“WE HAVE TO GIVE BACK THE GAME TO THE PLAYER”: ETHICAL AND MORAL DIMENSIONS OF COLLECTIVE SPORTS PEDAGOGY FROM GAME-BASED APPROACHES

Abstract

We start from the critique of the utilitarian tendency of game-based approaches (GBAs) with the objective of analyzing how the ethical and moral dimensions are revealed in the "act of playing" from the coaches’ pedagogical practice. Through the concepts of ethical "to play" and moral "to sport", we support 1) the primacy of playing over sporting, 2) the need for ethical feelings, manifested by the “state of play”, to pass through the scrutiny of the “lusory attitude” and 3) that transgressive and subversive attitudes to the rule are considerable depending on their source: self-love or resistance to the impasses promoted by the rules. We conclude that the “act of playing” reveals by itself the ethical-moral plan inherent to the game/sport, and the instrumentalization of the game with a commitment exclusively focused on the normative moral dimension is a risk to the ethical dimension inherent to the role of the player.

Keywords:
Sport Pedagogy; Game Pedagogy; Subversion; Transgression; Teaching Models.