Teaching Virtues Through Sport (TVTS)

The purpose of TVTS is to provide a range of game and activity adaptations that intentionally aim to emphasise character virtues.

Courage Responsibility Fairness Leadership Empathy

Selflessness Perseverance Compassion Resilience Honesty

There is potential for the above virtues to be ‘caught’ within any activity in sport and physical education. It is for this reason sport is often celebrated as a vehicle for personal development, teaching character and promoting life skills among youth. Yet the teachable moments where such goals can occur can often be fleeting and not sufficiently utilised by session leaders. What complicates things further, is that session leaders are often tasked with not only guiding learning around these goals ‘on the spot’, but then also orchestrating a vast range of individual and group discussions unplanned to guide their participants' understanding.

It is for this reason that we advocate that in addition to virtues being caught, they must also be explicitly taught. This therefore involves intentional and deliberate steps to plan and engineer activities to emphasise particular virtues. Sessions can then be delivered in themes related to character and virtues. This allows session leaders to commence activities with the expectation that opportunities to teach a particular virtue will arise. As such, this can be planned for and teaching can be targeted around specific virtues. The intentional teaching of virtues also presents learning opportunities that can be linked and assessed throughout curriculums and programmes.

‘In this football activity and we are looking to develop the character virtue of empathy’