PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION

WHAT IS LEARNING?

• Learning implies a change in a person - a change in his method of performing a skill, practicing a habit, gaining ability in performance, or changing an attitude toward a particular thing.

• Learning implies a progressive change in the behavior of an individual.

• Learn to move and move to learn is given much emphasis in the teaching of physical education.

Elements needed to have a learning situation:

• motivated human being• the absence of a skill, knowledge, or other

ingredient that has not as yet been learned but which is desired by the human being

• an effort on the part of the human being to achieve the particular goal

Motivation a Basic Factor to

Effective Learning

The desire within a human being prompts him to seek a solution to his recognized need through an appropriate line of action. This line of action may require practice, effort, mastery of knowledge or other behavior in order to be successful in achieving the goal. The speed with which the goal is achieved will depend upon the degree to which the individual is motivated, his capacity, and the nature of the task to be performed. It is a truism that motivation is the heart of the learning process.

Motor Learning

Motor learning is usually defined as learning in which bodily movements plays a major part. These movements are patterns of responses to recognized stimuli. The stimuli (perceived) may be visual, kinesthetic, auditory or other sense stimuli, or a combination of the stimuli of several senses. The movement patterns used by a performer are not exact repetitions of the same act. What must be learned is a general pattern, not specific responses to exact repetitious stimuli.

Motor learning is generalized. It is a change in general form of behavior. The forming of a motor pattern is of a generalized nature but not the exact repetition of an original or specific response.

PREREQUISITES FOR LEARNING

Prerequisites

• maturation• intelligence• level of aspiration• reaction time

• Maturation• is the acquisition od physical, mental, and social

characteristics through the fulfillment of the innate nature of the individual.

• implies the readiness for the experiences normally expected at a given age.

• early mental development is associated with motor development.

• social maturity is reached at the age of 20 years.• maturity of growth and intelligence tended to be reached

by 17 years of age.

• Intelligence• the ability to reason or to understand.• intelligence is more than knowledge - the awareness of

facts - but it requires knowledge as a foundation.• it involves insight, the recognition of meanings and

relationships between the facts or elements in a situation.

• Judgment is a more complex ability to evaluate the worth, utillity, or relevance of the elements in a problematical situation; thus one can form opinion or make an intelligent decision.

• Understanding is a still higher intellectual ability to generalize and organize from the awareness of facts, their relationships, meanings, and importance for adapting to one's situation.

• Level of Aspiration• One's achievement is partly dependent on one's

aspiration or expectations for himself. His estimations of success are chiefly in light of this self-set goal and his past experiences.

• What one says he expects to attain and what he in reality expects are not always the same. Even what one would like to attain differ from his achievement. One's aspiration vary with the activity or the job. It can be said, however, that one's aspiration can be a strong motive for achievement.

• Reaction Time

• refers to the interval of time between the signal to respond (stimulus) and the beginning of the response, not including the time it takes to accomplish the task.

• reflects the lag in the functions of an individual's nervous system.

• when a response is new to an individual, the reaction time is usually slow, allowing great potential for improving reaction time. As the response is repeated many times, it should be remembered that a small change in reaction time may often have significant influence on performance. Reaction time is highly specific to a particular movement.

THEORIES OF LEARNING

The function of any theory is to provide a framework to explain under what conditions learning occurs, how knowledges and skills are retained, and in the case of performing motor skills, how one achieves the best performance possible.

Stimulus - Response Theory (Associative Theory)

• developed by Edward Thorndike.• learning takes place by conditioning a response to a

stimulus.• emphasizes that when an individual is stimulated to

perform an act or response and this act of response is accompanied by pleasure or satisfaction, he will remember and also repeat the act.

practice drill or habbit

Cognitive Theory of Learning (Field Theory)

• developed by Gestalt• focuses on the individual• an individual learns a task as a meaningful whole rather

than asa series of related parts• response is not the stimulus but to the learner's inner

perception of the reconstruction of the stimulus in terms of the whole situation.

• Jerome Bruner - discovery approach - teacher places the students in situations in which insight determines solution to the problem

Some ways to facilitate learning recommended by Gagne:

1. It is generally recognized that each learner has different prerequisites skills he attempts to learn a new activity. A complete diagnostic survey should be made of what the child can and cannot do.

2. The teacher should have available the prerequisites the child has not yet mastered.

3. Students do not need additional practice to ensure retention but should be subjected to periodic and spaced reviews.

Recent Views on Learning

• Robert Gagne - questioned the older concept of learning advanced by Thorndike

• He maintains that the older concept of establishing and strengthening connections in learning does not take into account events that transpire inside and outside the learner. He further states that in teaching the school subjects, repetition is not necessary in oreder to learn, and he suggests that prior learning of prerequisite skills or capabilities is the most important factor to insure learning.

BASIC PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING

Some basic principles of learning that have implications in the teaching of physical education:

1. The learner learns as a whole individual.

2. Learning is an active process.

3. The child learns in terms of his maturity, his experience background, and his own purposes.