Games teaching: Changed or unchanged?

The Teaching for Understanding Movement is an innovation in games teaching developed by two lecturers, Bunker and Thorpe at Loughborough University of Technology, England during the 70’s. At present, this movement has been widely adopted in Europe, U.S.A., Australia & New Zealand. However, it seems that there is no tendency to adopt the movement in Hong Kong. The purpose of this study is to understand the teaching approach used by P.E. teachers during games lessons in schools. A survey was conducted by sending out questionnaires to 170 secondary schools representing one-third of all secondary schools in Hong Kong. Return from 75 Secondary Schools, comprising 7.31 P.E. teachers, showed that 92.9% of P.E. teachers adopted the skill-based approach in games teaching and 31.4% of them found difficulties in adopting this approach. Interestingly 81.7% of them showed an interest in the Teaching for Understanding innovation. This might imply that although there appeared to be no change towards the innovation, teachers might have greater interest in adopting it when they understand more about the approach.