Understanding motor learning

Children, even prior to birth, are constantly learning new skills and different pat terns of movement. Motor skill acquisition, as mentioned earlier, is sequential and is progressive, from generic movements to complex, specific actions. Gallahue and Ozmun (1995) proposed that there are five stages that children go through when they are learning a new movement skill. Figure 1 is an adapted version of this.

Hence, as skills are practiced and refined, children learn to have more control and develop greater fluency in their physical movements. The range of factors associated with physical development include biological, motor, perceptual and social skills and therefore it is not surprising that in the past many different per spectives have contributed to understanding motor learning and development.

When teaching children and young people with extremely severe social, emotional and behavioral difficulties, many of the programs I had previously used for similar learning problems failed to have any positive effect on them. Following observations and discussions with colleagues, I began to recognize that the exercises given were not actually reaching far enough back in the children’s development.