Students learn about:

• Stages of skill acquisition
  • Cognitive
  • Associative
  • Autonomous
    
    
• Characteristics of the learner, eg personality, heredity, confidence, prior experience, ability
  
  
• The learning environment
  • Nature of the skill (open, closed, gross, fine, discrete, serial, continuous, self-paced, externally paced)
  • The performance elements (decision-making, strategic and tactical development)
  • Practice method (massed, distributed, whole, part)
  • Feedback (internal, external, concurrent, delayed, knowledge of results, knowledge of performance)
    
    
• Assessment of skill and performance
  • Characteristics of skilled performers, eg kinaesthetic sense, anticipation, consistency, technique
  • Objective and subjective performance measures
  • Validity and reliability of tests
  • Personal versus prescribed judging criteria

Students learn to:

• Examine the stages of skill acquisition by participating in the learning of a new skill, eg juggling, throwing with the non-dominant arm
• Describe how the characteristics of the learner can influence skill acquisition and the performance of skills
• Design a suitable plan for teaching beginners to acquire a skill through to mastery. The plan should reflect:
  • Appropriate practice methods for the learners
  • The integration of relevant performance elements
  • An awareness of how instruction may vary according to characteristics of the learner
  • How feedback will be used as learners progress through the stages of skill acquisition
• Develop and evaluate objective and subjective performance measures to appraise performance

Extract from PDHPE Stage 6 Syllabus. © 2009 Board of Studies NSW.