Evaluate Instructional Feedback

Evaluate how instructional feedback from a teacher of Physical Education can serve as a source of motivation, reinforcement and error information for pupils within a physical education lesson.

Learning is a procedure in which an individual increases their knowledge in a certain area. Whether behavioural or skill based, the action that an individual takes in a particular situation can be changed in a variety of ways. I am concentrating on the effect of feedback in this process. The information processing theory explains behaviour in terms of nervous system activity and is supported by many slightly varying models. These models seem to agree on at least three major compulsory stages. These are, the perceptual mechanism,
Adam's (1971) ‘closed loop theory suggests that feedback is the essential difference between closed and open loop movement and is only present when there is time for a message to be sent back to the brain. If a movement is performed too quickly it is said to be ‘open-loop' and without feedback. Much research supports this theory such as Thorndike's (1913) laws of effect. He believed that rewarded behaviour would be repeated; in this circumstance, the reward is positive feedback. Whether positive or negative, feedback is generally divided into two categories, intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic feedback refers to all information retrieved by the individual themselves. It is largely kinaesthetic feelings with which the performer realises how well a movement has been performed and how close it felt to the perfect model. This is sometimes expressed as ‘knowledge of
Magill (1998) described knowledge of results as being ‘Information provided to an individual after the conclusion of a response that is related to either the outcome of the response or the performance characteristics that produce outcome'. Extrinsic feedback encompasses everything from a specific score or result achieved by the movement performed to verbal reaction from a coach or trainer. Without knowing what the results of our actions have been we will be unable to modify them in order to produce the precise movements needed for the correct performance of a skill. Informational feedback essentially points out errors and provides information to correct those