This is my last blog based on a presentation I prepared for our weekly coach education sessions.
You can read the previous parts below:
The coach who cried WULF!
Compare the pair.
Self Controlled Players
The last section relates to the practise of observational learning. It is my objective that here at IFS we integrate world’s best practice with the abundance of football experience we have through our amazing football coaches.
Monkey See Monkey Do
Just by watching another player strike the ball, neuroimaging experiments report that a set of common neural structures are activated during observation. This may give me the unique opportunity to extract important information concerning appropriate coordination patterns and subtle requirements of the task or to evaluate the effectiveness of strategies.
This additional processing in learning is best demonstrated when participants alternate between physical and observational practice in a dyad, that is, two participants alternate between observing and physically practising the task.
On retention tests, participants who practise in dyads perform as well or better than participants who undertake only physical practice, even though the dyad participants undertake only half the physical practice trials than the participants in the physical practice group enjoy.
In addition, transfer performance following dyad practice tends to be superior to that following physical practice alone. The strategies or techniques from combined observational and physical practice result in more flexible or generalisable capability.
Learning benefits of dyad practice are presumably also a result of enhanced motivation, perhaps from competition with the partner, the setting of higher goals, or the loss of self-consciousness, as people fulfil interdependent dyadic roles and find another in the same learning boat.
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