Last Updated1 June 2022

How People Learn explores how we can receive and give information, plus some of the things that may inhibit the ability to acquire new skills. There is endless literature out there on learning. The following will help to provide insight into several areas of learning that we need to be aware of and utilise when teaching snowboarding.

Becoming a skilled teacher takes time, experience and practice. Reflecting on your lessons should be done on a regular basis to help you understand and learn how to improve and evolve as a teacher.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Abraham Maslow created a hierarchy of needs during the middle of last century. His theory helps us to make sense of a child’s or adult’s emotional needs and motivations. It is still commonly used in education and a variety of industries to help understand what may be inhibiting learning or performance. These needs can result as motivations that affect our ability to concentrate and focus on anything else except the immediate need we are dealing with. We can use this theory to help guide our understanding of why our students may be struggling with a particular task.

Physiological (or Basic) Needs

This is the need for food, water and shelter, or the need to survive physically. If we are hungry, cold, fatigued, or just uncomfortable, we will find it increasingly hard to concentrate on the task at hand. Our motivation will shift to trying to address this need.

If we are hungry, we need to eat. If we are cold, we move to get the blood flowing or head inside to keep warm. A student may not tell you that they are hungry, thirsty or cold.

Safety and Security

If we feel we are in danger or threatened we may not want to carry on with what we are doing. When this need is not met we may find ourselves wanting to get away from what is endangering us. If it is not possible to change what we are doing or where we are, we will tend to become tense and lack the ability to focus. In extreme cases we may totally freeze up. Our motivation to stay safe in these situations can become the priority.

When we’re scared, we try to change what we are doing or the environment we are doing it in. A student is trusting us to make these decisions for them.

Belonging

We all want to feel that we belong and are accepted. It is a fundamental emotional need to be liked or loved, which is especially strong in childhood. When we do not feel that we belong, many and varied responses may occur. These responses are usually to help us to feel accepted or protect ourselves emotionally.

When we feel that we are not liked or accepted our motivation can change to focus on this instead of the task at hand. Often students have never met each other, it can be up to us to help create a sense of belonging. With young children, it is especially important to build trust and a strong group rapport to feed a sense of belonging.

Self Esteem

Everyone wants to feel good about themselves. When we feel good about ourselves, and respected, we will be more confident and ready to attempt new and challenging tasks. If we feel the opposite, our desire to gain respect and self esteem can affect our performance.

Giving positive feedback to our students is especially important in helping them to feel good about what they are doing and build their self esteem.

Self-Actualisation

This is the need or desire to be the best you can be at something. It is commonly thought that self-actualisation can only be achieved when you have successfully fulfilled all the other needs. Some people will never reach this stage. Those who do, have an in-depth understanding of what they need in order to perform any task to the best of their ability.

Creating this for your students can be extremely challenging. Consider this to be the absolute pinnacle of performance and achievement.

Example

You make the decision to take a five-year-old student to the top of the mountain. The child was making nice turns on the lower mountain and the terrain is no steeper at the top. So up they go. The child is feeling very good about themselves going on an adventure so high up the mountain. They get started on the run and the child makes half a dozen turns, stops, sits down and starts crying. You stop quickly and ask, “What is the matter? Did you hurt yourself?” The child says, “No, I'm scared I'm going to fall off that cliff over there.”

The child has gone from feeling good to not wanting to move because they are not feeling safe. They do not have the ability to deal with their need to feel safe. Their motivation has lowered from Self Esteem to the need for Safety and Security. It is up to you as the instructor to find a solution. You say, “Shall we take our boards off and see what is over the edge of the cliff?” The child agrees to have a look. As they look over the edge the child discovers that it is not a cliff, just a steeper off-trail run. She looks up at you and says, “Can we go down there?”

If we know which of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is affecting our student’s performance, we may then have the ability to change or adapt what we are doing to help cater to that need. We should try to be attentive to a student’s energy levels and body language as a basic indicator. If a student is struggling or looking uncomfortable, ask yourself, why is this? Is there anything I could change, say or do to help?

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