LEARN THE STAGES OF MOTOR LEARNING TO HELP STUDENTS SUCCEED MORE QUICKLY
By Kristen Quinn H
ave you ever driven to work, school, the ski hill – or some other place to which you have driven thousands of times – only to arrive and not remember specifically
what it took to get there? You ask yourself, “Did I stop at all the
red lights? Did I drive the speed limit? Did I use my turn signal?” You have done the drive so many times that much of it has become automatic. Your brain takes over, and driving requires less conscious thought than if it was an unfamiliar route. On the flip side, have you ever attended
a snowsports clinic, one in which the clinician taught something really cool? Inspired, you decide the next day you’re going to spend time working on this new movement on your own. However, as soon as you start trying to execute the move, you can’t remember how you did it in the clinic. You try a couple of times, yet cannot recreate the feel. Eventually, you get frustrated, give up, and convince yourself the clinician’s tip “just does not work for me.”
KNOW WHAT TO SAY… AND WHEN TO SAY IT As instructors, we want our students to have a quality learning experience, one in which they walk away having enjoyed the day and feeling like they made a positive change in their skiing or riding. If you ask instructors to recount their favorite lessons, most likely involve helping a student achieve an "aha!" moment – when the student understands the necessary movement, can reproduce the movement, and can “feel” what it does for their skiing or riding. But sometimes, the student doesn’t quite get there. You may explain a concept every way you can, and the student just does not comprehend. Or, you start to see the desired movement one day, but it’s back to square one the next. Even worse, the student gets so frustrated he or she quits trying. One element of being a good instructor is
knowing what to say and when to say it to maximize your students’ learning experience. It’s equally important to know when to back off and be quiet. But how do you decide
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which way to go? Understanding how people acquire new skills and where your students are in this learning process can help you develop a successful, individualized teaching plan to make learning a little faster, a little less frustrating, and yes, more fun.
MANAGE MOTOR LEARNING WITH FITTS AND POSNER MODEL In 1967, American psychologists Paul Fitts and Michael Posner presented a model of motor learning that even to this day helps take some of the mystery out of successfully coaching a student through change. Tey proposed that, even though the actual movements being taught may differ from task to task, the process by which people acquire them does not. Tis motor learning process can be broken down into three stages: cognitive, associative, and autonomous.
1. THE COGNITIVE STAGE: PROMOTE ‘YES!’ MOMENTS
Te first stage – cognitive – has also been called the verbal-visual phase. During this phase of the learning process, the student tries to get a mental picture of what the movement is. He or she asks a lot of questions and explores new movements through trial and error (mostly error). Movements are slow and calculated – with significant muscle tension throughout the body – and generally inefficient. Nothing about this stage “feels right.” You can help students in the cognitive stage
by using very clear and simple instructions: “I want you to move your foot like this.” Also make sure your demos are spot-on and match what you said. Most important, get your students moving. A child learns to walk by watching and doing, not by a parent or sibling talking them through it. Even though this is the “information-gathering” stage, the only way to learn a new movement skill is through movement. Feedback in the cognitive stage is mostly extrinsic (i.e., it comes from the instructor,
Instructors strive to produce "A-ha" moments -- when the student understands the necessary movement and can reproduce it. Some students don't quite get there right away.
KRISTEN QUINN
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