Background/Purpose: The Team-Game-Tournament creative processes of varying, improvising, and composing from the process dimension of the Cognitive Elaboration Theories (Johnson & Johnson, 1991; Slavin,1989 1990; Murray, 1994) were utilized to plan instruction for developing creativity. A model was developed for planning instruction for the Team-Game-Tournament creative processes approach, including three steps: stating objectives, team discussion of tactical strategy, planning modifications of activity's content and planning feedback. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of instruction focused on the Team-Game-Tournament creative processes in developing the tactical strategies of fifth grade physical education students.
Method: The performances of students who had experienced this approach were compared to those of students who had experienced the traditional approach of skills acquisition and refinement. Participants for this study were 68 fifth-grade students who were randomly assigned into to groups. Each group experienced learning strategies specific to their group's instructional focus (Team-Game-Tournament or Traditional). As they participated in their regularly scheduled physical education classes for 18 weeks, they received lessons in basketball and dodge ball with tactical game activities. Data were collected using measures of William Creativity Assessment and sport skills ability. Task sheet and Journal observations recorded by the researcher following each lesson provided additional information.
Analysis/Results: Significant differences between groups were found. The Team-Game-Tournament instruction group improved significantly in general creativity and tactical strategies, while the traditional instruction group remained relatively the same. The Team-Game-Tournament instruction group scored significantly higher than the traditional instruction group in terms of sport skills ability. General creativity, and tactical strategies, and sport skills ability were unrelated following traditional instruction; yet, General creativity, and tactical strategies, and sport skills ability were moderately related following instruction in the Team-Game-Tournament processes. An analysis of the Task sheet and Journal observations revealed three categories of student behaviors: affective, social, and skill-learning behaviors. More positive behaviors were recorded for the Team-Game-Tournament instruction group in each of the three categories.
Conclusions: The major conclusion of the study was that instruction focused on the Team-Game-Tournament creative processes improves general creativity and tactical strategies, results in superior performances in general creativity, tactical strategies, and sport skills ability.