Motor Learning Research: Meaningful Ways for Physical Educators or a Waste of Time?

Abstract

I attempt to provide a framework for the subsequent position papers by offering perceptions about the nature of motor learning research and various factors affecting its focus, quality, and depth. Historical antecedents and present conditions help to explain the course that the motor learning specialization is taking, with implications for the potential meaningfulness of the research to pedagogy and to the advancement of a body of knowledge. A number of variables confound the analysis, including the identification and growth of specializations referred to as motor control and sport psychology (and their interpreted relationship to motor learning), the ability to determine what in fact constitutes motor learning research, the judgment as to what research is user friendly (of potential benefit to physical educators), and the question as to who is responsible for making practical sense of the literature: the scholar or the practitioner.