THE IMPACT OF GIVING CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS A VOICE USING THE TEACHING GAMES FOR UNDERSTANDING MODEL IN PHYSICAL EDUCATION
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.46827/ejpe.v8i4.4293Keywords:
special needs, physical education, Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU), student voiceAbstract
The impact of the teaching games for understanding model (TGfU) in education has mainly focussed on mainstream children who have not been diagnosed with having an additional or specific educational need (SEN). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of the TGfU model by focussing on the feedback of the children about their learning journey. The activity of Table Tennis was used as the teaching medium in which to enact this student’s voice and then the children reviewed their learning by completing a questionnaire after each lesson. The questionnaire was adapted from the previous research of Cervelló et al., (2007) who originally devised a twenty-four-point questionnaire which was shortened to twelve questions for the purpose of this study. The research problem was whether the TGfU model and its principles could be adopted and adapted after giving the SEN students a greater sense of ownership of their own learning. In total, twelve children aged 11-16 from one special school institution were involved in this study and they all had additional learning needs. After a comprehensive literature review, there have been very few research papers which have looked at this specific topic with only one article on this subject coming from Malaysia (Ibrahim, 2021). The findings of this study show that there was a positive change in the levels of communication and control over the learning, social interaction and activity levels as a result of using a models-based approach to learning physical education with SEN children.
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