Reading and writing the game : creative and dialogic pedagogies in sports education

Sports educators have long used coaching and teaching methods based on regimes of mechanical execution of movements. Without accounting for the social context in which sports education takes place, these methodologies consider exhaustive action replication the best way to master physical skills. The past decades have seen a surge in alternative pedagogies that acknowledge that sporting bodies are much more than a combination of techniques. Pedagogies such as Game Sense approach the sports teaching-learning process through a constructivist perspective in which the intellectual dimensions of games are highlighted. This paper empirically examines how dialogic pedagogies can be put to work in sports education in order for students' bodies to become creative and a central part of their own development. Using autoethnographic data drawn from the authors' international personal experiences as sports coaches, physical educators, researchers and evaluators in two sports education contexts" school sports education and sport for development (SfD)" the paper aims to reveal pedagogies that foster creative participants who can enjoy, read and write their own games. The authors conclude that while dialogic sports education is not without conflict, it enables sports educators to create spaces in which continuous dialogue can occur. These pedagogies are not simply a tool for inquiry-based educational possibilities; they are the actual dialogic education.