Lesson video

Hello everyone, so glad you chose to join me here today for this lesson on "Classification of skill on a continua." My name is Mr. Broome, and you'll find this lesson in the "Sports Psychology: Skill and Ability" unit.

Can't wait to get started, so let's go, shall we? Okay, so by the end of today's lesson, you should be able to classify skills based on the characteristics, something we'll learn a lot more about as we go on, and then you should be able to place them on the different continua, namely the environmental continua, the difficulty, and the organisational continua.

Here are our keywords for today's lesson.

And you'll see that today's lesson will be divided into three sections, the first of which is called "Classifying skills on the difficulty continua." Let's have a look.

So first of all, let's remind ourselves that a skill is a learned action or behaviour.

And importantly, some sports or physical activities require multiple skills to be performed.

Think about the sports that you play in your PE lessons or maybe outside of school, and I'm going to give you the example here of rugby.

Now, these are just some of the skills that are required to play rugby.

So running with the ball, passing, drop-kicking, catching, scrimmaging, tackling, and offloading, are just some of the skills you'll perform in the game of rugby, there are more.

It's really important that you remember that if you're ever asked to give an example of a skill, you don't just name the sport but that you name the skill within it as I've just done on the screen with rugby.

Now, each skill can be classified according to its characteristics, the way it looks or the way it's performed.

Now, with the difficulty of a skill, we have to consider these characteristics: Are there lots of decisions to make? Is a lot of coordination required? Does it require a lot of concentration to perform it? Is there a lot of information to process? And is it quick and easy to learn? So jogging is a skill that is a learned behaviour or action, it's not something we were born able to do.

So are there lots of decisions to make when you go jogging? Not particularly, no.

You might have to decide which way you're going to jog or what route you're going to take, but generally it's not a skill that requires lots of decisions.

Is there a lot of coordination required? Not particularly, it's one foot in front of the other.

Does it require a lot of concentration? Not particularly, maybe if you're crossing a road, make sure you don't get hit by a car.

But otherwise, generally not a huge amount of concentration.

In fact, people go jogging and they chat to each other.

Is there a lot of information to process? Not particularly, no.

And is it quick and easy to learn? Yes, it is.

Many young children can jog, a skill that's learned very early on in life.

So this blend of characteristics means that you would classify jogging as a basic skill.

Let's just check your understanding on this so far.

So which two of these characteristics would you find in a basic skill? Is it A, easy to learn? Is it B, that it requires lots of coordination? Is it C, that it doesn't require much concentration? Or is it D, you need to make lots of decisions.

Two of those are the characteristics of a basic skill.

Well done if you said that A, it's easy to learn, and C, there's not much concentration needed, are both characteristics of basic skills.

Let's compare then, we're going to do exactly the same but this time with a different skill, and that's dribbling in hockey.

So are there lots of decisions to make if you are about to dribble the ball in hockey? Yes, because you might decide to pass or shoot.

You might decide that you are going to go to the right hand side or to the left hand side of the opposition player who's coming to try and tackle you.

Lots and lots of decisions to make.

Is a lot of coordination required? Certainly is, lots of hand-eye coordination to keep that ball under control in particular.

But you're also running, and so your whole body is involved in dribbling the ball and making lots of different movements in lots of different directions.

Does it require a lot of concentration? Yes, it does.

There's all sorts going on in this game of hockey.

There are other people involved, there are teammates, there are opposition players, lots of things to concentrate on.

Is there a lot of information to process? Yes, again, because of the amount of people involved, the amount of opposition players who might be trying to take the ball from you, the amount of teammates who might think that they're in a better position to take a pass and are calling at you telling you what to do, or maybe you are going to be through on goal and right to score.

There's a lot of information to process.

Is it quick and easy to learn? Not particularly, no.

This is the kind of skill that will take a long time to become good at, and certainly not something you learn in the early years of life as with jogging.

So this blend of characteristics, lots of decisions, coordination, concentration, and information to process, but not quick and easy to learn means that dribbling in hockey is a complex skill.

Another check for understanding then.

True or false, hockey dribbling requires lots of information to be processed and this makes it a simple skill, true or false? Well done if you recognise that that is actually false.

And why is that? Well, there's lots of factors to consider when dribbling.

Your teammates the opposition, the space you have or maybe you don't have, the time you have, and much more.

Processing lots of information classifies hockey dribbling as a complex skill, not a simple skill as the question said.

Now, this is the difficulty continua.

Here we see a continua for the first time in today's lesson, and they're not particularly complicated.

Essentially it's a line and you have two classifications at either end.

In this case, we have basic skills at one end and complex at the other.

Here's our two examples added to this continua.

There's jogging at the basic end of the continua and hockey dribbling at the complex end of the continua.

Now, skills are not always classified at one end of the continua or the other, like our two examples so far.

We could actually place a skill anywhere along that line.

And Aisha's got a question for you.

"Can you think of a skill that would be classified in the middle of this continua?" Maybe pause here and have a little think, what is not completely basic but is also not completely complex? Maybe you need to ask those five questions again of a skill and see if it would fall into the middle.

I chose penalty kick in football and I'm going to justify that for you now.

Well, let's go for our questions again.

Are there lots of decisions to make? Some decisions, but not many.

You've got one kick with which to try and score.

So that's not a huge amount of decisions, but you will need to decide where you're going to shoot perhaps or how hard you're going to shoot.

You might decide to shoot at the top right hand corner and you might even basis on your knowledge of the goalkeeper that you are facing, and it might be different if you're facing a different goalkeeper.

Is it quick and easy to learn? I mean, kicking a ball can be learned quite quickly, and lots of youngsters, like very youngsters, like toddlers for example, can probably have a go at kicking the ball, but they can't necessarily shoot with the technique and accuracy which is going to be required to score a penalty kick.

And so it's not really quick to learn, not like something like jogging.

Is there lots of information to process? There's not much information.

The only other person involved is the goalkeeper, and you can take the kick whenever you want.

And so actually, there's not a huge amount of other factors to process.

Does it require a lot of concentration? Yes, it is often a high pressure situation that you take a penalty in.

All eyes are on you, and you do want to shoot accurately and score.

So you really need to focus and concentrate on what you're doing.

So what we've seen there is that a penalty kick has some of the characteristics you would associate with a basic skill like jogging, but it also has some of the characteristics of a complex skill.

That means I justify putting it here somewhere in the middle of the difficulty continua, and hopefully that helps you to realise how some skills are neither at the basic end or the complex end, but they might fall somewhere in between.

Here's a check for understanding.

Which of these would be classified towards the middle, like that penalty kick, of the difficulty continua: Football throw in, the pole vault, or sprinting? Well done if you chose A, the football throw in.

Let's think about that very quickly.

Football throw in, there's not a huge amount of information to process like the penalty kick, there's one skill you need to perform and you need to send the ball by throwing it in.

Now of course there is some information to process in that lots of people will be moving around and you might have to choose which one you throw to, but generally it's quite a simple skill throwing the ball, it can be quite quickly learned.

And so again, we're seeing characteristics of basic skills and complex skills at the same time there, so somewhere in the middle.

A pole vault is a complex skill.

It takes a long time to learn, a long time to coordinate, whereas sprinting is a much more basic skill, something you can learn quite early on in life, not a huge amount of information to process or decisions to make.

It's quite simply run as fast as you can in a straight line.

So B and C were not the answer there.

Here's a practise task for you, and it comes in different parts.

So first of all, I'd like you to draw the difficulty continua as I did a few slides ago.

Then I'd like you to consider the characteristics of the following skills and place them on your difficulty continua: A golf swing, a deadlift, downhill mountain biking, and kayaking.

Where would you place those four skills on your difficulty continua? And once you have, I'd like you to write a sentence that tells me about your thought process to justify where you placed it on the continua, and why? Pause the video here, complete those tasks, and I'll be back shortly with some suggested answers.

Okay, so let's have a look.

You were asked to draw a difficulty continua, which should look something like this, a straight line with basic and complex at either end.

Now these are the positions I place these skills.

First of all, I put the deadlift at the basic end, kayaking, somewhere towards the basic end, but certainly not at the absolute end.

Golf swing, again, somewhere in the middle but perhaps slightly more towards complex and downhill mountain biking, I've put at the absolute complex end of this.

Ensure your justification for each of those skills refers to some of the following, so I want you to check back at your justifications, and I will give you a couple of examples as well.

So the number of decisions to make, the amount of coordination required, the amount of information to be processed, how quick and easy it is to learn, and the amount of concentration required, your justification should refer to those things because that's how we justify a placement along the difficulty continua.

Let me give you an example here.

So for the deadlift, there are literally no decisions to make other than when to lift the bar, okay? It's not a huge amount of coordination or information to process, and people can learn the deadlift very, very quickly.

You may just be shown one demonstration, then be able to copy that demonstration straight away.

Doesn't require a huge amount of concentration, it's a very quick skill to perform, and that justifies it being placed directly on the basic end.

So why did I place downhill mountain biking at the complex end of the continua? I'll tell you why now.

There's a huge number of decisions to make when you are downhill mountain biking because there is a lot of information coming your way.

You might approach some gravel, some mud, some puddles, some tree roots, lots of different types of surfaces.

There is obstacles coming at you every few seconds, and so it's a lot of information and requires a lot of concentration to keep yourself up on that bike.

There's also a lot of coordination to keep the bike balanced, to keep pedalling at the right times, and making sure that when you go over obstacles you remain on the bike.

It's not quick or easy to learn by any stretch of the imagination.

In fact, if you've learned to ride a bike before, you'll know that it takes quite a long time to be able to ride a bike comfortably without any support from anybody else or any guidance, even on a flat surface, let alone going down the side of a mountain with all these obstacles coming at you.

So that absolutely for me justifies why downhill mountain biking appears at the complex end of that difficulty continua.

The reason I place kayaking and golf swing in the middle is because I think that they have some characteristics of complex skills and other characteristics of basic skills, and therefore that's why I placed them there.

I hope you had something similar.

Onto the second section of today's lesson, and this is "Classifying skills on the environmental continua." And this considers how stable and predictable the environment is when the skill is performed.

What does that mean? Let's have a look a little closer.

Environmental factors include: Do other people impact on the performance of the skill? And that could be teammates or the opposition.

Is the situation always the same or is it ever-changing? Does the weather impact how the skill must be performed, and is the surface played on always the same? Let's take a couple of examples to help you understand perhaps in a little bit more depth.

So shooting in football.

Let's take a look at some of the environmental factors when we shoot in football.

So first of all, football's played outside generally.

So is the surface wet or dry? That could have an impact on how you perform the skill? Is the player strong shooting with their left foot or their right foot? In this case, it's their right.

This might be a left-footed player, that might change the the situation considerably.

What would the player on the opposition do? Are they going to slide in, are they going to stay standing, are they going to try and block the shot? Every defender that you come against will probably do something slightly different.

What are the weather conditions? Could be a strong wind, that could impact the way that you shoot the ball.

With a strong wind behind you, you might not have to kick it as hard as you would ordinarily.

How good is that goalkeeper? You might know something about the goalkeeper that might change the way that you shoot against them.

And what about your teammates? You might be about to shoot in football, but actually one of your teammate is in a better position, and at the final moment you decide to pass or cross the ball instead.

And is this a good position to be shooting from? Shooting in football can be taken from anywhere on the pitch, and so every time you take a shot, it might be in a completely different part of the pitch than the last time you took a shot.

Every time you shoot, you might need to consider, this is the right place to be shooting from.

So in summary, shooting in football is performed with multiple different influences from the environment every time.

That means we would say it is very unstable and unpredictable.

Let's compare it to a different skill, the basketball free throw.

Now, basketball free throw is always taken from the same line, and that line is always the same distance from the basket.

It doesn't matter where you go in the world, the basketball court should be painted exactly the same.

Now, the opposition can't interfere with a free throw.

They can't block your shot, you take it without opposition.

And it's what we call self-paced, and that means you shoot when you are ready, nobody's going to force you to shoot at a certain moment.

All that means that you can use the same technique every time.

So in summary, basketball free throws can be performed in almost exactly the same way anywhere in the world.

That means that this skill is very stable and predictable.

Very different from the football example, isn't it? So here's the environmental continua, looks exactly the same as the difficulty, except for our classifications have changed, and we call these open and closed skills.

So when the environment the skill is performed in is unpredictable and unstable, like in our football example, we would classify this skill as an open skill.

When the environment the skill is performed in is predictable and stable, we would then classify the skill as a closed skill.

So where should our two examples be placed? Well, there we go.

We have football shooting, is very much an open skill influenced by lots of environmental factors, and the basketball free throw is absolutely a closed skill.

It can be repeated over and over again in the same way, it's very predictable and stable.

Quick check for understanding: True or false, shooting in football is more unstable and more unpredictable than a basketball free throw? Well done if you said true.

It is more unstable and more unpredictable because there are many more environmental factors influencing a football shot than a free throw in basketball.

That means that the football shot is an open skill.

Second check for understanding.

Which of the following characteristics would you expect to see in a skill classified as a closed skill? Is it A, repeated actions or the same technique every time? Is it B, self-paced? Is it C, the weather impacts how you perform it.

Or is it D, performed differently every time? Okay, well done if you spotted that it was asking you which of the following characteristics, plural, and so there was more than one answer, and it was A and B, same repeated action or technique every time, and it's generally self-paced.

Okay, here's a practise task on the environmental continua, and here we have a relay changeover being performed.

I'm sure you've had to go at one of these in perhaps in a PE lesson or on sports day, or maybe you've seen one on the TV at the Olympics or something similar.

So I've annotated this picture, and I've noted that the relay changeover is the same repeated action every time, which certainly makes it stable.

But I've also noted that the weather may have an impact as relay changeovers are often performed outdoors, which would give it a bit of instability or this makes it unstable.

Your task then is to add three more factors which might affect the stability of a relay changeover, then draw an environmental continua and place relay changeovers where you believe it should go.

Finally, once you've done those two tasks, please write a paragraph to justify your decision.

You need to explain clearly why you have placed relay changeover where you did.

Pause the video here, answer those three parts, and I'll be back in a moment with some answers for you.

Okay, so we're back with that picture of the relay changeover, and I've put my two annotations on there already.

Let's see some of the things you might have said as well.

So you might say that often a relay changeover is done in a competitive situation against other teams, and that can bring with it a pressure from the situation of the race.

This team might be doing their changeover and they're really far ahead in the race or really far behind, or it might be an extremely close race where the pressure really is on.

Now, this skill requires two people to coordinate their actions at the same time.

It greatly depends on the person who receives the baton to time their run correctly.

That gives it a bit of instability.

But on the other hand, it's certainly a stable skill in the fact that the track is always the same shape and always the same size.

And we're talking about people again, weren't we? So something else that makes it unstable is that not only the person who's receiving the baton, but the person who's passing the baton over needs to do so accurately.

So one of these people might do the technique perfectly, but if the other person doesn't, then the relay changeover might not be performed very well at all.

And so there is that instability of having two different people having to coordinate their actions.

And you might argue that the track can sometimes be slippery if it has rained, that might slightly change the way the action is performed.

So with all that considered, I place relay changeovers towards the closed end, but I recognise that it's not quite a closed skill.

You were asked to write a paragraph, I wrote a paragraph, and I said that relay changeover is more of a closed skill than open because it is an action repeated the same way every time, making it very stable and predictable.

It does rely on more than one person coordinating their movements, which adds some instability.

And occasionally, other environmental factors will have some impact on the performance, meaning it is not a completely closed skill.

And that justifies why I placed it where I did on the continua.

I hope your paragraph, or perhaps you wrote more like I did, I hope your writing emphasises the characteristics of the skill and justifies its placement on the continua.

Well done if it does.

That brings us onto our third section of today's lesson.

Now in this section, we're going to classify skills on the organisational continua.

So some skills can be broken down into different parts or subroutines.

And different parts of the skill then can be practised separately, and finally put back together again.

And if this is the case, these skills are classified as low organisation skills.

Some examples, tennis serve.

So what do we mean by subroutines of a tennis serve? Well, we have the start position, the ball toss, the backswing, the strike of the ball, and the follow through, all different parts of the same skill.

How about the long jump? It's another skill which is a low organisation skill.

Let's have a look why? Well, we have subroutines again, the run up, the takeoff, the flight, and the landing are all different sections of the long jump, which could be practised and really focused on separately, and then put back together again to hopefully have improved the skill.

Quick check for your understanding on what I've just said.

Skills which have separate phases, parts, or subroutines are classified as low organisation.

Is that true or false? It is true, well done if you said true, and why is that the case? Well, a low organisation skill has different phases, parts, or subroutines, which we can practise separately and put them back together to improve the skill, that's low organisation.

Well done if you said true.

A little bit more information then because other skills cannot be broken down into parts or subroutines.

The different parts of the skill are very closely linked, and they must be performed in their entirety and practised in their entirety.

It's not that you can break them down and put them back together again as we did with low organisation skills.

Here's an example, the somersault, another one, a golf swing, and a third, cycling.

All these skills need to be performed in their entirety.

If you think of all three of those skills, how would you break them down into some parts and then put them back together? It would be very, very difficult.

All the different parts rely on each other.

So which of these is not a characteristic of a high organisational skill? Is it A, that it cannot be broken down into subroutines or parts, B, each subroutine can be practised separately, or C, that it must be practised in their entirety? Which of these is not a characteristic of high organisational skills? It was B, so well done if you said B.

Each subroutine can be practised separately.

With high organisational skills, we cannot practise subroutine separately, the skill has to be performed in its entirety.

So B is not a characteristic.

This is probably starting to look quite familiar.

Now, we have our straight line to represent the continua, and we have our two classifications at your end this time.

Of course, it's a low organisation and high organisation.

So there we have our tennis serve from earlier, we said that was a low organisation skill, and here we have a golf swing, which is a high organisation skill.

You'll notice that I didn't put tennis serve quite at the low organisation end completely because a couple of those subroutines would be very difficult to practise without one another.

Let's imagine the ball strike.

Striking the ball would be very difficult to practise if you didn't do the backswing first.

And so a couple of the subroutines do rely on each other, but other parts of it can be done separately, and then put back together.

Whereas with high organisation, the golf swing, you need to be able to practise the whole swing in one go, in its entirety.

So here's a practise task for you based on what we know about organisational continua.

Take a look at this organisational continua and the placement of the three skills on it.

Now, Sam says, "Some of these don't seem in the right place to me." Do you agree with what Sam is saying? And which skills, if any, are in the wrong place? Draw the organisational continua and position the three skills where you believe they should be.

And then as with the previous continua, write a sentence to justify each.

Pause a video here, complete those tasks, and I will see you in a moment with some suggested answers.

Okay, so you were asked to draw an organisational continua and place those three skills on it.

This is where I would place those three skills.

Hopefully you got something quite similar.

So first of all, I would place the butterfly stroke at the low organisation end, why? Well, swimming strokes are low organisation skills as they can be broken down into parts and practised separately.

I'm sure those of you who've learned to swim in the past have perhaps held afloat and practise the leg technique by itself, or maybe even practised the breathing technique, or the body position in the water, or the arm movements separately and then try to put it back together into the whole swimming stroke.

So certainly, a low organisation skill.

How about diving then? I put it here towards the high organisation end, but not completely, why was that? Well, diving is mostly high organisation, as generally you'd have to practise diving in its entirety.

You are going from the board to the water, and you don't have much choice but to practise the dive in that short space of time.

However, if you think about Olympic divers, they will do all sorts of different moves between leaving the board and entering the water.

So it might be that sections of that move might be practised separately and then combined as an entire dive sometime the future.

So that's why I didn't place it at the absolute high organisation end.

But I did place rowing at the high organisation end.

Why was that? Well, this is a skill which is practise and performed by doing the movement in its entirety.

You can't break rowing down into parts or subroutines, and therefore it's certainly the most high organisation of these three skills.

Here's a summary then on what we've learned today about continua and the three continua.

So skills can be classified according to their characteristics.

There are three skills continua we use to classify skills, and the difficulty continua considers how basic or complex a skill is according to factors such as how much information must be processed.

Then we looked at the environmental continua, which considers how much influence is placed on the skill by environmental factors like other people or the weather.

And finally, we looked at the organisational continua, which classifies skills based on how easily they can be broken down into parts or subroutines.

I hope that those three continua are something you feel very comfortable with now after this lesson.

Thank you for joining me.

I hope you learned a lot about classification of skills, and remember to always be able to justify where you place a skill along each of those continua.

Good luck, I'll see you next time.