Reconciling Approaches: Informing Game Sense Coaching Pedagogy with a Constraints-led Perspective

This chapter will raise questions about the instructional strategies used to develop
‘decision-makers’ in team sports like Australian football (AFL). A pedagogical
analysis of the Game Sense coaching approach with an emphasis on deliberate
game design for play with purpose and the application of the constraints-led
perspective for representative learning design is undertaken. A preface of this
chapter is that invasion games like AFL are not stable contexts. Play involves a
complex interplay of collective decision-making over time arising from a series
of contests for possession of the ball. The dynamics of the game are therefore
forever evolving over the course of play from the specific interactions of the behaviour of players and officials and the playing environment (Pill, 2014).