The role of perceptions of friendships and peers in learning skills in physical education

Background: Most research on how children learn when using the Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) approach has focused on cognitive dimensions in teaching games models. A social constructivist perspective suggests, however, that learning also takes place during social interactions. Since the process of learning game skills tends to have a relational dimension, researchers need to understand children's affective responses and how they situate their skill learning in games in relationship to their classmates.Purpose: To explore children's perceptions of collaboration, group formations, and friendships while learning a modified baseball game situated in social constructivist learning. Specifically, we focused on how children perceived the role that the social context, especially friends and classmates, plays in learning skills and strategies.Participants and setting: The children (N=25), aged 12-13, were in their first year of secondary school and were taught in a TGfU baseball unit. They participated in eight small focus groups to talk about their experiences in a modified baseball game.Data analysis: The constant comparative method was used to collect data in which drawings were used as cues for focus group discussions about interactions with peers during their learning of skills.Findings: Three themes emerged from the analysis: peers as necessary collaborators, friends as supporters and distractors, and peers as perceived critics. The results indicated that the presence of peers shaped the experiences of these children in contradictory ways. Findings were situated within social constructivism and compared with other research focusing on game-centered approaches and the role of the affective domain in learning.