Developing students' creative problem‐solving strategies in the context of blended sports education

Abstract To win in sports competitions, in addition to excellent sports skills, coping strategies in the face of various competition situations are also critical for success. Therefore, cultivating students' diverse, creative and flexible tactical application abilities is an important educational goal in sports training. However, in the online component of blended training in sports, conventional instructional approaches are teacher‐centred and hardly ever adopt the consolidated approaches to creative problem solving used in other fields. This results in limited opportunities for students to discover the problems and apply their creative thinking tendencies for problem solving. Hence, the present study proposed applying a consolidated creative problem‐solving approach in the online phase of blended training initiatives in order to cultivate students' higher‐order thinking skills. To verify the effectiveness of this approach, a convenience grouping‐based quasi‐experiment design was adopted. A 10‐week teaching experiment was conducted in a billiards training course. A total of 79 students were recruited in this study; they were divided into one CPS‐BL group with 41 students and one conventional blended learning (C‐BL) group with 38 students. The results showed that the CPS‐BL approach could significantly enhance students' billiards striking strategies, creative thinking tendencies and problem‐solving skills. Practitioner notes What is already known about this topic In many sports, like billiards, physical skills are generally not enough; higher‐order thinking skills are also needed to succeed. Blended learning in these sports generally entails teacher‐centred approaches in the online component and practice in the f2f component. This provides students with limited opportunities to develop their creative problem‐solving skills. There are consolidated methods to develop students' strategic skills though creative problem solving, but these are seldom applied in sports. What this paper adds The application of a creative problem‐solving approach to physical education is proposed. An experiment was conducted in a university billiards course to evaluate the impacts of the proposed approach. The approach enhanced students' billiards striking strategies, problem‐solving skills and creative thinking. Implications for practice and/or policy of creative problem‐solving‐based blended learning has great potential for promoting students' problem‐solving skills and creative thinking. Implications for practice and/or policy Creative problem solving‐based blended learning has great potential for promoting students' problem‐solving skills and creative thinking. The findings of this study provide a reference for future endeavours in designing blended physical learning.