The presence of non-linear pedagogy in the absence of a pedagog…
What struck me on arrival for my son’s first session at the indoor skatepark was the prohibition of parent supervision or “spectators”, which through the lens of a father taking his five year old child to a dynamic and high-risk environment for the first time was difficult to comprehend.
What happened over the next couple of hours perhaps told me why, and provided me one of the most serendipitous moments in my experience as a coach, an educator and a father.
The skatepark was full of problems for my son to explore and I witnessed first-hand human learning, in all of its non-linearity, in action through his exploration of a very complex and dynamic topology incorporating bowls, street terrain (including steps, kerbs, and a plaza) and ramps of varying size and shape; coupled with a lot of noise (contextual interference) in the form of twenty or so kids concurrently exploring the space on a variety of apparatus including stunt bikes, roller blades, scooters, and skateboards.
Lee & Magill (1983) postulated that the contextual interference effect is demonstrated within the process of skill acquisition. For unpractised tasks, interfering with the cognitive events that subserve the intention-to-action translation process may be accomplished by simply structuring the acquisition trials in a highly unpredictable (random) manner (Lee et al. 1983). This lends itself to Bernstein’s (1967) hypothesis that practice is not simply the repetition of the means of a solution of a given motor problem but rather the process of change in each repetition that leads to a task solution.
It strikes me therefore that in the absence of an external agent, a pedagog, my son was afforded the opportunity to search and explore the “perceptual-motor workspace” for himself. The workspace is conceptualised as the dynamical state space arising from the interaction of organism, task and environmental constraints (Newell, 1986).
In nonlinear, neurobiological systems [organism], constraint configurations do not prescribe each learners behaviour but simply guide it through interaction with his / her perceptual-motor systems (Chow et al., 2011)
When I susequently tried to make sense of what I observed of my sons interactions and exploitation of the skatepark as a learning space, and his intrinsic motivations to learn a new skill or skills I was struck by the lack of study and therefore literature in this space. So, instead I explored ethnographical papers in urban design, risk taking and architecture for clues that could shed light on how skateboarders developed their craft.
Although the literature was limited there was enough evidence to at least support an idea that skateparks in-fact are pedagogically rich environments evidencing the presence of non-linear pedagogy.
My son was quick to point out that he was “dropping in and ollie’ing” so he appeared to learn a new language as well as new tricks and it was now present in his consciousness as a result of the socio-cultural environment within the skatepark.
Skateparks are generally conducive to social inclusion, social interaction and informal coaching / learning (Dumas & Laforest, 2009). Learning the trick often occurs in a mentoring-learning atmosphere with veteran skateboarders patiently and openly answering questions from less advanced skateboarders about how to do tricks (Haines, Smith & Baxter, 2010).
This was consistent with how my son navigated the environment, frequently speaking to more experienced individuals seeking to understand what they were doing and how they were doing it. This concept of social learning is a strong feature of the literature and perhaps forms the basis for why learners are so intrinsically motivated to develop their craft, part of the joy of skateboarding is learning from other skaters and watching other skaters perform (Woolley & Johns, 2001).
“The thing is you can go on your own , I mean that’s the thing, you can just take your board and go… I can ride street and just practice my tricks or go to a park, that’s where, well if you see someone who is working on a trick and you want to learn it, that’s good. You can just watch them or ask them. We all kind of learn and watch from each other, it doesn’t matter what level you are, you could just be working on an ollie, but as long as you are out there that is cool” (Haines et al., 2010).
These groups [skateboarders] also benefited from the coaching skills and prevention techniques provided by experienced skaters; skaters mentioned advice they had given or received with regard to ‘recognising ones limits’, ‘not underestimating difficult jumps’ or ‘mastering basic skills before attempting difficult jumps’ (Dumas et al., 2009).
[In skateboarding] skill acquisition is manifested by learning a trick (Haines et al., 2010). The occupation of skateboarding requires intricacies of the movement to ‘ollie’ off stairs and rails, and drop into bowls at almost vertical angles, all the time manipulating the board under their feet. The skills required include posture, coordination, strength and effort, as well as energy (Haines et al., 2010).
Rodney Mullen in his 2015 TED Talk talks of how “context shapes content” and the nature of the environment shapes your tricks:
“What you do is cruise around the same streets you’ve seen a hundred times, but suddenly, because you already have something in this fixed domain of this target, it’s like, what will match this trick? How can I expand, how can the context, how can the environment change the very nature of what I do?”.
Mullen was 46 at the time of this TED talk draws upon 36 years of experience and wisdom to tacitly describe the neurobiological processes of performance and learning:
“…all of these tricks are made of sub-movements, executive motor functions, more granular to the degree to which I can’t quite tell you, but one thing I do know is, every trick is made of combining two or three or four or five movements. And so, as I’m going up, these things are floating around, and you have to sort of let the cognitive mind rest back, pull it back a little bit, and let your intuition go as you feel these things. And these sub-movements are kind of floating around, and as the wall hits you, they connect themselves to an extent, and that’s when the cognitive mind: “Oh, 360 flip, I’m going to make that.” So that’s how that works to me, the creative process, the process itself, of street skating.”
There is so much to unpack in these two quotes from Mullen over the course of his eighteen-minute TED Talk but I will attempt to do so in order to reconcile what he means.
Safe to say the topology of a skatepark or the urban landscape in which a performer is interacting with is the perceptual-motor workspace. Mullens description of letting his intuition go in the pursuit of the creative process, wherein learning a new skill is perhaps implied. Feeling his way around the environment is in essence him becoming sensitised to the key sources of information available to him within the perceptual-motor workspace and coupling that to an appropriate movement solution and therefore creating a new trick, a new skill.
Interestingly he described the level of cognisance between his flipping between being sensitized to the environment and having the presence of mind to know which trick to perform. It is described by Seifert & Hedderson (2010) as a flow state and in their paper they postulated a clear relationship between flow and intrinsic motivation. They believed both flow and intrinsic motivation were both subjective experiences that are characterised by setting and pursuing challenges. Conquering challenges required concentration and effort, and the resultant success can culminate in a flow episode that was described as peak performance, elation and transcendence (Seifert et al., 2010). This hypothesis has merit when you investigate the ethnography of skateboarding; skateboarders seek out a challenge in the form of learning a new trick, then practice to successfully perform or land the trick (Haines et al., 2010).
Chow (2013) highlighted the “paramount” need for practitioners to provide a learning environment that is intrinsically motivated, indicating that the use of non-linear pedagogy can provide such a context.
Teaching methods should facilitate opportunities to pursue autonomy, competence and relatedness which will result in intrinsically motivated behaviours such as effort, persistence and problem solving with respect to goal tasks (Chow, Renshaw, Button, Davids & Tan, 2013).
Herein lies some of the uniqueness of skateboarding, the learners are by nature self-directed. Within the literature references to the setting of challenges and striving to meet them were a common theme and it manifests itself in a number of different ways: learning a new trick, perfecting old ones, taking risks and feeling in control (Seifert et al., 2009). Seifert et al. (2009) went on the make the point that the most compelling themes was that of freedom, and observations suggest that skateboarding is inherently self-directed.
There is a lot to be learned from street sports about the creation of a pedagogically fertile environment and the development of skill.
If you were to profile a street sport athlete you could describe them as a creative, self-aware, self-regulating, self-directed learner who is perceptually attuned and sensitised to a complex and dynamic environment.
Why then interfere, why coach?
D…
Bibliography:
Chow, Davids, Hristovski, Araújo, and Passos. “Nonlinear Pedagogy: Learning Design for Self-organizing Neurobiological Systems.” New Ideas in Psychology 29.2 (2011): 189–200. Web.
Chow, J. Y., Renshaw, I., Button, C., Davids, K., &Tan, C. W. K. (2013). Effective learning design for the individual: A nonlinear pedagogical approach in physical education. In A. Ovens, T. Hopper, & J. Butler (Eds.). Complexity thinking in physical education: Reframing curriculum, pedagogy and research (pp. 121–134). London, England: Routledge.
Chow, Jia Yi. “Nonlinear Learning Underpinning Pedagogy: Evidence, Challenges, and Implications.” Quest 65.4 (2013): 469–84. Web.
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Renshaw, Ian, Jia Yi Chow, Keith Davids, and John Hammond. “A Constraints-led Perspective to Understanding Skill Acquisition and Game Play: A Basis for Integration of Motor Learning Theory and Physical Education Praxis?” Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy 15.2 (2010): 117–37. Web.
Seifert, T., and C. Hedderson. “Intrinsic Motivation and Flow in Skateboarding: An Ethnographic Study.” Journal of Happiness Studies 11.3 (2010): 277–92. Web.
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