Social Theory and Movement Skill Learning in Kinesiology

Across the world participation in physical activity spans a wide-variety of populations all with diverse backgrounds, needs and interests. This includes physical education in schools, sport in clubs, fitness in gyms and dance in studios as well as any number of outdoor pursuits and related leisure activities. Central to individuals’ participation in these varied physical activity forms, expressions and modes is some degree of movement competency. Unsurprisingly, therefore, movement skill learning has become an important area of inquiry for kinesiology scholars across a range of disciplines. Traditionally movement skill learning has been framed within kinesiology as a cognitive process studied primarily under lab-based or experimental conditions. As a result, skill acquisition has been predominantly defined by three common classification systems: the size of the movement, its beginning and end points and the stability of the environment (Schmidt & Wrisberg, 2004). Identifying the size of a movement and the primary musculature involved helps determine if a skill is a gross motor skill (downhill skiing) or a fine motor skill (wrist flick on a throw). Identifying the start and endpoints of a movement helps define the motor skill as discrete (a jump shot) or continuous (running). And identifying a skill based on the stability of the environment where it is being executed defines it as open (playing soccer) or closed (throwing darts). Given these classification systems, researchers began to propose a number of models to explain how learners moved through the process of learning a movement skill. Fitts and Posner (1967), as one of the earliest examples, suggested a three-stage model of skill acquisition. They argued that learners begin in a cognitive stage where their focus is simply to understand the movement problem before them and how they might solve it. After some practice, learners should progress to the associative stage in order to connect the movement they are attempting to learn in step with any emerging environmental demands. Finally, learners should reach the autonomous stage where the skill they have been learning is now something they can execute automatically. A further influence with respect to how movement skill learning has been studied within kinesiology has come from the natural sciences where the hallmarks of good research are grounded in realism: the idea that true knowledge is founded on direct observation of objects, bodies, and/or natural phenomena in controlled, objective laboratory conditions. Biomechanics, for example, drew from engineering principles to analyze biological systems, structures and functions that explained human movement as the result of a series of levers and pulleys. Exercise physiology emerged from the new anatomists who examined how bodies move by dissecting static cadavers. Mathematical laws were also applied to the body