Learning and teaching invasion game tactics in 4th grade: Introduction and Theoretical Perspective.

Journal of Teaching Physical Education.

by Rovengo, I. Nevett, M. & Babiarz, M.

Summary by Kimberly Manning (finally)

Issue/Focus:

The authors are analyzing, in detail, a teacher's ability to maximize learning by observing student behavior in the gymnasium. They want to know if how teachers teach correlates to how learners learn, and if methodology of teaching is effective in physical education. They are also exploring the effects of implicit and explicit learning and how each works in the classroom. They chose a fourth grade physical education class to observe and they chose the skills "cutting" and "lead passing" to evaluate the efficiency of teaching.

Reasoning:

They documented: (a) how fourth graders learned cutting to get free to receive a pass (b) how fourth graders learned to send lead passes and (c) how teachers and support staff taught the unit and how they structured the methods to respond directly to how children were learning.

By looking at the data, the researchers could analyze the success of teaching and the efficiency of learning. The researchers and the teachers met every day directly after the lesson for an hour to discuss the previous lesson. Each teacher brought specific information about the group they were in charge of and used direct language to communicate the dynamics of the group and the learning. The lessons were all taped so that further analysis could be done during the meetings.

Assumptions:

The research had some contradicting assumptions of student learning and the article attempted to interpret the conflict in terms of the learners. The research assumed: · It is important for students to be able to control the object before working on tactics. (Rink, French & Graham, 1996) · on the one hand, research has shown that student's learn movements, movement components of skills, environmental features of skills, and tactics of skills implicitly (without conscious awareness) through tasks without information being made explicitly to them.(Magill, 1998; Sweeting & Rink, 1999; Wulf & Weigeit, 1997) · On the other hand, explicit information can facilitate learning and initiate student learning. (Landin, 1994) · Our researchers offer that a combination of the two is best (e.g. to teach catchable passes, the relationship between the passer and the receiver was made explicit while the actions of the body parts were left to implicit learning)

Conclusion:

They found that learning was different for each student in each situation in every different environment with each new tool; in other words, there did not seem to be any consistency in which method worked best in each situation. The one consistency was, "children began to send more catchable passes and could explain the qualities of a catchable pass, but most did not understand that if they sent a poor pass and it was not caught, that this was due to the passer not the receiver; they weren't translating 'catchable' means 'me as a passer'". In other words, they learned the implicit information but could only regurgitate the explicit information without actually learning any of it.

Telling our students how to learn is an ineffective method. Setting up situations in which students can learn implicitly is a better way of organizing efficient learning. Explicit information should be restricted to only cues and reminders and should not be used as the main governing method of the lesson.

Teachers need to be involved in their student's learning. Each student learns differently in each new situation! In their class "affordances changed depending on the child and the situation; what was an affordance in one situation with one individual may not be so for another" (Gibson, 1986). Each time the teachers met at the end of the lesson, the plan for the following day was changed and added to in accordance with the way student's had reacted to the lesson that day. Not only were the students different from each other, they were different from any stereotyped fourth grade classroom with categorized entry and exit outcomes. The students as a group were different each day and in each situation.

Significant Information and Personal Comments:

This article directly relates to our discussions in class and on the list serve. Teachers need to set up situations where students can be responsible for their own learning. The only consistency the researchers found in their experiment was the inefficiency of explicit information. Students cannot learn what they don't take responsibility for.

Furthermore, we as teachers need to be involved with our students. We're lucky that in the education world today is much more accepting of different learning styles than it used to be. There are many resources on how to teach in a way that can "hit" most of the students in the class.

The article also reminds us that lesson plans are ever changing. While a plan is necessary, it has to be open to the diversity of the situation and the learners.