The impact of hybrid instructional models on game performance outcomes of middle school physical education students

During one semester of an academic year, one physical education teacher taught two similar instructional territorial sport units to an intact seventh grade physical education class using a traditional instructional model called the multi-activity model. The same teacher also taught a different seventh grade intact class one of the same territorial sports for six weeks, but combined two contemporary instructional models (Sport Education model and Teaching Games for Understanding model) into a hybrid model for teaching that particular unit. The classes were filmed prior to any instruction, at the mid-point (the end of the first traditional unit), and at the end of the six weeks for subsequent observations using the Team Sport Assessment Procedure (TSAP) (Grehaigne, Godbout, & Boutier, 1997) to measure game performance outcomes of participants in both types of instructional models. Game performance (volume of play and efficiency index) was used as the primary indicator of student learning for this study (Grehaigne, et al., 1997; Mitchell, Griffin, & Oslin, 2008; Oslin, Mitchell, & Griffin, 1998). Results showed that participants' volume of play in the traditional group decreased from pre- to post-testing in the second three-week unit, t (1, 29) = -2.177, p<.038. No other differences occurred between groups from pre- to post-test in the other units or from after the mid-point of the hybrid unit. Because of this, it is possible to suggest that participants learned game performance tactics equally well in both types of units. Because both groups were assessed after three weeks of the same unit (ultimate frisbee), the lack of significant differences at that point may suggest that an even longer instructional unit is needed to determine if game performance differences exist between the two instructional models. These results may also suggest that students in traditional units can learn to play the game tactically as well as students in a hybrid (Sport Education and Teaching Games for Understanding) unit if the hybrid unit is shorter than the recommended longer unit duration.