Keith Davids

Jia Yi Chow

Chris Button

Ian Renshaw

Nonlinear pedagogy is a powerful paradigm for understanding human movement and for designing effective teaching, coaching and training programs in sport, exercise and physical education. It addresses the inherent complexity in the learning of movement skills, viewing the learner, the learning environment and the teacher or coach as a complex interacting system, with the constraints of individual practice tasks providing the platform for functional movement behaviours to emerge. This is the first book to explain this profoundly important new approach to skill acquisition, introducing key theoretical ideas and best practice for students, teachers and coaches. The first section of the book offers a general theoretical framework to explain processes of skill acquisition and the learning of movement skills. The book then defines nonlinear pedagogy, and outlines its key principles of practice. It offers a thorough and critical appraisal of the optimal use of instructional constraints and practice design, and discusses methods for creating challenging and supportive individualised learning environments at developmental, sub-elite and elite levels of performance. Every chapter contains cases and examples from sport and exercise contexts, providing guidance on practice activities and lessons. Nonlinear Pedagogy in Skill Acquisition is an essential companion for any degree level course in skill acquisition, motor learning, sport science, sport pedagogy, sports coaching practice, or pedagogy or curriculum design in physical education.

An Introduction

Nonlinear Pedagogy in Skill Acquisition

Ludovic Seifert

Duarte Araujo

Dynamics of Skill Acquisition, Second Edition, provides an analysis of the processes underlying human skill acquisition. It presents the ecological dynamics multidisciplinary framework for designing learning environments that foster skill development.

An Ecological Dynamics Approach

Dynamics of Skill Acquisition

Nonlinear Pedagogy is a powerful paradigm for understanding human movement and for designing effective teaching, coaching and training programmes in sport, exercise and physical education (PE). It addresses the inherent complexity in learning movement skills, viewing the learner, the learning environment and the teacher or coach as a complex interacting system. The constraints of individual practice tasks provide the platform for functional movement behaviours to emerge during practice and performance. The second edition includes new materials, of practical, theoretical and empirical relevance, to enhance understanding of how to implement a Nonlinear Pedagogy to support learning in sport, PE and physical activity. There is updated, in-depth discussion on the various pedagogical principles that support Nonlinear Pedagogy and how these principles are applicable in learning designs in sports and physical education. There is further emphasis on examining how transfer of learning is implicated in practice, highlighting its relevance on skill adaptation and talent development. The first part of the book updates the general theoretical framework to explain processes of skill acquisition and motor learning. This edition draws clearer links between skill acquisition, expertise and talent development, focusing on how specificity and generality of transfer have a role to play in the development of learners. The book defines Nonlinear Pedagogy and outlines its key principles of practice. It offers a thorough and critical appraisal of the functional use of instructional constraints and practice design. It discusses methods for creating challenging and supportive individualised learning environments at developmental, sub-elite and elite levels of performance. The second part focuses on the application of Nonlinear Pedagogy in sports and PE. There is a greater emphasis on helping applied scientists and practitioners understand the impact of Nonlinear Pedagogy on transfer of learning. Every chapter is updated to provide relevant contemporary cases and examples from sport and exercise contexts, providing guidance on practice activities and lessons. Nonlinear Pedagogy in Skill Acquisition is an essential companion for any degree-level course in skill acquisition, motor learning, sport science, sport pedagogy, sports coaching practice, or pedagogy or curriculum design in physical education.

Duarte Araújo

Robert Hristovski

Natalia Balague Serre

Pedro Passos

Complex systems in nature are those with many interacting parts, all capable of influencing global system outcomes. There is a growing body of research that has modeled sport performance from a complexity sciences perspective, studying the behavior of individual athletes and sports teams as emergent phenomena which self-organise under interacting constraints. This book is the first to bring together experts studying complex systems in the context of sport from across the world to collate core theoretical ideas, current methodologies and existing data into one comprehensive resource. It offers new methods of analysis for investigating representative complex sport movements and actions at an individual and team level, exploring the application of methodologies from the complexity sciences in the context of sports performance and the organization of sport practice. Complex Systems in Sport is important reading for any advanced student or researcher working in sport and exercise science, sports coaching, kinesiology or human movement.

Complex Systems in Sport

Simon Bennett

The authors outline the development of a comprehensive model of motor control that has a multidisciplinary framework to capture the different interlocking scales of analysis involved in producing behaviour.

Chris Button

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