An introduction to the constraints-led approach to learning in outdoor education

Participation in outdoor education is underpinned by a learner's ability to acquire skills in activities such as canoeing, bushwalking and skiing and consequently the outdoor leader is often required to facilitate skill acquisition and motor learning. As such, outdoor leaders might benefit from an appropriate and tested model on how the learner acquires skills in order to design appropriate learning contexts. This paper introduces an approach to skill acquisition based on ecological psychology and dynamical systems theory called the constraints-led approach to skills acquisition. We propose that this student-centred approach is an ideal perspective for the outdoor leader to design effective learning settings. Furthermore, this open style of facilitation is also congruent with learning models that focus on other concepts such as teamwork and leadership

La enseñanza y el entrenamiento deportivo desde un enfoque «Constraint-Led». ¿Puede el retorno al futuro afrontar la idea de que «para jugar, lo primero son los fundamentos»?

Despite the continued popularity of Games Centred Approaches with tertiary level academics, the take-up by practitioners has been limited. In a recent survey of entry level HPE students undertaken at our university, 95% reported that they had received a predominantly traditional experience in school physical education lessons. This finding is in line with a common response when we engage with practitioners who strongly advocate the need for games players to learn the basics before they can play a game. In this paper we will present concepts and practical exemplars demonstrating a Constraint-Led Approach (CLA) to games teaching and coaching. We will show that adopting a CLA has the potential to provide practitioners with the tools to address this significant barrier and potentially enhance the adoption of games-based approaches. We will argue that the technique-tactics dichotomy is a redundant framework as the intentions and actions of learners is a function of their current action capabilities. However, we will also propose that games-based practitioners need to develop pedagogical practices that initially develop intra-individual-environment co-ordination before moving onto a more traditional focus on inter-individual-environment co-ordination (i.e., how teams organise to solve games-based problems). A key focus will be on the need to consider the mutuality of the individual and the environment and how backyard games allied to CLA methods can help practitioners design better games based programmes that will meet the needs of all games players irrespective of age or ability level.A pesar de la popularidad de los Enfoques Centrados en el Juego entre los académicos de educación superior, su aceptación por los enseñantes de niveles inferiores ha sido limitada. En un reciente sondeo llevado a cabo entre los estudiantes que iniciaban sus estudios de Salud y Educación Física en nuestra universidad, el 95% indicó que la EF recibida en su escolaridad había sido predominantemente tradicional. Este dato coincide con la respuesta habitual que nos encontramos cuando trabajamos con los enseñantes; éstos defienden la necesidad de que los jugadores adquieran los fundamentos antes de jugar a cualquier deporte. En este artículo, presentamos conceptos y modelos prácticos de enseñanza y entrenamiento deportivo basados en el Enfoque Basado-en-Condicionantes/Limitadores (Constraint-Led Approach –CLA–). Mostraremos que la adopción de este enfoque proporciona a los enseñantes herramientas que les permiten abordar dicho obstáculo, a la vez que incrementa las posibilidades de que adopten enfoques centrados-en-el-juego. Sostendremos que la dicotomía técnica-táctica es un marco inútil porque las intenciones y acciones de los aprendices son una función de sus capacidades para la acción. Sin embargo, explicaremos también que los enseñantes que siguen el enfoque basado-en-el-juego necesitan llevar a cabo prácticas pedagógicas en las que inicialmente desarrollen la coordinación intra-ambiente (i. e., cómo se organizan los equipos para resolver problemas basados-en-el-juego). Un punto clave será la necesidad de considerar la reciprocidad entre individuo y entorno, y el modo en que los juegos del patio y de la calle, aliados con los métodos CLA, pueden ayudar al enseñante a diseñar mejores programas basados-en-el-juego, que respondan a las necesidades de todos los jugadores, cualquiera que sea su edad o nivel de habilidad

The impact of nonlinear pedagogy on physical education teacher education students’ intrinsic motivation

Background: Providing motivationally supportive physical education experiences for learners is crucial, since empirical evidence in sport and physical education research has associated intrinsic motivation with positive educational outcomes. Self-determination theory (SDT) provides a valuable framework for examining motivationally supportive physical education experiences through satisfaction of three basic psychological needs: autonomy, competence and relatedness. However, the capacity of the prescriptive teaching philosophy of the dominant traditional physical education teaching approach to effectively satisfy the psychological needs of students to engage in physical education has been questioned. The constraints-led approach (CLA) has been proposed as a viable alternative teaching approach that can effectively support students’ self-motivated engagement in physical education. Purpose: We sought to investigate whether adopting the learning design and delivery of the CLA, guided by key pedagogical principles of nonlinear pedagogy (NLP), would address basic psychological needs of learners, resulting in higher self-reported levels of intrinsic motivation. The claim was investigated using action research. The teacher/researcher delivered two lessons aimed at developing hurdling skills: one taught using the CLA and the other using the traditional approach. Participants and setting: The main participant for this study was the primary researcher and lead author who is a PETE educator, with extensive physical education teaching experience. A sample of 54 pre-service PETE students undertaking a compulsory second-year practical unit at an Australian university was recruited for the study, consisting of an equal number of volunteers from each of two practical classes. A repeated measures experimental design was adopted, with both practical class groups experiencing both teaching approaches in a counterbalanced order. Data collection and analysis: Immediately after participation in each lesson, participants completed a questionnaire consisting of 22 items chosen from validated motivation measures of basic psychological needs and indices of intrinsic motivation, enjoyment and effort. All questionnaire responses were indicated on a 7-point Likert scale. A two-tailed, paired-samples t-test was used to compare the groups’ motivation subscale mean scores for each teaching approach. The size of the effect for each group was calculated using Cohen's d. To determine whether any significant differences between the subscale mean scores of the two groups was due to an order effect, a two-tailed, independent samples t-test was used. Findings: Participants’ reported substantially higher levels of self-determination and intrinsic motivation during the CLA hurdles lesson compared to during the traditional hurdles lesson. Both groups reported significantly higher motivation subscale mean scores for competence, relatedness, autonomy, enjoyment and effort after experiencing the CLA than mean scores reported after experiencing the traditional approach. This significant difference was evident regardless of the order that each teaching approach was experienced

Information-movement coupling in developing cricketers under changing ecological practice constraints

Changing informational constraints of practice, such as when using ball projection machines, has been shown to significantly affect movement coordination of skilled cricketers. To date, there has been no similar research on movement responses of developing batters, an important issue since ball projection machines are used heavily in cricket development programmes. Timing and coordination of young cricketers (n = 12, age = 15.6 ± 0.7 years) were analyzed during the forward defensive and forward drive strokes when facing a bowling machine and bowler (both with a delivery velocity of 28.14 ± 0.56 m s−1). Significant group performance differences were observed between the practice task constraints, with earlier initiation of the backswing, front foot movement, downswing, and front foot placement when facing the bowler compared to the bowling machine. Peak height of the backswing was higher when facing the bowler, along with a significantly larger step length. Altering the informational constraints of practice caused major changes to the information–movement couplings of developing cricketers. Data from this study were interpreted to emanate from differences in available specifying variables under the distinct practice task constraints. Considered with previous findings, results confirmed the need to ensure representative batting task constraints in practice, cautioning against an over-reliance on ball projection machines in cricket development programmes

How interacting constraints shape emergent decision-making of national level football referees

Here we sought to add to understanding of how and why football referees make decisions. A grounded theory methodology was undertaken to tap into the experiential knowledge of 9 national level referees (aged 23 to 35 yrs). Results indicated that referee decision-making actions were not predominantly aimed at traditional notions of decision-making accuracy (e.g., correctly identifying rule transgressions), but were instead focussed on meeting two overarching task goals: maintaining control and preserving the integrity of the competitive game. These objectives were, in part, informed by co-invested task outcomes which referees perceived that players, spectators, coaches and fellow referees had about 'how the game should be played'. Analysis revealed ‘four pillars’ used to meet these expectations, which were conceptual notions of: safety, fairness, accuracy and entertainment. These findings showed that: (i) referees co-construct the game with players, and that (ii), referee decision-making is an emergent process of the performer-environment relationship nested within task goals. It was concluded that: (i) decision-making accuracy should be viewed very much within the context of a competitive match, and (ii), distinctions should be made between types of bias and the complex strategies that referees use to manage the game

Defining cricket batting expertise from the perspective of elite coaches

Traditionally in sporting tasks, expertise has been thought of as the attainment of near flawless technical abilities. While contemporary views have become more holistic in nature, in certain sporting domains it is still not clear what exactly encapsulates expertise. This study sought to further understand the crucial and defining characteristics of cricket batting; a complex and difficult perceptual-motor skill with minimal error tolerance and severe time constraints. Eight elite cricket batting coaches, who themselves were former international or state level batsmen, were interviewed to identify characteristics of cricket batting expertise. From this, a conceptual model was developed in relation to an expert within their performance environment. This model highlights several key factors experts possess beyond just technical proficiency, such as self-awareness of their technical and tactical strengths in relation to the situation of the game; self-regulatory behaviours to problem solve performance challenges in-game; and psychological strategies such as between-ball routines to manage cognitions and emotions. The conceptual model of batting expertise described in this paper is designed to introduce an order to how these various skills, possessed by an expert batter, interact within the performance environment to interpret expert performance

Representation learning for unsupervised speech processing

Automatic speech recognition for our most widely used languages has recently seen substantial improvements, driven by improved training procedures for deep artificial neural networks, cost-effective availability of computational power at large scale, and, crucially, availability of large quantities of labelled training data. This success cannot be transferred to low and zero resource languages where the requisite transcriptions are unavailable. Unsupervised speech processing promises better methods for dealing with under-resourced languages. Here we investigate unsupervised neural network based models for learning frame- and sequence- level representations with the goal of improving zero-resource speech processing. Good representations eliminate differences in accent, gender, channel characteristics, and other factors to model subword or whole-term units for within- and across- speaker speech unit discrimination. We present two contributions focussing on unsupervised learning of frame-level representations: (1) an improved version of the correspondence autoencoder applied to the INTERSPEECH 2015 Zero Resource Challenge, and (2) a proposed model for learning representations that explicitly optimize speech unit discrimination. We also present two contributions focussing on efficiency and scalability of unsupervised speech processing: (1) a proposed model and pilot experiments for learning a linear-time approximation of the quadratic-time dynamic time warping algorithm, and (2) a series of model proposals for learning fixed size representations of variable length speech segments enabling efficient vector space similarity measures

Interpersonal angular relations between players constrain decision-making on the passing velocity in Futsal

The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of interpersonal interactions between players on the regulation of ball passing velocity in the team sport of futsal. For this purpose 28 sequences of play, in which passes were performed between outfield players, were selected from an elite futsal competition and analyzed using TACTO software. Relative angles between attackers and defenders were used to examine interpersonal coordination tendencies that emerged during performance. Results showed that ball passing velocity was constrained by the rate of change of the angle created by the following vectors: “ball carrier-ball receiver” and “ball carrier-ball receiver’s nearest defender”. Passing velocity remained the same when that angular value remained within a critical threshold range between ?18.16°/s to 11.26°/s. Beyond those critical threshold values, angular relations between participants seemed to enter into a new critical state requiring the emergence of a new passing velocity for performance success. The findings of this study allowed us to conclude that passing velocity during competitive performance in futsal was regulated by the rate of change of an angle established by the interaction between the ball carrier to ball receiver vector with the ball carrier to ball receiver’s nearest defender vector

Evaluating weaknesses of "perceptual-cognitive training" and "brain training" methods in sport: An ecological dynamics critique

The recent upsurge in "brain training and perceptual-cognitive training," proposing to improve isolated processes, such as brain function, visual perception, and decision-making, has created significant interest in elite sports practitioners, seeking to create an "edge" for athletes. The claims of these related "performance-enhancing industries" can be considered together as part of a process training approach proposing enhanced cognitive and perceptual skills and brain capacity to support performance in everyday life activities, including sport. For example, the "process training industry" promotes the idea that playing games not only makes you a better player but also makes you smarter, more alert, and a faster learner. In this position paper, we critically evaluate the effectiveness of both types of process training programmes in generalizing transfer to sport performance. These issues are addressed in three stages. First, we evaluate empirical evidence in support of perceptual-cognitive process training and its application to enhancing sport performance. Second, we critically review putative modularized mechanisms underpinning this kind of training, addressing limitations and subsequent problems. Specifically, we consider merits of this highly specific form of training, which focuses on training of isolated processes such as cognitive processes (attention, memory, thinking) and visual perception processes, separately from performance behaviors and actions. We conclude that these approaches may, at best, provide some "general transfer" of underlying processes to specific sport environments, but lack "specificity of transfer" to contextualize actual performance behaviors. A major weakness of process training methods is their focus on enhancing the performance in body "modules" (e.g., eye, brain, memory, anticipatory sub-systems). What is lacking is evidence on how these isolated components are modified and subsequently interact with other process "modules," which are considered to underlie sport performance. Finally, we propose how an ecological dynamics approach, aligned with an embodied framework of cognition undermines the rationale that modularized processes can enhance performance in competitive sport. An ecological dynamics perspective proposes that the body is a complex adaptive system, interacting with performance environments in a functionally integrated manner, emphasizing that the inter-relation between motor processes, cognitive and perceptual functions, and the constraints of a sport task is best understood at the performer-environment scale of analysis