The Effect of tactical game approach on teaching tennis in a physical education teacher education program

The purpose of this investigation was to determine the effects of tacticalgame approach on tennis skills in a Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE)program. The data were obtained from 16 undergraduate School of PhysicalEducation students enrolled in a tennis course at a university in Turkey. Subjectswere seven female, nine male students (N=16) and assigned to two groups asexperimental group (n=8) and control group (n=8). The experimental groupcompleted 4-week, twice a week, two hours tactical game approach, control groupreceived 4-week, twice a week, two hours traditional approach only in same content.The results of this study were, micro tennis game sessions recorded and analyzedobserving video tapes with tennis Game Performance Assessment Instrument(GPAI). Moreover, every forehand, backhand, and serve skill recorded via cameraviduring tennis skill test battery for individual skill analysis. A pre-test and post-testexperimental design was applied. Non parametric tests, The Mann Whitney U testwas conducted and the Wilcoxon Signed Rank test was used to determine pre-topost-test changes within the groups. Alpha set at p< 0.5. The results showed thatalthough no significant differences were found between the experimental and controlgroups (p>0.05) in forehand, backhand, serve skill analysis results. On the contrary,experimental group significantly improved in micro tennis game performance(p<0.05). The results of this study revealed that tactical game approach can be aneffective instructional method to improve game performance. This study haslimitations such as the characteristics of subjects, tests, and the measurements thatwere applied. Therefore, further studies should address the effects of tactical gameapproach on different individual, team sport skills, ages.Key words: Tactical Game Approach, Traditional Approach, Forehand, Backhand,Serve, Skill Analysis , Match Analysis.