i 1 Game as context in physical education A Deweyan philosophical perspective John Quay and Steven Stolz The issue of context and physicaleducation It was 30 years ago when Bunker and Thorpe (I 982: 5) made the claim that 'traditional methods' of teaching physical education 'have failed to take into account the contextual nature of games'. Their aim was to problematise the teaching of particular techniques before these techniques had been con- textualised within a specific game. They understood that when the game as context is missing, questions of what to do with a technique and when to apply it emerge for students, along with the broader question of why one needs to learn the technique in the first place. As a response to this problem they envisaged a model for teaching in physical education that 'starts with a game and its rules which set the scene for the development of tactical awareness and decision making, which, in their turn, always precede the response factors of skill execution and performance' (p. 8). In other words, the game con- textualises the tactics or strategies, and the strategies contextualise the skills. Their model is widely known as teaching games for understanding (fGfU), which contrasts with more traditional technique-orientated models, the traditional methods, which are known in this way as the technical approach or the 'skills approach' (Brooker, Kirk, Braiuka and Bransgrove 2000: 20), or sometimes as fundamental motor skills (FMS). In this paper we focus first on the shift in context between these two models, FMS and TGfU, and the ramifications for physical education. This is the shift from learning techniques before a game to learning techniques, tactical awareness and decision making in the context of a game. We then explore the notion of the game itself as context by questioning who is involved in the creative development of the game, referring to Almond's (1983) work on 'games making'. In addition we investigate the further contexts within which the game itself sits. In a physical education setting games are usually con- sidered to be competitive to some degree, thereby positioning a game within an aspect of the context of sport (but not necessarily labelling a game as a particular sport). We understand sport as context through the model of 'sport education' designed by Siedentop (1994). And then sport itself is part of the broader social context, for which Hellison's (1995) model of taking personal