All Whites highlight importance of developing children's sporting expertise

The performance of the All Whites in this year’s FIFA World Cup highlights the importance of developing children’s sporting expertise through effective teaching, according to physical education researcher Dennis Slade.

Mr Slade, a senior lecturer in the University’s College of Education says making the most of education opportunities in the wake of the All White’s success in South Africa will ensure it won’t be another 28 years before a New Zealand football team takes the world stage again.

“Quite a lot is known about how expertise in sport is developed and there are clear pointers as to what we can do to ensure we provide opportunities for that expertise to be uncovered in our children,” Mr Slade says.

“The stages for development of expertise in sport are seen as: the sampling stage, 6-12 years; the specialising stage, 13-15 years and the investment stage, 16 years and over – a period where school education figures prominently in young people’s lives.”

He says it is important during the sampling stage that children are exposed to a range of different games so they can find the one in which “they click”.

“In team games, the sampling years are characterized by supportive coaches or teachers, not necessarily experts, providing positive, fun, exciting learning experiences,” he says.

“Research has shown that children aged between seven and eight years old improve their performance if confined to one sport. However, when exposed to more than one sport their creative responses to tactical issues improves both in the specific sport of choice but also in other sports.

“The huge focus on numeracy and literacy is coming at the expense of the liberal arts, in which physical education sits. Trainee teachers are only getting a taste of the preparation required to deliver quality programmes in these areas.”

Mr Slade says policy makers can exert an influence. “They could, for instance, instigate policy that would require Colleges of Education to provide minimum amounts of time in the preparation for teaching in the liberal arts,” he says.

“By time, I mean face to face with lecturers trained to teach them in these subjects. Just reading about it, or writing some reflective review on-line of an article on how to teach children games is not ideal preparation for actually teaching movement skills to children in those crucial sampling years.

“Experiences of elite performers in sport during their sampling years are typically marked by motivating, exciting, fun, and positive learning experiences from coaches or teachers.

“Any reduction of time spent in preparing trainees to apply these experiences through physical education can seriously curtail the path to sporting expertise for the next generation of prospective All-Whites.”