Learning Sports And Physical Activity Skills
Teachers who understand how students learn have a distinct advantage: they can teach in ways that maximize student's learning while reducing the time needed to learn the new information. If you were told that next weekend you were to bowl a cricket match, what would you do? If you were North American, there is a good chance that the first thing you would do is find a cricket match in order to see what a bowler does. Perhaps you might seek out books on cricket or talk with people who know the sport. After you understood a bit about the game and the responsibilities and skills needed to bowl, you would most likely want to practice.
Practice would continuee until you felt relatively comfortable bowling with proper form and satisfactory outcome. Then comes the game day; you would, for better or worse, bowl your first cricket match. As you did for every motor skill you can perform, you just completed the three phases of learning a motor skill. Although you may not have mastered the cricket bowl, you likely learned to perform it at some level of proficiency. The steps in learning this skill were (a) understanding, (b) practice, and (c) performance.
Step 1: Understanding
Human movement skills hold two characteristics: sequential action and temporal execution. In other words, a skill represents a series, or sequence, of actions that are performed with mechanical efficiency in a smooth and progressive order, the results are usually a resonably performed motor skill. For students to learn these skills, teachers must focus the students' attention on both the critical movements in the skill and the smooth transition from one movement to the next.
In walking, a person swings the left arm forward while bringing the right foot forward. As the left arm reaches full extension, the right leg is extended and the right heel contacts the ground. Next, the arm begins to move back toward the body as the bodyweight is shifted from the heel to the ball of the foot. If any of those actions are performed inefficiently (e.g, left arm fails to come fully forward or the outside of the foot contacts the ground before the heel) then the skill isn't being performed efficiently or accurately. Similarly, if any of the movements are performed out of sequence (e.g, the front of the foot contacts the ground first and the is shifted to the heel), the skill isn't being performed well.
When learning a new skill or refining a previous learned skill, the learner must clearly understand the movements to be performed and the timing of those movements. Put in another way, the serial components of the movement task must first be understood before the learner can deliberately practice the skill to mastery. Students need to form a picture in their minds of the essential components that make up the skill and the order in which those activities are performed. For example, the student doesn’t understand that a forward step with the opposite foot the throwing arm is necessary for throwing a ball, there is little chance he will ever be able to throw a ball successfully enough for any ball game.
In this stage of skill learning, teachers need an arsenal of knowledge and activities that may help students better understand the skill. The more a teacher knows about the subject matter, the better is he/she able to teach it. For tasks new to the learner, a teacher may begin the lesson with an introductory explanation of the skill. Demonstrations are an effective strategy for getting someone to understand the mechanics of a movement. Asking students to describe their conceptions of the skill in another method of helping them gain a better understanding. Videos, movies, pictures, and other visual aids also convey the essential information regarding the skill and its performance. Sometimes teachers can find effective blends or combinations of these strategies.
Regardless of the presentation strategy, you must keep two factors in mind when helping students understand the skill being learned: (a) convey only a few points to the student at a time (pick the most essential), and (b) make those points precise, concise, and memorable. A problem common to many beginning teachers is the tendency to “over-teach”. That is, they overload the student with so much information that the student cannot possibly remember the important points to carry into the practice phase of learning. Effective teachers, in contrast, identify the skill components most needed to be mastered given the learner’s present skill level and ability. With a concise and appropriate picture of skill performance firmly rooted in the student’s mind, he/she is now ready for the next phase of skill learning: practice.
Step 2: Practice
Teachers often believe their job is completed after they explain or demonstrate a skill, but nothing could be further from the truth. Once the students understand what needs to be done, a crucial step in the learning process now begins. Students must practice what they know until the skill is mastered. Without practice, a skill simply can’t be learned, or at least not retained for long. Michael Jordan didn’t learn to play basketball because someone gave him a good explanation or demonstration. He learned to play basketball by spending a great many hours practicing putting the ball through the hoop. A good teacher recognizes the importance of adequate, purposeful practice for learner success and will not only search for appropriate practice activities but also attempt to find ways to motivate and reinforce the learner during practice. The importance of practice and feedback for learning and improving cannot be overstated.
Step 3: Performance
Combining sufficient understanding of a skill with a healthy amount of practice prepares a person for the final learning stage: Performance. At this stage, the skill is executed in a game or activity. When executing the skill, the student should focus on the purpose of the activity and not the process. In other words, when stepping up to the free throw line in basketball or into a starting block, the student should focus on making the shot or getting to the finish line , not the technique or mechanical aspects of performance.
Because results are more important than technique during performance, the performer should no longer think about the skill itself but rather rely on the skill having become a comfortable habit through long hours of practice. If a player taking a penalty shot in the final minutes of an important soccer game thinks more about where he is going to plant his non-kicking foot than about his target, it’s likely he will get a good foot plant but unlikely that the ball will hit the back of the goal. Although thinking about one or more aspects of a skill is vital for understanding and practicing, when it comes to game performance, students must trust that they’ve sufficiently learned the skill and just let it happen as a natural response to the game or activity.
When a skill is being performed in a game, sport, or activity, conscious thought is replaced by automaticity – that is, the skill is being performed from motor memory and not by conscious control. In fact, thinking while performing a motor skill can be detrimental to the performance, what people who study motor skill learning call “paralysis by analysis”. Consider how awkward walking would be if you consciously attempted to recall and control every aspect of a step. Automaticity provides the aesthetic linkage that permits maximum control and power to be combined into a smooth, progressive, cumulative action.
For most motor skills, this phase of learning occurs after long hours of practice. Extended and deliberate practice leads to familiarity with the skill that allows the learner to detect performance errors and to make corrective adjustments. One distinguishing characteristic of the automaticity stage in skill learning is consistency: There is little variation from one performance to the next. The student no longer concentrates on the aspects of the skill performance and is now free to concentrate on the conditions of performance. For example, a tennis server no longer needs to carefully consider the grip, toss, or follow-through during the performance and can now focus on where and how she/he wants the ball to go.
As learning progresses, the student or athlete performs the required skills accurately and repeatedly with fluidity, elegance, and ease. This unconscious attention to the mechanics of the skill has the added benefit of allowing the student to focus on other information pertinent to the skill performance (e.g. Time on the clock, gaps in the opponent’s defense, and changes in wind direction). Extensive hours of practice are an important prerequisite for developing the automatic aspect of top-level performance. Being able to perform the skill does not, however, signal the end of learning. A student can always learn to perform better, and if practice isn’t continued, it’s unlikely the performance level will remain very high. This last step in learning simply means that the skill can be performed without conscious effort, leaving conscious thought for more immediate concerns of the game or activity. Continued improvement in skill performance depends on increased understanding and additional practice. In other words, students must continually reenter step one to get new information, step two to practice, and step three to perform the skill to improve and develop as a player or participant.
Skill learning is a cyclic process: learning always continues. It is the rare student who can hear an explanation or see a demonstration, practice once or twice, and have the skill mastered. For the majority of learners, learning a skill is a gradual process that requires continual information and repetitive practice. Once the student masters the fundamentals of the skill, it becomes a matter of refining and improving as the student moves along the road to mastery. A learner, therefore, needs to constantly revisit each phase of learning – understanding, practice, and performance.
Excerpt from Teaching Sport and Physical Activity (Paul G. Schempp)
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