In basketball education, the development of decision-making ability is a critical determinant of performance, complementing students’ acquisition of technical skills and tactical knowledge. Accordingly, enhancing learners’ comprehension of diverse offensive and defensive strategies constitutes a central pedagogical aim in cultivating decision-making competence. Prior research suggests that flipped learning (FL) environments afford students expanded opportunities for basketball practice. Pre-class videos and digital resources, in particular, are frequently used to support the self-regulated learning of technical skills and tactical concepts. However, students’ decision-making in dynamic game situations remains constrained by the fixed visual perspectives typically provided in conventional instructional videos. Furthermore, heavy reliance on instructor guidance and feedback during in-class activities may limit the development of learners’ independent analytical reasoning and autonomous judgment. Collectively, these constraints may hinder the progression of higher-order cognitive abilities, including problem-solving, critical thinking, and decision-making. To address these challenges, the present study introduces a Spherical Video-Based Virtual Reality Flipped Learning approach (SVVR-FL), which is designed to enable students to observe game scenarios from multiple viewpoints and complete corresponding problem-solving tasks. Within this framework, students engage in group-based identification of basketball strategies to enhance their situational tactical decision-making competence. A quasi-experimental design was employed, involving 70 university students enrolled in two basketball courses. Participants were assigned to two groups: 33 students in the SVVR-FL group and 37 students in the traditional FL group. Interview data indicated that the SVVR-FL approach yielded broader pedagogical benefits, which included not only cognitive gains but also enhanced collaborative engagement and deeper situational tactical reasoning. While the traditional FL approach was similarly linked to improvements in learning outcomes, its impact appeared more narrowly focused on individual-level cognitive development. Furthermore, quantitative analyses demonstrated that the SVVR-FL approach significantly outperformed traditional FL in enhancing students’ situational tactical decision-making performance. No significant effects were observed, however, on critical thinking or problem-solving dispositions.
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