Effects of the Skills4Genius sports-based training program in creative behavior

Abstract

Team Sports has been suggested as a suitable environment to investigate creative behavior. This study’s purpose was two-fold: first, it intended to identify the effects of the Skills4Genius sports-bases training program in thinking, motor, and in-game creative behavior in team sports. Second, it aimed to investigate the relationship between creative thinking and in-game creativity. Forty children from primary school were allocated into control (n = 18, age: 9.2±0.4) and experimental (n = 22, age: 9.5±0.7) groups. The experimental group participated in a five-month training program involving either creative thinking, diversification, physical literacy, and nonlinear pedagogy approaches (Skills4Genius). Variables in the study included: a) creative thinking; b) motor performance (vertical jump, speed, and agility); c) in-game individual creative behavior (attempts, fluency, and versatility); and d) in-game collective behavior (positional regularity). The results suggested that the Skills4Genius program fostered creative thinking, agility, and speed performance. Moreover, it stretched the in-game individual creative behavior mainly through the improvement of the attempts and versatility of the player’s actions. Lastly, it nurtured a better learning of the tactical principles, whereas the children were more coordinated with their teammates’ and opponents’ positioning. Additionally, this study presents a positive correlation linking creative thinking and in-game creative performance. These findings highlighted that creativity is facilitated while players become more thinking and game-skilled. Coaches and educators may apply this functional environment to inspire children’s disposition to move outside the box and trigger a creative spark in team sports players. Notwithstanding, the sports environment is ideally suited for fostering creative behavior, a higher-order disposition that will go on to differentiate the everyday life of a child.

Are Physical Education Lessons Suitable for Sport Talent Identification? A Systematic Review of the Literature

“…PE teachers continue to use physical ability as a key indicator of talent [44]. However, researchers are currently conducting studies to validate other tools for TI in PE (AST) [43], assessing motor competence or perceptual-motor skills as a part of TI [46,47]. Finally, pupils seemed to positively perceive the support offered by mentoring programs [45] to fulfil their commitment to training and sport on the one hand, and the requirements of academic work on the other.…”

“…Regarding each study's context, England was the country with the largest number of studies (4) [20,[44][45][46], followed by Germany (1) [42], Portugal (1) [47] and Netherlands (1) [43]. Four studies did not mention the context: one was a descriptive study [48] and the other three were reviews and proposals [10,25,26].…”

“…Concerning participants' grade level, studies were conducted at all educational levels. However, the majority focused on primary education (3) [43,47,49], followed by secondary education (2) [45,48], and preschool (1) [42]. Only two studies were conducted with PE teachers [20,44].…”

“…Several types of data collection and analysis strategies were used: qualitative (3) [10,25,26], quantitative (5) [42,43,[46][47][48], and mixed methods (qualitative and quantitative) (3) [20,44,45]. In the quantitative studies, motor performance tests (2) [42,47] and questionnaires were used (4) [20,[44][45][46]. In the qualitative studies, no assessment instruments were used (3) [10,25,26].…”

The development of tactical skills in U-14 and U-15 soccer players throughout a season: a comparative analysis

“…the nonlinearity of the tactical development found in this study suggests that nonlinear pedagogy might promote players' development through game-based tasks [28,29]. As athletes of similar categories -U-14 and U-15 -present significant differences in the development of tactical skills, it might be important that their training processes comprise these specificities, adjusting training content and expectations to the athletes' actual conditions.…”