Education requires more than the ability to retain and recite facts and figures. The days of the stern task master, focused on route memory are well behind us. Educators have many roles, many tasks to perform on behalf of learning. Movement professionals in rehabilitation and sports performance are educators. What can the fields of academic learning teach to the movement professionals about creating motor learning? Years of educating has produced clarity about the work to be done and who is accountable for what in the student-instructor relationship. Clarity on the roles and skills required for both will produce the dynamic required for needed learning and for the desired changes on behalf of the learner. For educators, it is important to know also what the student is accountable to produce.
It is not the job of the educator to take the action for the student. And it is certainly not the role to do the learning for the student. Clearly, it is not the job to motivate the student. Nor is it the job to organize the student’s choices for them. There are a number of jobs that are not the movement professionals, and these are a few of them. These are the realm of the student.
The work to be done as an educator is to organize the environment to support the learning of the student. Making assessments about the state of learning, and making choices about presentation of information, all are critical to developing a successful change effort.
The successful movement educator has not only a grasp of the facts and figures, the knowledge base, but also how to arrange that knowledge into focused movement choices. A Physical Therapist for example is not responsible to do the exercises, learn the movements, and choose to move differently for the patient. It is the role of the PT to setup the plan of care and subsequent treatment lessons in a way that promotes not only cognitive learning, but motor learning. And just as professional educators can attest to, more than just a grasp of knowledge is required for real learning to occur.
This can be news to the professional who has viewed him or herself as solely a fixer, a mechanic, a changer of muscles and joints. More likely the movement professional sees the need but was not educated as an educator and as a result is not aware of the curriculum building process, the lesson development approach and the impact that structuring learning has on long term acquisition of skill. A well-developed curriculum provides the framework that I described above. Providing footholds and hand holds for exploration of knowledge and development of skills.
Educators are also are performers, as a presenters of information. To make it interesting for the audience of learners it is important to engage with the learner, to focus the attention. Learners that are clear about how the information will impact their lives and how the information, skill, aptitude is on behalf of something that matters to them are interested. Presentation that includes the learner, asking them to interact with them as the information is presented; asking for their feedback promotes higher levels of the brain. Content that is more contextual for them based on my understanding of their backgrounds and experiences brings in prior learning that can build upon.
The same is true when working with a patient or client. Promoting the clear understanding of how this movement skill impacts their life and how improving their movement choices will provide them more involvement in life as they desire.
What really draws the learner in is to have the cause and effect explained, to have a deeper insight into how apparently disparate parts of information impact each other. Our minds are relationship seeking, cause and effect driven structures. Given the opportunity, a mind will gnaw on a problem, seek to understand what happened and keep chewing away on a problem like a dog chewing on a bone until the mind is satisfied that it understands. Another way to look at this inherent ability of the mind to seek understanding is the behavior associated with a state of not knowing. With enough plausibility the mind will create false, fictitious explanations to release the tension associated with not knowing. Although not true the mind will hold on to that explanation, again like the dog protecting its bone. Ever try to take a dogs bone away…probably was the last time you tried. However, create a new structure for the mind to explore cause and effect and begin to let go of old ideas as it reaches out to new hand holds on the structures and real learning can take place.
In the next article the students mind and tendencies when learning are discussed. It takes more than just understanding what is to be taught to the student, to produce a successful outcome. The values supporting this approach is a desire to see the learner involved in their life as they choose, and to have the capacity to perform at a level that matters to them. In this way the educator impacts more than just the learner, but through extension, the learners’ impact on the community.