great specificity the Sport Education model. In short, Sport Education is a curriculum and instruction model which has been designed to provide students with authentic experiences that are thorough, enjoyable and that contribute to their desire to become and stay physically active throughout their lives.

The purpose of this text book is to explain the background, theory and features of the Sport Education curriculum, while also providing many resources for present and future teachers to implement the Sport Ed model in their own classes.

Content:

The first segment of the text focuses more on the theory or foundation for Sport Education, including topics such as the history of Sport Education and its related goals, as well as objectives and evidence to demonstrate the power, impact, and influence that the Sport Education model can have on students and school programs. Wrapping up this first segment are such pedagogical topics, such as key instructional features of the model (i.e., organization, class management) and developing outcomes centered on National physical activity goals.

The second segment of the text delves into the 'do' portion of Sport Education. The 'do' section gives suggestions and examples of how a physical education teacher can modify the structure of the games played in Sport Education, how to include students with disabilities, competition formats, and the various students roles developed within the model. It also provides numerous strategies for selecting coaches, teams and information regarding how to develop camaraderie within the team structure through such ideas as uniforms, cheers, posters, and portfolios.

The last segment of the book focuses on how to make Sport Education festive, how to include and conduct authentic assessment, as well as strategies for integrating academic goals within Sport Education. These are all important subjects as festivity helps bring the excitement into Sport Education while also helping students develop various social skills. Assessment and academics should play an important role in all physical education programs, and as such, the text provides multiple ideas and strategies to complete both in an effective and efficient manner.

Strengths/Limitations:

The texts main strength is found in the immense amount of detail found on this curricular model. The authors do a great job fulfilling the text's purpose, which is to explain what the Sport Education curriculum is and how to implement it. The text is almost a step by step guide for an educator to implement the entire program within their school or teaching environment.

The book also provides a vast amount of practical examples as well as resources for the reader. A portion of the resources are online (e.g., presentations/spreadsheets) which contain tournament setups, point trackers, participant profiles along with a number of other useful tools.

The text also contained real life testimonials of teachers who implemented the Sport Education program and the successes that they had experienced with it that are useful and motivating. The research findings provided in the text made it clear how and why the curriculum works. This research is a good assurance to the reader that the material provided within the text is evidence based (not simply the authors perspective and or opinion). A limitation of the Sport Education text is that the authors may be overly confident that this model will fit every Physical Education context.

Summary:

I thought the text as a whole was laid out in a very effective manner. I thought the order of the ideas and subjects presented within the text were very appropriate, and made it easy to understand the model and its main goals and objectives.

The writing was very clear and concise. Anything complicated within the model was often followed up with a chart, diagram or real life example which made understanding the material very easy. I believe that the high quality of writing and explanations would help an individual greatly in actual implementation of the Sport Education model which is the overall goal of the text.

Recommendation:

I would definitely recommend this book. I believe it accomplishes its purpose and overall goals in a very effective and efficient manner. The book is very well suited to its main audience of Physical educators. As mentioned above, the text gives numerous types of descriptions, explanations, examples, and resources to enable a physical education teacher to have the tools necessary to implement the model themselves.

Reviewer: Kyle Hall, Graduate Student, Arizona State University, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College (2012)

To Main MEDIA Review Page

(back to pelinks4u homepage)