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Representative Learning Design

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Representative Learning Design

An introduction

Brian Sullivan
Mar 28, 2023
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Representative Learning Design

3points.substack.com

Last week, I highlighted an Ecological Holistic Approach to talent development. In line with this approach, this week we will zoom in on understanding the role of the environment and the processes that can enable talent development and skill acquisition.

Have you ever seen a player look great on a driving range or not miss a shot shooting stand-still jumpers and wonder to yourself, why doesn’t that translate to games?

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In this week’s 3 points, I’ll introduce representative learning design, and why understanding this framework can help your players transfer their skills from training to performance.

1. What is representative learning design?

Representative learning design (RLD), introduced by Dr. Ross Pinder (2011) is a framework that assesses the degree a practice or drills accurately ‘represent’ the performance environment they are meant to be preparing athletes for. RLD suggests that the more training accurately simulates competition demands, the more likely skill developed in training is to transfer to competition. Makes sense to me.

According to Pinder, there are two key elements used to accurately simulate the performance environment:

  • Action fidelity (movement)- the extent to which an athlete's movements during training mimic the required movement behavior during competition.

  • Functionality (information) - the degree to which a practice task or drill contains the same informational cues present during competition, ensuring that actions are based on realistic learning contexts.

2. The importance of coupling:

The key here is providing athletes with drills and practice tasks that incorporate both movement and information that are representative of the performance environment.

  • What are the movements your athletes are making during a performance

  • What information is being presented to the athletes during a performance?

  • How can we create tasks in training that require athletes to process both?

A quick anecdote as a case study:

My role as a basketball player was to shoot. I spent most of my time practicing by myself on a shooting machine. I would shoot near-perfect passes and essentially Tee up each shot in a quiet gym. From an RLD perspective, this was not very representative. Most of the shots I would take during a performance were running off screens, catching passes from all angles, and using different footwork, all while reading the defense to assess if they could disrupt my shot and doing this in front of thousands of screaming fans. My point is not to say that repetition is not important; I believe it is. But there were a lot of elements that represented my performance environment that were not showing up in training.

So, how can we create representative practice environments to enhance skill transfer?

3. Dr. Keith Davids, Professor of Motor Learning in Sport & Human Performance, provides a framework to do just that:

116 Keith Davids et al. 
Table 7.1 Criteria, description and examples for 'representative learning design 
Criteria 
Design complex 
tasks 
Provide access to 
relevant sources 
of information 
Use dynamic 
tasks 
Allow for active 
perception 
Set achievable 
goals 
Description 
Provide learners with 
opportunities to explore a 
variety of task solutions 
Create tasks that specify 
properties of interest for 
learners. Allow them to make 
reliable judgements and 
actions based on relevant 
patterns in the environment 
Include tasks that evolve over 
time 
Enable learners to act in 
context in order to perceive 
informational variables that 
support achievement of their 
goals 
Design tasks in which goals 
can always be achieved with 
different degrees of success 
(e.g. more quickly or slowly, 
in a bigger or smaller area) 
Examples 
Challenge learners to practise under 
different task constraints in which 
information or goals are changed 
Perceptual judgements and actions 
of an advanced tennis player will be 
improved at a faster rate if he or she is 
required to hit a ball that comes from 
the actions of an opponent rather than 
from a ball projection machine 
Playing small-sided games (2v1 or 3v3) 
encourages learners to understand 
where to move in order to perform 
an action. This opportunity for 
establishing a relationship between 
movement and action may not be 
afforded in static practice drills 
Movement interactions between 
an attacker and a defender allow 
perception of informational variables 
such as interpersonal distance and the 
time to close the space benveen players 
In a tennis practice game when an 
advanced player plays with a novice, 
the task of the advanced player might 
be to place the ball into certain 
restricted areas of the court, and the 
task of the novice is simply to return 
the ball to the other side

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