CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Sport Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1610750
A socio-constructivist framework for tactical development in team sports: fostering critical thinking through collaborative learning
Provisionally accepted
- 1Tecnológico de Antioquia, Medellín, Antioquia, Colombia
- 2University of Antioquia, Medellín, Antioquia, Colombia
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In team sports, tactical success depends not only on players' individual skills but fundamentally on their ability to engage in meaningful social interactions and shared understanding. This study introduces the Tactical Program based on Critical Thinking (TPCT), a pedagogical framework grounded in socio-constructivist theory, aiming to foster the development of higher-order thinking skills essential for tactical decision-making. TPCT emphasizes processes such as interpretation, analysis, inference, evaluation, explanation, and self-regulation through guided reflection and collective dialogue. Rather than imposing predefined tactical solutions, the program promotes collaborative construction of strategic responses based on reflective discussion and mutual support among teammates. Coaches using the TPCT are provided with structured guidelines to design training sessions that prioritize communication, reasoning, and joint problem-solving. By fostering an environment where knowledge is co-constructed, the TPCT contributes to more autonomous, context-sensitive, and socially informed tactical behaviour. This approach offers promising applications across various team sports, reinforcing the role of critical thinking in enhancing team coordination and intelligent gameplay.
Keywords: Socio-constructivist pedagogy1, Tactical decision-making2, Critical thinking in sport3, collaborative learning4, Game-based coaching5 Socio-constructivist, Critical Thinking, team sports, TACTICS
Received: 12 Apr 2025; Accepted: 15 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Gaviria Alzate, Valencia-Sánchez and Arias. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Samuel Jose Octavio Gaviria Alzate, Tecnológico de Antioquia, Medellín, 011421, Antioquia, Colombia
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