The Learner: Pre-instruction Considerations

1. The Learner: Pre-instruction Considerations Chapter 6

2. Effective Communication • In your future professional path: • With whom will you need to communicate? • When will you communicate in the learning process? • Why will effective communication be important?

3. Effective Communication • Communication is the greatest single factor that impacts a learner’s ability to understand new concepts and achieve movement proficiency • Messages must be clear, concise, & match the developmental level of the learner • However, learners are all unique in how they receive new information and make sense of it

4. Effective Communication • The practitioner must provide meaningful instructions that take into account: • Learning styles • Individual differences • Level of motivation

5. Learning Styles • Individual preference for receiving and processing new information • Greater achievement when instructional and learning styles match • Dunn and Dunn’s model (1975) • Processing preference • Global vs. analytical learners

6. Global Learners • Need to see the big picture first then focus on the details • Show the whole skill before breaking it into pieces to learn

7. Analytical Learners • Do better with sequential instruction that culminates in the final product • Breaking the skill into pieces and then combining to the whole is best

8. Perceptual Mode • Modal strength • Preferred perceptual mode through which a learner takes in information • Four perceptual modes: • Visual • Kinesthetic • Analytical • Auditory

9. Examples of Cue Words and Strategies

10. Accommodating Learner’s Style • Utilizing only one presentation style denies learners comparable opportunities to understand the information presented • Know your learning style – tends to influence teaching style • Use eclectic approach when working with groups

11. Practical Application • Choose any skill and describe your teaching strategies that would accommodate all four styles of learning • How would you help a learner in PT? • In the classroom? • In the training room? • In the cardiac rehab facility?

12. Review Question • If effective communication occurs when messages are clear, concise, and match the level of the receiver, what is the significance of matching presentation style and learning style? • Pick two learning styles and list cues words and teaching strategies to match the learning styles.

13. The Learner • The learner is the central focus for the practitioner, therefore the practitioner must consider: • Present stage of learning • Learning style • Past experiences • Motivation • Abilities

14. Past Experience & Transfer • Transfer • When the learning of a new skill or its performance under novel conditions is influenced by past experience with another skill or skills • From the learning setting to a target context/new environment • PT lab to the home • Doing a target skill under a different situation • Taking a jump shot practiced in isolation to doing the jump shot over an outstretched arm of a defender • Instruction in basic skills to later be combined to form more complex skills • Teaching elementary students how to throw to later be combined to throw to a player at a base • Making a difficult task easier for initial practice: combined serial skills in a skating routine would be separated for initial practice

15. Types of Transfer • Positive • Facilitates • Negative • Hinders • Zero • No effect

16. Theories of Transfer • Identical elements theory • The more identical elements shared by two skills, the greater the positive transfer from one to the other • Transfer appropriate processing theory • Positive transfer would be expected when practice conditions require learners to engage in problem-solving processes similar to those experienced during the criterion task (or authentic situation)

17. Fostering Positive Transfer • Analyze the skill • Examine the following to determine the degree of similarity between two skills: • Fundamental movement pattern • The strategic and conceptual aspects of the game or task • Perceptual elements: what visual search strategies are similar? Walking down a busy street vs. walking down a clinic hallway • Temporal and spatial elements: similarities in how skills are done through time and space

18. Fostering Positive Transfer Cont. • Determine the cost-benefit tradeoff: unless similarity between skills, no sense doing the activity • Point out similarities and differences: how is a volleyball serve similar to a tennis serve? • Make sure that skills referred to have been well learned: transfer won’t occur if the analogy isn’t well learned

19. Fostering Positive Transfer Cont. • Use analogies: helps create a mental image • Maximize similarities between practice and performance/competition • Consider the skill level of the learner: beginners transfer more readily than intermediate or advanced learners

20. Assessing positive transfer • After instruction, design a transfer test that allows learner to apply the content taught • Experience with one skill to learning another skill (e.g. Bench press on Cybex machine to Dumbbell Bench press) • Performing a skill in one situation to performing it in another context (e.g.practice setting to game setting)

21. What causes negative transfer? • When an old stimulus requires a new but similar response • Change in spatial location of movement • Heat/AC switch in different location on a new car • Change in timing characteristics of the movement • Learning how to hit from one coach and then having another coach tell you to hit a different way • Changing the rhythmic pattern of the skill • Negative transfer effects are temporary; more often seen in early stages of learning

22. Why do negative transfer effects occur? • Practice develops a specific memory representation • This representation is the preferred way to perform (deep basin) • When a familiar situation requires a slightly different movement, problems occur (phase shift is hampered) • Another reason is cognitive confusion

23. Practical Application • How would you maximize positive transfer and minimize negative transfer in a learning situation?

24. Motivation to learn • Highly motivated learners: • Devote greater effort to learning a task • Are more conscientious during learning sessions • Are more willing to practice for longer periods (even outside of the learning setting)

25. Motivation • Most motor learning situations have an achievement orientation towards goals • Success is judged by: • Improvements to performance • Improvements in performance when compared to performance of others

26. Ways to increase motivation • Explain why it is important to learn the skill • How is this skill relevant in daily life? • Fitness benefits? Use in ADLs? Health benefits? • Create a positive, supportive learning environment that is challenging yet realistic • Provide opportunities for success • Involve learner in the goal-setting process • Construct goals that are relevant and process oriented

27. Abilities and Learning • The underlying abilities inherited by the learner will predispose them to success or difficulty in various learning situations • High levels of underlying abilities will predispose to better chance of success • For those who do not have the underlying abilities: • Performance goals should be realistic, perhaps less rigorous • More specific practice opportunities towards a goal should be provided

28. Practical Application • How might you motivate an injured athlete, a person doing rehab, a ninth grader who doesn’t like PE, to participate in the learning situation? • Why is motivation a pre-instruction consideration? • Why should underlying abilities be considered during pre-instruction planning?