The Impact of Design Thinking Strategy on Students' Learning of Basic Football Skills

Abstract

This research aims to identify the impact of design thinking strategy on students' learning of some basic football skills and to determine the differences in post-test scores between the experimental and control groups in learning these basic football skills. The researchers adopted an experimental approach with a pre-test and post-test design using two groups (experimental and control). The research population consisted of first-year students at Babylon Preparatory School for Mathematical Sciences during the 2025-2026 academic year, totaling 138 students distributed across three classes. The research samples were selected using simple random sampling. Fifteen students were chosen to represent the pilot sample, and ninety-two students were selected to represent the main sample, which was divided equally into two groups: an experimental group and a control group, each containing 46 students. Twelve educational units were implemented according to the design thinking strategy for learning football skills (passing, dribbling, and shooting). These units were delivered over a period of six weeks, with two units per week, each lasting 90 minutes. The five phases of the strategy were implemented. The research yielded several conclusions, including: Educational units designed according to the design thinking strategy contributed to the learning of some basic football skills (passing, dribbling, and scoring) among first-year students. Furthermore, the stages of the design thinking strategy (identifying the problem, defining it, generating ideas, building a model, and implementing it) increased student engagement and motivated them to think creatively while learning these skills.