The Sport Education model is a sport-based curriculum and instructional model “designed to provide authentic, educationally rich sport experiences for girls and boys in the context of school physical education” (Siedentop, 2002, p. 409), helping them to become competent, literate, and enthusiastic sportspersons (Siedentop, 1994). According to Siedentop (1994) a competent sportsperson is defined as someone with sufficient skills to satisfactorily participate in games. An enthusiastic sportsperson participates and behaves in ways that preserve and enhance the sport climate and a literate sportsperson understands the values, rituals, rules and traditions associated with the sport.

Traditionally, Physical Education lessons have been characterized as a teacher-centred approach with a multi-activity curricula and short-units (i.e. no more then 10 lessons). Beyond that, students experience activities within Physical Education decontextualized from the institutionalized sport culture (Siedentop, 1994). Sport Education is a student-centred approach with longer units (18-20 lessons) designed to address this issue. To accomplish authentic experiences, Siedentop (1994) integrated six key features of institutionalized sport within this model where students gradually assume greater responsibility for their learning. In Sport Education students participate in longer seasons than traditional physical education units. These seasons are bounded by formal competition, which is interspersed with teacher and student direct practice seasons, namely through peer-teaching tasks (PTT). Students are members of teams (small and heterogeneous learning groups) and stay on that team for the entire season. Records are kept for purposes of motivation, feedback, assessment, and to build standards and traditions. A festive atmosphere marks the entire season, and a culminating event marks the end of that season and recognizes students’ accomplishes.

Notwithstanding, exacerbated competition of the sport culture setting where inclusion is not always considered is contrary to the ethic of Sport Education (Siedentop, 1998). In fact, all students play all the time, and appropriate competition through modified games and equipment is developed. Additionally, students have administrative and officiating roles other that just a player. This model is designed to offer a more complete sport experience that of being simply a player. While all students practice and participate in matches as members of their teams, they also have the opportunity to become coaches, referees, managers, statisticians, among others.

Research focused on Sport Education’s educational impact has suggested unequivocal results according to students’ personal and social development (enthusiasm, motivation, affinity, equity, etc.) (Hastie et al., 2011; Wallhead & O'Sullivan, 2005). These findings are expressed not only by students (Bennett & Hastie, 1997), but also by teachers’ perceptions (Alexander et al., 1996; Strickwerda-Brown & Taggart, 2001). However, although students have already recognized the potential of SE in developing their play/tactical awareness (Alexander et al., 1996), as well as empirical measurement (Hastie, 1998; Hastie et al., 2013; Mesquita et al., 2012; Pritchard et al., 2008), teachers still show some scepticism about its effectiveness (Alexander & Luckman, 2001) and to date, its impact on student’s improvements remains somewhat unclear (Hastie et al., 2011; Wallhead & O'Sullivan, 2007). The potential lack of effective student leadership and pedagogical content knowledge within PTT has been recognized as a possible reason for this scepticism (Wallhead & O'Sullivan, 2005). Nevertheless, the analysis of the dynamics of student interaction in the PTT as content taught and learned is still scant (Wallhead & O'Sullivan, 2007). Namely, the difficulties of the student-coach in identifying the technical and tactical errors of their teammates and providing feedback have not been examined. Therefore, the present study analysed the student-coach instructional effectiveness during the PTT, more specifically, the level of expertise in error diagnosis and feedback provided by student-coaches to their teammates.

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