Abstract
The purpose of this study was to assess the influence of blocked and random practice schedules on acquisition, retention and transfer after teaching basketball skills among novice Senior High School students. Using a quasi-experimental design, a combination of simple random and purposive sampling procedures were used to select 60 novice participants who were equally assigned to a Blocked Practice Group (BPG [N= 30]) and Random Practice Group (RPG [N= 30]) respectively. After 9 sessions of teaching and learning of chest pass, overhead pass and sidearm pass, results for skill acquisition indicated that the BPG scored higher means than the RPG in all the three motor skills. For retention, improved performance for the RPG than the BPG in all 3 skills was noted. Similar results were obtained for the transfer phase. ANOVA test for retention produced significant mean differences between the three motor skills. However, the RPG recorded more superior values for between group analyses than the BPG. Independent sample t-test also revealed significant difference between random and blocked practices in terms of overall learned skills. Based on these findings, Physical education tutors and perhaps coaches should consider adopting blocked practice approach during isolated skill learning. Additionally, random practice scheduling should be used when the main objective is based on retention and transfer of knowledge regarding motor skills, especially during competitive milieu or other analogous related activities.
Highlights
Research to date has tried identifying significant determinants underlying the acquisition of motor skills to better understand the various processes that influence a learning process [1, 2]
The impact shows that individuals or learners who practice in high levels of contextual interference have sub-standard performance outcomes during skill acquisition but show superior retention and subsequent transfer of motor skills learnt compared to low levels of contextual interference
Even though the random practice schedules were less effective during the acquisition phase in the current study, they were better than the blocked practice conditions on retention test and subsequent transfer
Summary
Research to date has tried identifying significant determinants underlying the acquisition of motor skills to better understand the various processes that influence a learning process [1, 2]. The impact shows that individuals or learners who practice in high levels of contextual interference (e.g., a random arrangement of trials on varied tasks) have sub-standard performance outcomes during skill acquisition but show superior retention and subsequent transfer of motor skills learnt compared to low levels of contextual interference (e.g., a blocked practice approach where all practice trials of one task are performed before another task [10]). Blocked practice leads to a kind of rote learning that allows for better performance during training sessions but less skill transfer to competitions and novel situations, as well as lower retention levels over time. One explanation for this is that, there are lower demands on active problem-solving and engagement during blocked practice than during random practice [13]. This effect is more pronounce when learning motor skills that are relatively simple in task difficulty [5]
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