Curricular proposal through the traditional game of Mate: Tool for improving perceptual-decisional skills in Secondary school physical education students

Abstract

Sport represents a core content within of the Spanish Secondary Physical Education curriculum. Thus, perceptional and decisional processes should be pivotal elements to be take into consideration when successfully tackling the design and planning the sport teaching and learning process in the context of secondary school Physical Education. More particularly, the MATE game may be a suitable strategy to be implemented by physical educators in enhancing both processes and, consequently, providing students with a quality teaching for any sport. Therefore, the present study aims to show a curricular implementation proposal that, based on secondary Physical Education curriculum, helps students improve the perceptual and decisional process involved in teaching of sport through the game of MATE. To do this, a 13-lesson teaching unit is shown, considering the progression of this game as a main instructional strategy in terms of managing to increase the cognitive and decisional complexity for the student through the introduction of new rules and materials, such as mats (and their disposition) or increasing the number of balls that intervened during the game. Thus, this study aims to provide an integrated learning proposal, in which students understand the internal logic of the game and, consequently improve their participation and performance in it.