Play with Purpose: Deliberately
Coaching and PE teaching interactions should encourage players to start, stop, increase, decrease, or modify behaviours that contribute to their game performance effectiveness. The aim of the PE teacher or sport coach should be one of assisting players to successfully sustain existing effective behaviours, and assisting players to successfully sustain new or altered behaviours: in other words, creating new habits. Deliberate, varied, purposeful, and ongoing 'practice' has been associated with the successful behaviour change of forming new habits and improving existing effective habits. Simply put, the behaviour change we are aiming is for the players we teach or coach to 'get better'.
To this end, Andres Ericsson uses the term 'deliberate practice' to describe the focused, structured, detailed and continuing practice at 'getting better'. Ericsson's work is often mistakenly taken as the 10,000 hour rule; that is, it takes 10,000 hours or more of deliberate practice to reach expertise. In the book Peak this myth is set aside as Ericsson explains that it is not the hours of practice that are most important, but how the time is used. In this book, Ericsson explains the 'how' and 'why' of deliberate "purposeful practice".
Deliberate practice is not simply going out to play. Deliberate practice is targeted at a learning path towards improvement. The learning path should be monitored so that the practice can be adapted as and when necessary in challenge point to keep the learner moving along the learning path. According to Ericsson (and others), deliberate practice is assisted when monitored by a knowledgeable 'teacher' (a pedagogical-content expert) able to provide effective feedback at an effective time in an effective manner. Deliberate practice therefore involves 'stretch' out of one's 'comfort zone'. Deliberate practice also assumes effort on behalf of the learner.
Deliberate practice involves activities that are designed or used for the purpose of improving players performance. The activities may be designed by the learner/s or the teacher or sport coach.
These ideas about deliberate practice in no way deny that the development of expertise involves a complex and complicated interactions between the personality of the individual, opportunity and environment, and the genetic inheritance of the individual. Deliberate practice does not account for the complete variance found in ability levels, but depending on the field of 'expertise', it may contribute as much as 50% of the variance - and that is a lot.
Ericsson and Pool (2016) set out 5 principles of deliberate practice:
In 2006, after more than ten years 'playing around' with the idea of Game Sense coaching as designer and modified games, and match simulations with clearly defined learning intentions, I was approached to put my ideas into a teaching resource. 'Over the years', I had been to a lot of workshops and read a few articles where game-based (or game-centred) teaching and coaching was presented as "just let them play". My experience as a PE teacher and sport coach of 18 years (back in 2006) was that "let them play" without purpose was great for consolidation of existing ability. Occasionally through mimicry of a more experienced 'other' in the game, a player might try out something new, but this was the exceptional character and not the norm. Mostly people, children and adults, played within the comfort of their existing abilities. As a teacher and sport coach, I understood my role as helping to assist and where possible accelerate player development along the learning path, and to help players avoid going down the path of developing movement habits Alan Launder use to describe to us at Teachers College as 'dead end techniques'. The role of the teacher and sport coach is therefore a purposeful role. This led me to adopt the lens of 'play with purpose' on the Game Sense approach in the workshops I run and the resources I have developed. In these resources, I have tried to demonstrate the 5 principles of deliberate practice within a game-based (not game only) practice approach.
There is a large volume of research that suggests that it is the combination of self directed play and more structured play and practice that leads to expertise. Recently, Hendry and Hodges (2019) concluded from their research that deliberate practice type activities were most related to the skills associated with elite status in soccer.
If you are interested in reading more about the idea of play with purpose, information is available in this blog Developing players technical and tactical connections: play with purpose and the Play with Purpose resources for middle-secondary school PE, Australian Football (AFL), Football/Soccer, Netball and Rugby are available online from the ACHPER Bookshop; the Play with Purpose for FMS Teaching is available from ACHPER South Australia online here [I do have a Lacrosse Play with Purpose resource available free for download from my academia.edu site]
It's been a while since I did some research in this area, as a few physical education pedagogy projects have taken my attention the past couple of years. If you have an idea for some research and want to collaborate, please get in touch. You can find me here
Ericsson, K. A. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100, 363-406.
Ericsson, A., & Pool, R. (2016). Peak: Secrets from the science of expertise. UK: Ransom House.
Hendry, D. T., & Hodges, N. (2019). Pathways to expert performance in soccer. Journal of Expertise, 2(1), online
Nowack, K. (2017). Facilitating successful behaviour change: beyond goal setting to goal flourishing. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 69(3), 153-171
To this end, Andres Ericsson uses the term 'deliberate practice' to describe the focused, structured, detailed and continuing practice at 'getting better'. Ericsson's work is often mistakenly taken as the 10,000 hour rule; that is, it takes 10,000 hours or more of deliberate practice to reach expertise. In the book Peak this myth is set aside as Ericsson explains that it is not the hours of practice that are most important, but how the time is used. In this book, Ericsson explains the 'how' and 'why' of deliberate "purposeful practice".
Deliberate practice is not simply going out to play. Deliberate practice is targeted at a learning path towards improvement. The learning path should be monitored so that the practice can be adapted as and when necessary in challenge point to keep the learner moving along the learning path. According to Ericsson (and others), deliberate practice is assisted when monitored by a knowledgeable 'teacher' (a pedagogical-content expert) able to provide effective feedback at an effective time in an effective manner. Deliberate practice therefore involves 'stretch' out of one's 'comfort zone'. Deliberate practice also assumes effort on behalf of the learner.
Deliberate practice involves activities that are designed or used for the purpose of improving players performance. The activities may be designed by the learner/s or the teacher or sport coach.
These ideas about deliberate practice in no way deny that the development of expertise involves a complex and complicated interactions between the personality of the individual, opportunity and environment, and the genetic inheritance of the individual. Deliberate practice does not account for the complete variance found in ability levels, but depending on the field of 'expertise', it may contribute as much as 50% of the variance - and that is a lot.
Ericsson and Pool (2016) set out 5 principles of deliberate practice:
- The challenge point of the activity provides stretch - participants are pushed to the boundary of their comfort zone. In education terms, we might refer to this as the zone of proximal development
- The activity has specific, well-defined goals
- There is effort on behalf of the learner to focus on the defined goals. In education terms, we might say the learning goals are visible and explicit, and Hattie's work on understanding learning has some relevance here
- There is high quality feedback
- A mental representation of expertise is developed
In 2006, after more than ten years 'playing around' with the idea of Game Sense coaching as designer and modified games, and match simulations with clearly defined learning intentions, I was approached to put my ideas into a teaching resource. 'Over the years', I had been to a lot of workshops and read a few articles where game-based (or game-centred) teaching and coaching was presented as "just let them play". My experience as a PE teacher and sport coach of 18 years (back in 2006) was that "let them play" without purpose was great for consolidation of existing ability. Occasionally through mimicry of a more experienced 'other' in the game, a player might try out something new, but this was the exceptional character and not the norm. Mostly people, children and adults, played within the comfort of their existing abilities. As a teacher and sport coach, I understood my role as helping to assist and where possible accelerate player development along the learning path, and to help players avoid going down the path of developing movement habits Alan Launder use to describe to us at Teachers College as 'dead end techniques'. The role of the teacher and sport coach is therefore a purposeful role. This led me to adopt the lens of 'play with purpose' on the Game Sense approach in the workshops I run and the resources I have developed. In these resources, I have tried to demonstrate the 5 principles of deliberate practice within a game-based (not game only) practice approach.
There is a large volume of research that suggests that it is the combination of self directed play and more structured play and practice that leads to expertise. Recently, Hendry and Hodges (2019) concluded from their research that deliberate practice type activities were most related to the skills associated with elite status in soccer.
If you are interested in reading more about the idea of play with purpose, information is available in this blog Developing players technical and tactical connections: play with purpose and the Play with Purpose resources for middle-secondary school PE, Australian Football (AFL), Football/Soccer, Netball and Rugby are available online from the ACHPER Bookshop; the Play with Purpose for FMS Teaching is available from ACHPER South Australia online here [I do have a Lacrosse Play with Purpose resource available free for download from my academia.edu site]
It's been a while since I did some research in this area, as a few physical education pedagogy projects have taken my attention the past couple of years. If you have an idea for some research and want to collaborate, please get in touch. You can find me here
"it's not how much you practice, but how you do it"
Ericsson, K. A. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review, 100, 363-406.
Ericsson, A., & Pool, R. (2016). Peak: Secrets from the science of expertise. UK: Ransom House.
Hendry, D. T., & Hodges, N. (2019). Pathways to expert performance in soccer. Journal of Expertise, 2(1), online
Nowack, K. (2017). Facilitating successful behaviour change: beyond goal setting to goal flourishing. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 69(3), 153-171
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