Motor Learning Method Matters in Physical Education

The intended learning outcomes of Physical Education (PE) in the Netherlands demand PE teachers to enhance their students’ motor skills and motivational beliefs. Current developments in PE emphasize the importance of understanding how motor learning methods can be adequately adapted to the needs of individual students and whether, and how, digital applications can be implemented to support motor learning and motivational beliefs. Based on previous –predominantly laboratory– studies, it seems that differentiation with explicit and implicit learning methods and application of self-controlled video feedback could be promising learning methods to apply in PE. However, applications of these motor learning methods should be tested in experimental studies that are representative for PE. The aim of the first part of this thesis was to study the relative benefits of explicit and implicit learning methods on students’ motor learning, self-efficacy, and perceived competence in two experimental studies (Chapter 2 & 3) in PE. We examined whether, and how, the potential benefits were constrained by individual student characteristics, such as verbal working memory capacity (Chapter 2 & 3), visuospatial working memory capacity (Chapter 2), and propensity for conscious motor control (Chapter 3). In the first study, grade 7 and 8 primary school students with special educational needs practiced balancing a slackline. The second study included first year students of a mainstream secondary school who practiced a layup. In both studies, the students practiced either with explicit or with implicit guidance of a PE teacher. At a group level, practice with either explicit or implicit learning methods was similarly successful in improving motor skill and self-efficacy or perceived competence. The influence of the individual constraints in explaining the effectiveness of explicit and implicit learning was significant but smaller than anticipated, since we only found significant effects of verbal working memory capacity, and only in the study that was situated in special education schools. The aim of the second part of this thesis (Chapter 4 & 5) was to verify whether, and how, application of self-controlled feedback in PE benefits motor learning and motivational beliefs compared to adoption of video feedback without this self-control and compared to a traditional teacher-controlled setting without video feedback. In an experimental learning study, grade one secondary school students practiced shot-putting during regular PE lessons. In the two video feedback groups (self- and externally controlled), we incorporated a broader application of self-regulation compared to earlier laboratory studies (as described in Chapter 4). Although students improved their motor performance and self-efficacy, differences between groups arose only in motivational measures and not in motor learning outcomes. Students in the self-controlled video feedback group reported a higher perceived learning effect than students who practiced with externally controlled video feedback. Furthermore, self-efficacy improved significantly in the self-controlled video feedback and traditional teacher-controlled group, while no significant changes in the externally controlled video feedback group were found. Based on the findings of the studies presented in this thesis, I would recommend PE teachers to be aware that cognitive characteristics of the students may affect the effectiveness of explicit and implicit learning methods. They can adopt more explicit learning methods in children with a relatively high verbal working memory capacity and try to evoke a more implicit learning process in children with a relatively low verbal working memory capacity. In addition, self-controlled video feedback as applied in Chapter 5 seems promising for PE. More study is needed to obtain (further) delineation of individual- and task constraints that influence explicit and implicit learning and learning with self-controlled video feedback. Furthermore, a challenging task for future research is to examine how self-controlled video feedback influences self-regulatory processes during practice.