Structures and Ecology: Linear facilitation processes vis-à-vis non-linear developmental processes.

Is it possible to have a linearly focussed structure together with a realisation of non-linear development of the learner? I don’t think I like so much all these descriptors with the word linear (or non-linear) pegged to it. Linearity or the lack thereof suggest a unidimensional process, with temporal (chronological) urgency or not. This type of versus discussions puts many off almost immediately, especially those in teaching where everything is based on neat time-based structures. Structures by definition are pretty fixed and always starting from clear beginnings, going through fixed processes and inevitably always ending with a common accepted end. This is great, this is how we have survived for so long. The challenge now is to fill up the flexible spaces in between the structures with realities of how learners learn. The structure may have a strong temporal focus but the gaps in between can accept multi-dimensional (multi layered) processes that are unique to individuals but follow universal laws of existence between the agency (the learner), the environment (including people, society, etc.) and the task. I will include one more important element; living expectations.

The below was a struggle to write. Definitely, the longest I have taken to write an article for my blog. As I teach less towards year-end, administrative work pile up, thoughts become preoccupied with non-direct teaching matters. It was clear that reflective mood is directly proportional to how much on-the-ground teaching and observation is happening, at least for me. It reached a point where I wondered what really I have accomplished in decades of teaching Physical Education (PE) or if I even have been teaching at all. Very good friends put things into perspective for me and all of it is basically “if you cant beat them, join them” type of advice. For the millionth time, I wish I were in an industry/field with much clearer outcomes, half wishing in jest. Writing for me is like the canaries to miners of the past. Once it dies, there is a chance I have lost the balance in teaching.

A paper I read recently, (Moy, Renshaw, & Pavey, Impact of the constraints-led approach on students’ motor performance, 2020), looked into gathering more empirical evidence to show the benefits of an Ecological Dynamic (ED) based Constraint Led Approach (CLA) informed by principles of Non-Linear Pedagogy (NP). Putting the different bodies of thought, ED, CLA and NLP, in the same sentence took me some time to reread and even then I am not sure I got the true (or accepted) relationship right personally, in the direction of what the well-known authors in the areas try to do. I feel forced. Is fidelity to processes and approaches, such as those described above, taking away focus from the learner?

The main researchers in these areas (CLA, NP, etc.) are all mainly within the same circle, leveraging on each other to produce much papers and textbooks that is valuable for our understanding. Their work is probably not complete in its theories or practical application and do require much effort by any reader, if there is interest in exploring it for teaching.  My own interest in Ecological Dynamics approaches when looking at how we interact with the world in our needed actions daily definitely takes up quite a bit of the time I have that is dedicated to professional development outside of the business of being a teacher leader on a day-to-day basis. It is not easy.

One of my areas of responsibilities is to discuss where PE has taken us over the year with individual teachers in my department. A colleague mentioned Games Concept Approach (a Singaporean understanding of Teaching Games for Understanding, TGFU) and NP in the same thought when describing at possible ways of looking at PE. In the discussion that follows, I felt there was an overwhelming desire to bring PE to a level that is beyond the comfort, practical level of that teacher. The same feeling I sometimes have when trying to make sense of how to move forward in the field of PE. Many a times, I question the need to do that when expectations seems to tell us to be status quo in treating PE mainly as activity sessions. This expectation can come from internal to the school and external stakeholders, including PE teachers ourselves. During this terrible COVID period, I am very sure there are many of us out there feeling very helpless as the main component of social interaction in traditional PE is taken away, relegating movement away from the context we are used to our whole teaching lives.

Which led me to reflect on what exactly do we want from our learners when they leave the schooling system, other than hoping for a neat linear extrapolation of what we expect of them while in school. Majority of them will not carry on with facilitated, deliberate learning of skills like sports and explicit physical fitness type activities. It ends the moment they leave the schooling system, hopefully their last education touch points have some element of PE, probably around the age of eighteen. After that, some do take on a routine of being involved in sports and/or physical fitness activities but mainly as social vehicles that just happens to overlap with their need for recreational movements for health and fitness. Their participation in these areas will develop and that happens mainly from trial and error. There is no more deliberate fancy acronyms labelled processes being administered by professionals. Some may indeed take classes led by instructors whose main modus operandi will be technique replication approaches as the quickest way to get outcomes from motivated individuals, usually very successfully.  

PE is sometime broken up to cognitive, affective and the physical in its delivery plans. This linear decomposition strategy is a structure also allows us to understand better, different aspects of the movement process. This strategy looks promising on paper but may not necessary meet the embeddedness of the affective and cognitive in actions for successful learning impact. For example, fair play and respect mentions may mean little if it appears as descriptors before opportunities that allows such competencies to be exhibited. Even if scenarios are planned deliberately, an artificially designed opportunity may not deliver such affective components in the same way as real opportunities, which by definition is mostly difficult to schedule or plan.

Hayball and Jones, (Hayball & Jones, 2016), wrote on how Sports and PE impacted life-skills delivered to a group of females. They interviewed 16 – 18 year old females who withdraw from school sports. The participants refer to PE also in their comments on how it influenced their perception of certain life-skills like conflict resolution, positive attitude, awareness of consequences of action, mental toughness, self-esteem, confidence, stress management, having realistic expectations, planning, adaptation, leadership, and social competence.

It is satisfying to see efforts in such areas of research but I feel that more needs to be done to really figure how best to offer Sports and PE in a way that have lasting impact other than using simple input–output processes. It is reassuring to hear the participants in the study reflecting on certain experiences being a catalyst for certain positive/negative life-long behaviour but it is unlikely that a single (or even multiple similar type) past reflection that is so specific is the root cause. It probably points to types of authentic experiences over a period of time being the real influence. The process of influencing (through teaching for the teacher and learning for the learner) is probably not just definitions or recollections of such behaviours. Is living it.

Without doubt, is the incredible contribution of movement life skills to personal affective development in specific identified areas like those mentioned in the study above. An example of an input-output process: I want learners to know about conflict resolution and therefore I indicate verbally that a specific affective competency is targeted at in a series of sessions that may allow students to resolve conflict as part of design. Teachable moments in overdrive. Unfortunately, some of us may have experience explicit teaching of values that fails because of not being authentic to the needs of learners, e.g. it needs to be experienced, maybe through their learning relationship with the teacher and context. In a way, the teacher needs to exude the values and character competencies in the lesson design as part of the task environment and not as direct instructions for learners to focus on standalone values and character competencies. I believe that in observing a teacher-learner situation, you can almost be guaranteed of very effective values education taking place by the mannerisms and behaviour of the teacher rather than the task design that artificially incorporate non-representative experiences of values in action and learners’ responses to it. There is room for both type of approaches, there is value in behaviour definitions and recollections.  

What could be an enhancement to the usual input-output process can be a learning approach being more organic to our base objective of delivering movement outcomes in its broader existence as part of life. For example, this can be letting movement lessons bring out naturally the need to resolve conflicts, in decision making to inter-personal interactions, without deliberate creation of conflict scenarios. Words like conflict resolution, mental toughness, etc. are different in its impact and meaning to different contexts. I might go as far as to say that such character building opportunities needs to be from bottom-up, rather than top-down. That is, having a broad base, original intent experiences leading to identified aspects of movement development and the cognitive and affective influence that comes together. This is oppose to starting off with specific character traits or cognitive wants and trying to fit into a learning experience. The mind is the body and the body is the mind.

In the same vein, how effective is putting a physical outcome before experiencing the affordances of a task in a specific environment, e.g. creating receiving opportunities by moving to space. This may mean very little until the learner experience not having space to receive a pass and is committed to a task outcome that requires needing to receive the ball in an advantageous position. This can happen with a lesson design that acknowledges the role of carefully thought out constraints that are aligned to the multi layered developmental processes of the learner that does not always flow neatly in temporal and spatial sequences. Movement definitions help but they are just proxies to a deeper process. All these might seem very long-winded for a straightforward passing activity that seemingly can be more directly delivered. Either way, we might still observe good learning except that one relies on facilitated learning and the other by learner’s own adaptive abilities that leverages probably more on learner’s own motivation to want to know more. In which scenario are we value-adding better as teachers?

Cited, referred to articles:

Hayball, F., & Jones, M. (2016). Life after sport? Examining life skill transfer following withdrawal from sport and compulsory physical education. Sport & Exercise Psychology Review, 12(1).

Moy, B., Renshaw, I., & Pavey, T. (2020). Impact of the constraints-led approach on students’ motor performance. Journal of Physical Education and Sport, 20(6), 3345 – 3353. doi:DOI:10.7752/jpes.2020.06453