Team Invasion Games (TIG) such as soccer, field hockey and basketball hold a prominent position within Physical Education (PE) curricula in schools in Scotland. However, the Review Group on PE (Scottish Executive, 2004a) claim that fewer pupils in schools are able to relate to these “traditional” activities and that this may be one of the reasons why pupils choose to opt out of PE and physical activity. One of the aims of this thesis was to investigate the perceptions and experiences of pupils and teachers in relation to TIG within a Scottish urban state school and its three feeder primary schools. Findings indicated that both the teachers and the pupils in each school valued TIG but the value the pupils attached to TIG was contingent on their perception of competence in TIG. This thesis also investigated the ways PE teachers in each school taught TIG. Results found teachers predominantly used teacher-led, skill-focussed approaches, especially in the primary schools. None of the teachers indicated any awareness of alternative, game-based, pupil centred teaching approaches such as Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) (Thorpe & Bunker, 1982) or the Tactical approach (Griffin et al., 1997). The final part of the thesis involved an intervention where one teacher from the urban state secondary school was introduced to a game-based, pupil-centred teaching approach in order to teach basketball to a class of secondary 1 (S1) pupils (n=27; age 12-13 years). The effects this approach had on pupil learning were compared to another S1 class (n=25) who took part in their regular ‘skill-focussed’ basketball lessons. Findings indicated that the game-based class performed significantly better in 4v4 basketball games for decision making on-the-ball (p<0.05) and off-the-ball (p<0.001). The game-based group also acquired more sophisticated basketball knowledge and perceived their decision making competence to be significantly higher from pre to post intervention (p<0.01) compared to the skill-focussed group.