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In order for students to learn and understand concepts, they must direct their attention to the teacher while instructions are being given.  A student’s attentional focus varies depending on its width and direction.  The width can be either broad or narrow, and the direction can be either external or internal.  An example of a teacher displaying broad external attentional focus in a physical education setting is observing the class play a game of volleyball.  The teacher can display narrow external attentional focus by shifting focus to an individual player while they serve a volleyball to assess their serving skill.  The player can display a narrow internal attention focus by performing a cognitive self-check on what the steps and cues are to serve the volleyball.  The player can also display a broad internal attentional focus by planning in their head where they need to position themselves on the court to have the best strategy to defend the incoming serve.

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In physical education, there are a number of skills that require speed as well as accuracy.  Paul Fitts developed what is now known as Fitts’ Law, which predicts that the time required to rapidly move to a target area is a function of the ratio between the distance to and the width of the target.  With this law, there is a tradeoff that occurs.  If you want to decrease your movement time, you do so by increasing the likelihood of accuracy problems.  An example of this tradeoff in the physical education setting is passing a soccer ball to a teammate.  In order to complete a successful pass, it must be on target to the teammate and moving at a speed so that the player can successfully trap the ball and continue playing.  However, in a game type setting, there may be a defender trying to intercept the pass.  Should the passer try and kick the ball harder and faster so the defender does not intercept the pass? Or should the passer try and take more time to kick the ball to deliver an accurate pass.  Fitts law implies that an inverse relationship occurs between the difficulty of the movement and the speed at which it can be performed.  Therefore, people generally tend to maintain accuracy by decreasing speed.  This is evidenced in our cup-stacking lab.  The slower one stacks the cups, generally speaking fewer errors will occur.  When one stacks cups at a rapid rate, there is a greater opportunity for errors to occur.

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As a teacher, it is my hope that students try and learn as much as they can from my physical education classes.  By the end of my unit plan, my goal is that my students have achieved their learning objectives of the unit and can remember them when asked to recall them later on in the year.  However, forgetting does occur with everyone.  Two causes of forgetting are proactive and retroactive interference.  An example of proactive interference in physical education classes is transitioning from performing a forward pass in a flag football unit to now performing a rugby pass in a rugby unit.  A football pass is an overhand motion, where the pass travels forward to a target in front of you.  However, rugby passing is an underhanded pass, and the direction of the pass is backwards and to the side of you to a teammate.  Students might forget about the rules of rugby passing on the first day of the unit if they had just been involved in a 6-week flag football unit.  An example of retroactive interference in a physical education setting is when a teacher start to learn the names of their students during the first class period of the first day of school.  Then, a new batch of students comes in during the second-class period of the day, and the teacher has a problem remembering the names of the first class.

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If I as a physical education teacher know why transfer occurs, I can use this to set up practice scenarios in my lessons that can help maximize the transfer.   The identical elements theory can help explain why positive transfer occurs. If two tasks share similar components, there is a better chance of positive transfer to occur.   When comparing two similar skills, it is important to look at the component parts of the skills.  Component parts refer to the observable movement patterns during the performance of the skill.  Using an example of hitting a tennis ball and hitting a baseball, both skills require similar observable movement patterns (rotation of trunk, extension of arms and turn of wrist, transfer of weight).  According to the identical elements theory, it would result in a positive transfer.  Component parts also refer to elaborated automatisms.  Elaborated automatisms are corrections we make during performance of a skill to help coordinate the forces that we exert during the performance.  In an example of throwing a baseball and throwing a football, the muscular forces used to rotate our trunk, bring the ball up to our head, and extend our arm and release toward the target are both very similar.  This would result in a positive transfer.

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Motor Abilities and Individual Differences

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Motor Abilities and Individual Differences

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The concept of motor abilities and individual differences is very relevant to me as I progress into my physical education teaching career.  Abilities defined from our lecture material is: “A general trait or capacity of the individual that is a determinant of a person’s achievement potential for the performance of specific skills.”  Teaching different movement patterns as well as sport and fitness skills is one of my main job requirements as a physical education teacher.  It is interesting to note that with motor abilities, they are unmodifiable by practice.  However, skills are modified by practice.  This means that with practice on different skills such as striking a tennis ball or kicking a soccer ball, improvements can be made by students.  As a teacher, it will be important to note that there are limiting factors to improvement, such as body configuration, emotional or personal influences, or the motor ability of the student.  As a teacher, I will have to devise lesson and unit plans that help students improve on their skills, while taking into account that not all students have the same level of natural ability.