In this episode, Alex Sarama is joined by Philip O'Callaghan to discuss the nonlinear nature of learning and how it applies to basketball performance. He explains that humans are nonlinear systems, and learning does not follow a straight line progression. He emphasizes the importance of individualizing practice environments and designing tasks that are representative of the game. Philip also introduces the five key principles of nonlinear pedagogy: manipulation of constraints, representative learning design, attentional focus, information movement coupling, and functional variability. He and Alex provide practical examples of how coaches can apply these principles in a closeout situation, and highlight the importance of consequences and task simplification.

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Key Takeaways:

6:00 - Nonlinear Pedagogy provided the principles that helped Philip begin to understand on how to apply the CLA to practice

10:00 - Scaling representative learning design to “reduce complexity without impoverishing the key information.” - Cal Jones https://twitter.com/CalJonesJudo

18:15 - 3 Categories of Constraints and their subtypes: Individual-structural, Individual-functional, Environmental-global, Environmental-local, Task.

22:30 - Building on a Closeout Activity through manipulating constraints

27:45 - The importance of including consequences to maintain representativeness when manipulating constraints

30:15 - Building on a Closeout Activity through encouraging functional variability

35:00 - Our focus of attention is best used by attending to key informational variables in the task at hand

Every story has two sides: evaluating information processing and ecological dynamics perspectives of focus of attention in skill acquisition:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fspor.2023.1176635/full 

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