The purpose of this article is to report on the development and validation of the Game Performance Assessment Instrument (GPAI). The GPAI is a multidimensional system designed to measure game performance behaviors that demonstrate tactical understanding, as well as the player’s ability to solve tactical problems by selecting and applying appropriate skills. The GPAI provides analyses of individual game performance components (e.g., decisions made, skill execution, and support) and/or overall performance (e.g., game involvement and game performance). The individual game performance components were developed and evaluated by experts to determine validity and reliability. The GPAI protocol was field tested across three categories of games: invasion (soccer and basketball), net/wall (volleyball), and field/run/score (softball). Validity and reliability were examined through three separate studies using middle school physical education specialists and their sixth-grade classes. Findings suggest that the GPAI provides a valid and reliable method for assessing game performance.

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In this article, we were interested in how young people learn to play games within a tactical games model (TGM) approach (Griffin, Oslin, & Mitchell, 1997) in terms of the physical-perceptual and social-interactive dimensions of situativity. Kirk and MacPhail's (2002) development of the Bunker-Thorpe TGfU model was used to conceptualize the nature of situated learning in the context of learning to play an invasion game as part of a school physical education program. An entire class of 29 Year-5 students (ages 9-10 years) participated in a 12-lesson unit on an invasion game, involving two 40-min lessons per week for 6 weeks. Written narrative descriptions of videotaped game play formed the primary data source for the principal analysis of learning progression. We examined the physical-perceptual and social-interactive dimensions of situated learning to explore the complex ways that students learn skills. Findings demonstrate that for players who are in the early stages of learning a ball game, two elementary, or fundamental, skills of invasion game play-throwing and catching a ball-are complex, relational, and interdependent.

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