Play Practice: The Games Approach to Teaching and Coaching Sports - Softcover

Launder, Alan G.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0736030050 ISBN 13: 9780736030052

Publisher: Human Kinetics, 2001

Synopsis

This text presents a clear alternative to traditional approaches that will revitalize your own teaching and coaching. It replaces mindless games and mechanistic training methods with creative and enjoyable practices that improve students' skills and enhance their tactical understanding. This book focuses on teaching game play first instead of techniques and skills - an approach that sets it apart from other games-approach texts. It provides answers to many of the problems that sports educators face, such as motivating reluctant or resistant students. It provides both the theoretical basis and the practical plans for changing practice from drudgery into an educational experience young people look forward to.

About this title

About the Author

Alan Launder has been deeply involved in sports for more than 50 years as a competitor, teacher and coach. In that time he has worked in Great Britain, the United States, and Australia. Since 1973, he has been a senior lecturer at the University of South Australia, where he helped to develop a four-year degree course in physical education--teacher education that became a model for programs in other countries. He won the 1992 Rothmans Prize in recognition of his ability to develop and communicate innovative ideas in sports education. The paper that won the prize, "Coach Education Towards the 21st Century," has had a great influence on the coach education programs of many Australian sporting federations.

Alan holds senior coaching qualifications from Great Britain and Australia in soccer, cricket, basketball, track and field and table tennis. In 1984, he was a coach of the Australian track and field team at the Los Angeles Olympics. In 1986 and 1988, he was the head coach of the Australian team at the World Junior Championships. In 1991, 1993, and 1995, he was a coach of the track and field team at the World University Games. Most recently he has served as a consultant to the Australian Track and Field Coaches Association and to the Australian Lacrosse Association as they reinvented their coach education programs.

Alan regards his major career achievement to be the development of the philosophical and pedagogical principles that underpin the "Five Star Award," an innovative approach to teaching track and field that has been adopted by more than 20 countries.

In his spare time, Alan's hobbies are sporting art, travel, snow skiing, and fine wine. He lives with his wife, Jennifer, in Salisbury East, South Australia. He has two sons, David and Richard, and three grandsons, James, Mitchell and Matthew.

Edition details

• Publisher: Human Kinetics
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0736030050
• ISBN 13: 9780736030052
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 185