Evolution of French handball teaching during the 1960s and 1970s: a new representation of team sports

Abstract

Our contribution highlights the transformations in the conception of handball and its learning during the 1960s and 1970s. We focus specifically on the evolution of the representation of team sports in France and abroad as well as changes in the orientation of physical practice in youth.
Methodologically, we identified documents about handball in France: articles from the Revue EPS, various technical-tactical works and the booklets published by the Direction Technique Nationale (i.e. the technical committee) of the french handball federation (FFHB). This corpus is completed by federal sources such as the FFHB official journal (Bulletin Fédéral) during the 1960s and 1970s, private archives, and other team sports documents, in particular related to the International Colloquium of Vichy in 1965, which initiated tactical thinking in team sports.
Analyses of these eclectic sources highlights a theoretical transformation of the conception of handball during the 1960s. Indeed, changes in the teaching and training of young players were progressively introduced. Consistent with Frédérich Mahlo’s and Léon Teodoresco’s works presented during the International Colloquium of Vichy, the technique is no longer a juxtaposition of isolated movements, but a technique ‘through action’ that a player could use in collective tactics. Consequently, the game is upgraded in lessons of sport and physical education by considering all the pieces of team sports ‘internal logic’, namely the ball, the target, partners, opponents, the space and the time. Therefore, learning situations in situ get increasing interest contrary to technical or ‘techno-centric’ lessons (i.e. focused on technique only and not on the player) that were still widely used in the 1960s.