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Reprints From The Professional Skier

Fall 1997 - "Teaching For Transfer: It Just Takes A Little Experience" by Ron Kipp

This article is reprinted from The Professional Skier. All copyrights apply. Please see our copyright and disclaimer notice page.

The sun is peeking over the mountains, the temperature hovers around 30 degrees F, and a quiet breeze is blowing some of the fresh snow off the nearby pine branches. It is a good day to learn to ski. Twelve year olds Alex and Brian can't wait to get started. Alex, a competent ice hockey player, and Brian, a pitcher for the school baseball team, are excited about trying out a new sport.

After the inevitable walking and gliding progressions, it is clear that something in Alex's experience is benefiting his skiing skills. Alex has adopted an athletic stance, complete with flex in his ankles and a relatively quiet upper body, while Brian leans back and often resembles a circus contortionist as he repeatedly twists his upper body into a variety of shapes. As the two continue to progress it is obvious that both boys are having fun, although if observers were asked to guess which boy were more experienced on the slopes, they would probably point to Alex. While Brian is beginning to match his skis after the fall line, Alex is skidding his skis and is almost performing hockey stops.

Why do some students, like Alex, master basic skiing skills more quickly than others? The answer may have something to do with previously learned skills. For example, novice skiers who are good ice skaters seem to pick up skiing more quickly than students who excel at baseball. There are aspects of the previously learned skating skills that transfer over to skiing. It is as if something that is learned can be carried over or applied to the new task. The balance, gliding, and edge control inherent in ice skating may accelerate the rate at which a novice skier learns the new skill of skiing. In contrast, ice skating skills probably would not transfer over as successfully to playing baseball.

Richard Magill, a renowned learning specialist, defines the transfer of learning as the influence a previously practiced skill or skills has upon learning a new skill or performing the skill in a new context (1993).

Types Of Transfer

There are three types of transfer: positive, negative, and zero. Positive transfer occurs when a person's experience with a previous skill helps when he or she sets out to learn a new skill. The ice skater who masters skiing quickly has experienced positive transfer.

Negative transfer occurs when a previously learned skill hinders or interferes with the person's ability to learn a new skill. The freestyle swimming stroke is an example of a skill that may pose a negative transfer to skiing. When it is performed correctly, the stroke involves rotating the torso, an action that might hinder a swimmer's skiing progress. In this case the upper-body rotation desired during the freestyle stroke encourages an undesirable rotary movement pattern when skiing.

Zero transfer occurs when a previously learned skill has no effect or influence upon the participant's ability to learn a new skill. Pitching a baseball has basically no effect or influence that might transfer to skiing. Stepping forward and rotating the arm are motions that neither contribute to nor hinder skiing skills.

Fortunately most transfer is positive. Negative transfer is usually the result of a new response to an older acquired stimulus. Experimental conditions where subjects were taught a skill and then had to re-adjust their learned response with a new response account for the only situation in which negative learning has been recorded (Lewis, McAllister, and Adams 1951; Schmidt 1971, 1988; Schmidt and Young 1987). For example, imagine that a skier had been taught, and mastered, skiing on the inside ski as opposed to the traditional method of skiing on the outside ski. For this particular skier, the acquired skill of skiing on the inside ski would be an example of negative transfer.

Transfer Situations

The examples presented thus far represent intertask transfer, i.e., that which occurs when a skill from one sport transfers to a new sport. During the instructional process, intertask transfer is most important when instructors conduct their initial interviews with their students. By knowing what sports the students have participated in, the instructor can better understand the students' movement patterns and outcomes and can tailor his or her movement analogies to the students' realms of experience.

Another situation during which transfer can occur is intratask transfer, which takes place within the same sport. To employ intratask transfer in lessons, instructors often attempt to modify students' behaviors by asking them to perform on-snow learning progressions and strategies. The instructor who directs his or her students to modify or exaggerate their behavior usually hopes to see a change in behavior after the exercise. For example, when an instructor directs a student to traverse on the downhill ski to experience the sensation of standing on one ski, he or she hopes that the feeling will transfer to the student's actual ski turn.

Proactive, Retroactive Transfer

The Mt. Hood Meadows Ski School in Oregon learned the value of teaching for transfer when, in the early 1980s, it conducted a test in which it divided beginner students into two groups. One group took its first alpine ski lesson on cross-country skis. The other group learned on alpine ski equipment. The idea behind this test was to use the mobility permitted by the less fatiguing cross-country equipment to facilitate learning. Indeed the group of students that used the cross-country equipment for its initial lesson did progress at an accelerated rate. This result is an example of proactive transfer, which occurs when an intervention (in this case, the cross-country equipment) speeds learning.

In this example, the cross-country experience facilitated learning above and beyond the traditional alpine-only experience by allowing the students more practice trials. Because the cross-country equipment weighed less than the alpine equipment, students had an easier time climbing the hill after each descent and didn't tire as quickly. And probably more important, the students could actually use their ankles for balance since they were not encased in rigid plastic alpine boots.

If the cross-country students would have learned (positive transfer) albeit at a slower rate than the alpine students, then the transfer would be termed retroactive (even though still positive). Students that progress at more rapid paces than their cohorts can experience retroactive transfer in the class lesson. Due to his hockey experience, Alex's learning curve was steeper than Brian's. Since instructors have to move the group along at a pace that is appropriate for each participant within the group, Alex's progression was probably slowed by the pace the instructor had to follow. In this case the teaching pace would be a positive--although retroactive--example of transfer. Alex should probably consider private lessons, or at least a class lesson with other hockey players.

To some extent, students will learn and improve their skiing exclusively by skiing. Taking this into account, instructors use drills and exercises to create positive, proactive transfer. When teaching for transfer, the instructor should use drills and exercises that address the student's deficient motor skill or movement pattern.

Methods Of Transfer

An instructor who is familiar with the elements of transfer can often suggest exercises that will facilitate the crossover of certain skills from one sport to another. Proficiency at performing the drill is assumed to transfer into the skills of skiing. Because a student who performs the drill proficiently usually transfers the newly learned skill to skiing, the instructor must carefully select a drill that contains the elements to be learned.

For example, if students need to master edging and cross-over skills, the instructor might suggest the 1,000 steps drill. To perform the 1,000 steps drill, students start off in a traverse and alternate steps like marching band leaders. The stepping motions require the students to learn to engage their uphill edges, otherwise they will slip and lose their line. The instructor then asks the students to add a turn to link traverses. This is where the students emphasize the skill of cross-over, which refers to the upper body's movement into the new turn. The cross-over is timed with the edge change or movement to the new uphill edges. The edge change and crossover skills have been successfully emphasized if the students are able to continue the 1,000 steps motion while they cross-over.

The student who needs to practice simultaneous leg steering skills, however, would derive little benefit from the same drill. Pivot slips down a corridor would be more appropriate when trying to get the student to increase simultaneous leg steering. Students who start with a sequential leg entry by turning the outside ski before the inside ski-as opposed to those who start with a simultaneous leg entry by turning both skis at the same time-will get immediate feedback when they find themselves unable to stay within the confines of the corridor.

Breaking a skill into its components is another teaching method that facilitates teaching for transfer (Seymour 1954). For instance, to teach weight transfer, many instructors ask their students to step to the uphill ski during a traverse, an action that elicits the desired movement of weight transfer. Dissecting a sport into its constituent elements lets the student experience the movement sensations of each element exclusive of the total motion. The instructor must always remember to insert the new learned movement back into the criterion skill when teaching for transfer. A good rule of thumb would be to always ski after every exercise or drill.

Simulators such as ski machines and revolving ramps stake their claims on their transfer abilities. The closer the machines resemble the range and speed of motion of skiing, the more they will transfer to the actual sport of skiing.

Bilateral Transfer

Sometimes called "cross education," bilateral transfer focuses on the transfer of learning between limbs rather than between or within tasks. Bilateral transfer results when a limb on one side of the body transfers what it has learned to the corresponding limb on the opposite side of the body (Magill 1993). For example, if you can throw a Frisbee with your right hand, you will learn to throw the Frisbee quicker with your left hand than if you did not know how to throw with your right hand. Research from bilateral transfer studies indicates that it is better for an individual to master a skill on one side of the body first as opposed to switching sides during the learning process. Although this idea is often difficult to implement during ski lessons, it does help explain why students should practice a skill repeatedly in one direction before attempting the same feat in a different direction.

One side of the body may be more adept at initial learning. Even though the research is mixed concerning which limb, the preferred or nonpreferred, should be focused on first, studies seem to suggest that for complex tasks, such as skiing, the nonpreferred limb to preferred limb transfer may be advantageous (Ammons 1958; Elliot 1985; Taylor and Heilman 1980). If the student's left leg is the nonpreferred side, then right turns may be the better choice when the instructor is introducing something new.

Why Transfer Occurs

The more similar two tasks are, the greater the chance that transfer of learning will occur (Schmidt and Young 1987). But what, exactly, needs to be similar? In 1901 two pioneering learning theorists, Edward Thorndike and Robert Woodworth, proposed that transfer depends on the number of "identical elements" between two tasks to be mastered. The two implied that an "element" was either (a) necessary abilities the two tasks have in common, (b) motor programs used by both tasks, or (c) both.

Elements could also refer to general characteristics, such as the purpose of the response or the attitude related to the performance. For example, an instructor trying to teach students to engage their edges will find that the students will use learned movements from their past to attempt to achieve this goal. These movements might include tipping or tilting the foot (eversion), moving the knee medially, or tipping the body.

Elements could also refer to specific characteristics, such as the particular components of the skill being performed. In 1949 a prominent learning theorist named Charles Osgood elaborated on Thorndike and Woodworth's theory, suggesting that the amount of learning that occurs is a joint function of the similarity between the stimulus elements and the response elements. For example, when a student is cross-country skiing or ice skating--activities that might transfer edging skills--he or she learns that moving the knee medially (the stimulus) causes the ski or skate edge to engage (response).

What will not transfer? General traits or abilities do not transfer. For example, studies have shown that "quickening exercises," various laboratory tasks that require rapid decision and action, provide no transfer to other tasks that require quickness. Specific motor abilities such as quickness, which are indigenous to the individual, differ significantly from skills, which can be learned. It is not surprising then, that general traits or abilities such as quickness cannot be improved by the use of different activities supposedly involving that trait (Schmidt 1988). Skills such as balancing on one foot, on the other hand, can be transferred, whether the individual is on skis, ice skates, or in-line skates.

Conclusion

The transfer of learning and the teaching strategies that it suggests provide ski instructors with numerous opportunities for shaping their students' skiing experience. By developing an awareness for how previous experience can impact a student's ability to learn skiing skills, instructors can teach for positive transfer or at least make sure that bad habits don't threaten to take over the lesson.

Editor's note: This article is a synopsis of Ron Kipp's lecture for the National Children's Educator Symposium held last January at Deer Valley, Utah.

Ron Kipp is a PSIA-I division examiner/ clinic leader and serves as the director of athlete preparation for the U.S. Ski Team.

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