A Constraint-led Approach for P.E. Teachers

                                                            Photo by Joao Viegas on Unsplash

🚀 Article in 3 Sentences

1. Talks about some of the problems faced by PE teachers and how the CLA may be a way of addressing some of these
2. Discusses two key principles for teachers implementing the CLA: Understanding that a person's environment will influence their emotions, thoughts, and actions and that sled organisation can occur without instructions.
3. Finishes with an example of Renshaw’s rugby constraint and some comments from their own trainee PE teachers ab

🤝Impressions

Would be a nice article to introduce teachers and coaches to the CLA

👨‍🏫Who should read this?

Anyone from someone beginning with the approach to people that are very familiar with it could get takeaways from it.

🎾How Article will influence my coaching

• Individuals all posses the ability to self-organise their actions without instructions. Allowing players to self-organise will lead to players exploring different movement solutions that will usually lead to finding their own best solution. It’s important to understand however that self organisation is not always optimal.

📃Takeaways for coaches

• The theory of the CLA can underpin the design of games lesson to give teachers the best chance of satisfying the skill acquisition and psychological needs of every child in PE
• The goal of many children in PE is to avoid showing their incompetence and finding creative ways to avoid taking part. Forcing children to replicate perfect technique is going to set them up for failure from the off
• Giving students chances to achieve some initial success is crucial for skill learning. Freezing Degrees of Freedom is a common way for beginners to not fail at achieving their movement goal and having some initial success
• Solutions emerge through exploration and and then interaction of unique constraints. There is no one optimal way of solving performance problems
• A key focus of the CLA is that an individual is acting in a dynamic environment so when we are designing tasks we need to keep the key information used to control action present to enable the development functional perception-action couplings
• Constraints don’t act in isolation and changing a constraint may have a knock on effect on other areas

🥇Top Quotes

💡 In this article we will introduce the constraint-led approach to learning and demonstrate how the theory can underpin the design of games lessons ensuring that teachers give themselves the best chance of satisfying the skill acquisition and psychological needs of every child in P.E 

💡 This was an important lesson, and highlighted that some initial success was far more important than developing a proper technique; the big, beaming success smile was reward enough! 

💡 A second key principle underpinning ‘constraints’ is that individuals have the capability to self-organise their actions without instruction 

💡 For P.E. teachers, task constraints are particularly important as they can be most easily manipulated to channel the acquisition of specific coordination patterns and decision- making behaviours 

💡 It is worth noting at this point that adopting a constraints-led approach does not mean that technique is neglected per se. Rather there is an acknowledgement that because of the uniqueness of each individual the “textbook technique” mantra is ignored 

Link to full paper

https://eprints.qut.edu.au/91519/1/Ian%20Renshaw%20-%20proof.pdf

Reference

Renshaw, I., Moy, B., & Cook, M. (2015). A constraint-led approach for PE teachers. ACHPER Active and Healthy Magazine, 22(2), 17-20.