Last Updated26 February 2024

How People Learn covers some of the core elements of how and why people learn. Creating an environment where people are able to learn is more important than the technical aspects of skiing (or any activity). Understand and discover more about how people process information and develop skills.

Learning Process – Skill Acquisition

For an instructor it is important to understand the learning process their students go through as they develop their technique and learn new skills.

Fitts and Posner (Human Performance 1967) developed a theory that suggests learning movements is a sequential process. This process is broken down into phases and at each phase the student will have different needs from the instructor. This process is quite often referred to as the acquisition of skill.

No one can go from not being able to do something directly to being able to do it. All people need to pass through these phases of learning: cognitive, associative and autonomous.

Understanding what is happening physically and mentally during each phase will in turn allow the instructor and students to make decisions and choose activities that best suit the needs of the student depending on the phase of learning they are in.

Cognitive Phase

When students are introduced to a new movement or activity, their main objective is to understand what is being asked of them. This involves forming a mental picture of the skill or movement. In order to do this students need to develop an understanding of both the desired outcome and the difference between their performance and the desired outcome.

Firstly, the student needs to develop a cognitive understanding of the desired ski and body performance and how this relates to their goal.

Secondly, they need to be able to visually identify what the correct performance looks like and learn how their current performance differs.

During the cognitive phase, the student will develop, and try, possible strategies for success through a process of trial and error, followed by feedback and further trial. This process requires considerable mental activity and concentration.

Hot tip

Feedback at this stage ideally needs to be simple, general and immediate to enhance a student’s performance. This process of trial and error and feedback and trial continues until some form of consistency is achieved.

It is vital that the student understands their current performance. Accurate descriptions of ski and body performance or video footage of it will help the student understand what they are currently doing and subsequently what needs to change.

Example

A student attempting a wedge for the first time. The wedge has been explained, demonstrated and the key feelings highlighted. This helps students form a mental picture of what they are trying to learn. Despite the information received, their first attempt is often inaccurate. The wedge may be asymmetrical, the student is often off-balance laterally or the skis may shoot out from under them and they lose balance.

Cognitive Phase Characteristics

The student needs demonstrations and verbal explanations
Trial and error takes place
Performances are inconsistent, the instructor should expect errors

Associative Phase

Once students have some understanding, and have determined an effective way of producing the same results achieving an amount of success, they have entered the associative phase.

The learner will be able to start adjusting body and ski performance to find the desired outcome. They will be able to start to self-analyse, correct and identify when they are being successful or not. Their performance will become more refined but still require concentration and external feedback.

Students’ improvements will be gradual and movements will become more consistent. The associative phase can continue for some time depending on the level of the student. At a beginner level, this phase can last hours, at an upper level, many days or weeks. Refinement happens during this phase. To promote refinement, instructors can put more attention to how details of the skill or movement are performed through activities. It is important to note that if a student can not recognise success in themselves, or others, they are not likely to have reached this learning phase.

Hot tip

Feedback at this stage ideally needs to be supportive and positive, recognising that lots of trial and error, and self-correcting will be happening from within the students.

Example

Once students can perform a gliding wedge with some degree of success they have created a functional mental image of the task and an ability to execute it. From this point, they begin to refine and master individual components of the new skill. They might be balanced slightly aft creating muscle fatigue in the thighs. Students associate this feeling with being aft, creating a basic understanding of this cause-and-effect relationship.

Through this process of association, students learn ways of self-correcting. Progress at this stage still uses a considerable amount of mental energy due to creating relationships between the mental picture and a physical outcome. Because movements are more refined, progress is considerably slower than during the cognitive stage.

Hot tip

Guided practice, allowing for mistakes and the realisation of more efficient choices, is key to success during the associative phase.

Associative Phase Characteristics

Longer than the cognitive phase, students sometimes never leave this phase
Learners begin to recognise and eliminate mistakes
Performances become more consistent
Motor programmes are developed with subroutines becoming more coordinated resulting in the skill becoming smoother
The learner is able to recognise and act on relevant cues
The learner develops the ability to use kinaesthetic feedback to detect their errors

Autonomous Phase

When students produce the new movement skilfully with little thought or effort they have reached the autonomous phase. Students demonstrate this phase by producing the desired result almost automatically.

Depending on the skill, this stage can be reached very quickly and last for a very long time, or it may take weeks or months to achieve and may be only a fleeting experience.

This stage has the benefit of allowing students to reflect on their abilities and alter and apply the mastered skill in an adaptable manner to react to a variety of terrain and conditions.

Hot tip

Feedback at this stage ideally needs to continue to be supportive and positive. The opportunity will arise where you can increase the challenge or vary the application of the skill, to see if the student is able to change and adapt to the new challenges.

Example

A student who has mastered the wedge and can make it automatically will maintain the use of the wedge when introduced to turning.

More accomplished skiers may, however, start the season with a lower skill level than they finished with the previous season. But through practice, skills will resurface in a reasonable time frame. This may take minutes, hours, days or weeks. This is simply the associative process working to regain autonomy of skills they once had.

Autonomous Phase Characteristics

The student is able to perform the skill with minimum conscious thought and can concentrate on tactical situations
The motor programme is established and stored in the long term memory and is able to be recalled with little prompting
Self confidence is increased and the student is able to consistently correct performance
When feedback is given it can be specific and highlight errors to ensure improvement
Improvements are slow and if practice is not maintained the student may return to the associative phase

Simply put, whenever we introduce a new skill, adapt it or take that skill into a new situation, students need to have an understanding of what they need to do or change before they can become successful. Once our students know what they are trying to do, our role moves from primarily creating clarity around what to do to guiding practice and facilitating feedback and ownership of the skill through the decisions and choices made.

Teaching Strategies

Teaching Strategies for the Cognitive Phase:

Give lots of demonstrations of activities
Give lots of room for trial and error and practice
Relate feedback and questions to the intended outcome (what), more than just how to perform the skill or movement (how)
Encourage observing in others’ and own performance (e.g. video)
Refrain from over correcting or being too detailed with feedback
Praise effort over performance

Teaching Strategies for the Associative Phase:

Give room for experimentation and play
Continue to give demonstrations of activities
Use adaptations to activities and exercises to facilitate the refinement of skill
Use questioning to facilitate non-judgemental feedback related to what happened in the performance
Facilitate decision making on how to become more successful or what to do next
Praise effort AND performance

Teaching Strategies for the Autonomous Phase:

Create challenges that cause students to adapt and vary their skills in a reactive manner
Use terrain to creatively challenge skill sets
Continue to give demonstration where needed
Use activities that focus on adaptability and that challenge skill, potentially this could be the physical nature of the activity or difficulty
Ask questions and provide non-judgemental feedback focused on how to adjust performance
Recognise and praise both effort and performance