Relevance, Application, and the Development of an Unlikely Theory

This paper advances the argument that motor learning research is not relevant to the needs and interests of motor skill teachers. The principal reason is that motor learning researchers in university departments of physical education have responded to calls for paradigmatic shifts that were intended for experimental psychologists, not necessarily for researchers from departments of physical education. As a result, motor learning researchers have concentrated their efforts on studying the mechanisms underlying motor performance rather than on devising and testing ways to improve motor performance. The body of knowledge produced by this approach has been based on experiments employing laboratory tasks and treatment conditions that lack fidelity to those appropriate or even possible in real-world teaching environments. Consequently, little knowledge has been produced that can be directly applied to the technical aspects of teaching. It also is argued that progress toward an applied thrust has been hindered because energies of the most capable researchers have been spent on attempts to develop a grand theory of motor skills, a theory that can never emerge until researchers attend to the essential preliminary task of defining motor skills.