Post by Pete Hurrikane on Apr 18, 2012 21:06:10 GMT -5
I have spent most of my life giving and receiving judgemental feedback and was of the opinion that this was the only way to live or learn. Since discovering Timothy Gallwey and Fred Shoemaker, my opinions have been turned upside down.
Everything we do in life, be that sport, education or work, is directed by someone who knows more than ourselves (the students). And that manager, coach or teacher uses his personal judgements to relay how he thinks we are progressing.
More often than not this director finds himself in a very powerful position, where he condemns, chastises and embarrasses his students. He freely uses words like: wrong, bad, slow, useless, time waster, idiot, science, physics etc.
My first experience of this judgemental direction started at school where many teachers would verbally bully pupils in this way.
As toddlers we went through the fastest learning phase of our lives. In less than five years we learned most of the fundamental motor skills and, on the whole, were not verbally bullied into learning them.
I have been practising non-judgemental direction for a few years now and have achieved much better results with my students.
A typical judgemental feedback session would sound like this,
"No, wrong. You bent your left elbow again on the back swing." That type of teacher would then ask the student to swing again and probably have him stop at the top and put him in the correct position. He would direct the student to swing to this position with feedback like "Better, almost there, to that's it, you've got it now."
That's basically how I learned to play golf but was never really comfortable trying to swing to the position that the trainer had put me in. Five minutes later I would be swinging somewhere in between and I would hear, "No, wrong!" once again and go through the same old correctional procedure. In a nutshell I was very reliant on his (expert) knowledge and feedback.
An non-judgemental directive would be to ask the student to swing again and after that swing the initial feedback must come from the student. The trainer acts as a mirror for his student and reports to him what he saw. This lesson sounds like this,
"Swing again but this time tell me when you feel your elbow starting to bend?" The student who must be the first to talk would report something like this, "I felt my elbow bending about here." The trainer would either agree or state that he noticed it happening a little earlier or later. The student would swing again and the trainer would again respond to the students feel and observations.
This student will quite quickly achieve the desired position using his own feeling and the coach has helped him get there without manipulating his body.
Which one of these lessons is going to be more effective?
In my opinion, the student who has been led into finding the straight left arm position with his own feeling will be able to repeat and age this and the manipulated student with always be checking in mirrors or asking someone to have a look, relying on someone else's feedback/direction.
Everything we do in life, be that sport, education or work, is directed by someone who knows more than ourselves (the students). And that manager, coach or teacher uses his personal judgements to relay how he thinks we are progressing.
More often than not this director finds himself in a very powerful position, where he condemns, chastises and embarrasses his students. He freely uses words like: wrong, bad, slow, useless, time waster, idiot, science, physics etc.
My first experience of this judgemental direction started at school where many teachers would verbally bully pupils in this way.
As toddlers we went through the fastest learning phase of our lives. In less than five years we learned most of the fundamental motor skills and, on the whole, were not verbally bullied into learning them.
I have been practising non-judgemental direction for a few years now and have achieved much better results with my students.
A typical judgemental feedback session would sound like this,
"No, wrong. You bent your left elbow again on the back swing." That type of teacher would then ask the student to swing again and probably have him stop at the top and put him in the correct position. He would direct the student to swing to this position with feedback like "Better, almost there, to that's it, you've got it now."
That's basically how I learned to play golf but was never really comfortable trying to swing to the position that the trainer had put me in. Five minutes later I would be swinging somewhere in between and I would hear, "No, wrong!" once again and go through the same old correctional procedure. In a nutshell I was very reliant on his (expert) knowledge and feedback.
An non-judgemental directive would be to ask the student to swing again and after that swing the initial feedback must come from the student. The trainer acts as a mirror for his student and reports to him what he saw. This lesson sounds like this,
"Swing again but this time tell me when you feel your elbow starting to bend?" The student who must be the first to talk would report something like this, "I felt my elbow bending about here." The trainer would either agree or state that he noticed it happening a little earlier or later. The student would swing again and the trainer would again respond to the students feel and observations.
This student will quite quickly achieve the desired position using his own feeling and the coach has helped him get there without manipulating his body.
Which one of these lessons is going to be more effective?
In my opinion, the student who has been led into finding the straight left arm position with his own feeling will be able to repeat and age this and the manipulated student with always be checking in mirrors or asking someone to have a look, relying on someone else's feedback/direction.
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