Instructional Cues in Futsal Teaching, Coaching and Matches

Abstract

This study investigated what are the verbal cues provided in futsal contexts of teaching-learning, training, and official matches, and what are their attentional foci. A cue refers is a short instruction that constrains the students/athletes to direct their attention to critical elements for successful performance. 1543 instructional cues were collected from Physical Education (PE) classes, futsal training sessions and futsal matches of an official championship. Data were analysed based on content analysis method and categorized through the Systematic Analysis of Pedagogical Content Interventions. Inferential analyses were run by the Trend Module (Trend Analysis and Multiple Comparisons) of PEPI software. The results showed that the category offensive technique (passing) was the one with the highest number of instructions in the classes, training and matches. It was also observed that rules and violations were similar between curricular classes and futsal training sessions. The findings allowed to verify (i) the primary cues physical education teachers and coaches provided, (ii) about which critical aspects they referred to and (iii) their specificity regarding the context specificity (classes, training and matches). The findings provide useful insights into the design of instructional tasks as the instructional cues allow students/athletes to gain knowledge about the learning task and to direct their attention to critical elements for successful performance.