Traditional Learning Methods
Skills can only be learned through trial and error.
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Normally in the process of examining skills, we tend to read books to get information about them or we watch others perform them, either in person or in videos. The effort is more in the nature of learning what others have to say about the skills, and not so much a matter of doing a critique of the skills themselves. The point of a critique, or scientific study would be to learn the true merits of the skills to learn how they might apply to you, personally, taking into account your physical characteristics, temperament, and the like. There is very little, if anything, in the way of scientific or formal studies of skills.
For training, likewise, we depend mainly on personal instruction or classroom lectures and demonstrations, with informal practice. (Too often, though, self-instruction is the only available mode of training, and this all too frequently turns into self-destruction, since for the most part we don’t know what we’re doing, particularly at the critical, early stage of learning, when the most damage can result.) Otherwise, the training takes the form of individual or group coaching. The most common approach is to start with a discussion of the skills. This may be followed or accompanied by demonstrating them. The students might then practice the skills -- usually under loosely controlled supervision. There is seldom, if ever, any deeper, more scientifically oriented training of the students. Our challenge is to develop better study and training techniques across the board, particularly since many skills are interdependent.
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Problems with Traditional Techniques
Although we can hardly avoid the traditional approach, we should at least recognize that it has its own weaknesses and problems. This may be overshooting the mark, but it seems to me that by adhering strictly to the standard, we are depending on the student's ability to understand what's being discussed or demonstrated. Differences in student background, social values, and language development, along with differences in the competence level in perceptual skills, can create significant barriers to learning. We don’t all bring the same background to the classroom. So care should be taken to present the material in a more effective way. Plus, the words we use to talk about skills are completely different from the skills themselves. So the conversion to performance is suspect from the very beginning. When you don't know where you're going, it's not easy to get there. The truth is not easily acquired.
In many sports, for instance, problems arise because there are inadequate practice facilities. In golf, for example, except for an occasional practice putting green, the so-called practice range is almost the only place we have to practice (the course itself is out of the question). Unfortunately, however, the practice range doesn't provide enough detail to properly represent the realities of the game and let you learn to make correct perceptual judgments. Only the golf course contains the true playing conditions and the real stimuli for shots, yet the course is not a place to practice. This is a catch-22 situation. In tennis, the problem isn’t as severe, because the practice arena is usually the playing arena. Even so, it’s difficult to arrange work sessions. You need willing participants and a good coach to observe the action and interrupt play to suggest corrections. Many other skills have similar practice problems.
There is also the matter of practice technique, which is seldom like doing the real thing. We commonly practice by repeating a skill. We do this, as we say, to develop technique. For example, we rehearse basketball hoop skills by shooting a hundred free throws or jump shots in a row. Or golf by driving a bucketful of balls into a large empty field. Or returning hundreds of tennis balls hit from an automatic machine server. Even solving a hundred math problems of a particular type. (I confess I’ve engaged in each of these practices myself, with limited success.)
I know of no strong alternative to the use of repeated trials to develop muscle memory, but there is risk in this mode of learning, because it occurs in an alien context. One objection is that we tend to establish supporting links with prior successive attempts. Each event comes to depend somewhat on the previous event as a guide or memory device. So the prior event in the sequence acts as a crutch; it becomes part of the dynamics of the practice context. But in the real context it's the real-world situation itself that provides the stimulus for your action, not some prior event. Practice should reflect that real read-react exchange. You have to respond directly and quickly to what is presented, not to what you did previously.
In tennis, practice in an alien environment (like against a wall) can inhibit development of both perceptual and motor components of the skills. For one thing, perception is the way we study the space of our environment and take its measure. Without a realistic setting in the practice environment, you can't do any useful studying and so can't improve your perceptual judgments. And because the timing of shots is so much different, you can't better your decision-making and reaction skills. I shudder to think of the hours I wasted at the flailing wall.
And there is the most difficult and potentially most damaging problem of all, which is to learn skills incorrectly and develop and reinforce bad habits while practicing. You can’t always tell from hitting a bad shot what the source of your error happened to be, at least not without more detailed feedback of the shot. Nor can you always tell from a good shot, what it was you did right, so you don’t really know what to reinforce. You must have good and detailed feedback to correct errors or reinforce good shots, and it isn’t usually available. You also have to understand what the feedback is telling you, and you don’t come by that easily, either. The different aspects are interrelated, and you normally start with a blank slate in each of them.
The upshot is that the road to the truth is full of potholes. There is no convenient way to practice and learn to develop the required skills, but especially the overlooked perception skills that you absolutely need in order to participate in any activity effectively.
In my view, this failing calls for using computer-based simulation as a means for learning the skills. If constructed properly, simulation can provide a wide variety of realistic settings and would allow for significant study, along with good feedback. By means of such studies you can break through the blank-slate barrier with precise knowledge of what to do. What's more, special constructions involving simulation could also be useful for training, particularly simulation observed as virtual reality. Using simulation you could learn to respond to more realistic conditions. But simulation has many problems of its own, not the least of which are the high cost of construction and the need for a wide range of technical expertise to build, maintain, and run the system.
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