ABSTRACT
The concept of appropriateness refers to a pedagogical perspective that intends to help sport educators to structure and create meaningful learning environments to all sport learners, while respecting inter- and intra-individual variation in learning over time. This chapter maps the conceptual and practical implications of an appropriateness-based framework to sport teaching and learning, which will be practically applied in the following chapters. The appropriateness principle emerges from the interaction between three domains of the teaching-learning process: the learners’ characteristics (level I), the educational goals (level II), and the design of learning tasks (level III). There are four premises for an appropriateness-based framework: (i) the learners should be at the centre of the educational processes, (ii) the learning goals must be individualized, (iii) the representativeness must be extended beyond the scope of sport-specific competence, (iv) the learning goals must be translated into meaningful tasks. Practical examples on how to apply appropriateness-based principles in the design of sport activities for different game categories is offered in the last section of the chapter.
