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The Social Nature of Games: Australian Preservice Primary TeachersÍ First Experiences of Teaching Games for Understanding

This article reports on a study of pre-service generalist primary school teachers’ experiences of a games unit taught using the Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) approach in an Australian teacher education programme. The study sought to make sense of the knowledge and dispositions that pre-service primary school teachers brought into the games unit, the ways in which this shaped their interpretation of the TGfU approach, the impact that this had on their perceptions of physical education’s educational value and the pedagogy they articulated as intending to adopt.A sense of ‘joy’ related to achievement and profound learning (Heywood, 2001) emerged as a central theme in many students’ accounts of their games unit. It is argued in this article that this sense of joy arose from the holistic, whole-body learning that is possible in games using a TGfU approach.