How can the joint action theory in didactics allow to understand didactic interactions in high-level sport ? Illustrations in athletic throws
Author(s):
Maël Le Paven (presenting / submitting) Mathilde Musard
Conference:
ECER 2015
Network:
27. Didactics - Learning and Teaching
Format:
Paper

Session Information

27 SES 06 A, Didactic Approaches to Physical Education, History and Music

Paper Session

Time:
2015-09-09
15:30-17:00
Room:
201.Oktatóterem [C]
Chair:
Kirsti Klette

Contribution

Introduction

This paper aims at showing how the joint action theory in didactics (JATD) allows to understand some specific phenomena appearing in high level sports training sessions and how generic  aspects of this phenomena can contribute to extend the comprehension of didactic situations – in both academic and non-academic forms of teaching and learning – seen as games (Sensevy, 2008).

Theoretical framework

The JATD explains that it is possible to consider didactic interactions as games in which teachers win only if learners win. Thus the didactic game, collaborative, is considered as taking place within a joint action (Clark, 1996). The victory is effective when learners acquire skills and knowledge (expected by teachers), considered as solutions to solve problems held by the learning situation. This constructivist approach leads teachers to “didactic reticence” (Brousseau, 1998): if they show the solutions or deliver too much information, they avoid learners to construct the efficient strategies leading to the solutions.

In this theory, the strategies involved in actions and interactions are considered as “transactions” (Sensevy, ibid.) focused on the objects leading to winning issues (for learners and teachers).

We noticed (Le Paven, 2008) that these transactions sometimes refer to negotiations between coaches and athletes, affecting the strategies and the nature of the knowledge involved in the transactions. By this way, coaches and athletes conceptualize skills and knowledge. They also (re)define together what deserves to be investigated, taught and learned, which is typical to the didactic interaction in high level sport (Le Paven, op. cit.).

Objective

In this paper, we focus on sudden and important reductions of both performance and quality of execution of athletes’ movements (episodes of “unexpected chesses”) after new technical instructions (from coaches), not referring to previous discussions between coaches and athletes and revealing a new didactic strategy. The goal resides in understanding why these phenomena appear.

Hypothesis

We formulate the hypothesis that a voluntary alteration of the movement is sometimes used by athletes in order to incite coaches to change their strategies.

Method

Methods In order to verify this hypothesis, we filmed four dyads “coach/athlete” during the same period (six weeks) of training sessions, reporting : i. each performance reached (in meters), thanks to the graduations on the ground; ii. all the speeches (instructions, feedbacks, comments…). We built a technological framework based on comparisons between performances and movements (speed, amplitude) of the main parts of athletes’ bodies (segments, articulations), in order to : i. associate performances obtained and ways of execution ; ii. identify moments of sudden reductions (performances, quality of execution) after unexpected transformations of didactic instructions. In complement, pre and post-sessions individual and collective interviews facilitated the identification of the didactic intentions and strategies, the expectations – including the mutual attributions of strategies and intentions, which is typical to “didactic contracts” (Brousseau, 1997) – and the episodes of “unexpected chesses”. Then we used simple and crossed self-confrontations (Clot, 1999), showing videos of these particular episodes. The interviews of athletes and coaches during the self-confrontations were focused on their intentions and expectations (actions, interactions). Results During their self-confrontation, the athletes sometimes explain that they modify or “emphasize” some parts of their movement and even apply fewer forces at the end of the execution, in order to produce less performing throws, when they are convinced that their coach’s strategy is not effective. They never tell this to their coaches. The coaches, also during their auto-confrontation, formulate hypothesis about the athletes’ movement in context of “unexpected chesses” and put in evidence the fact that few details on instructions can transform the whole throwing movement. They never analyze the changes as due to athletes’ attempts to modify or stop coaches’ strategies.

Expected Outcomes

Discussion and conclusion This study shows that the “winning-winning game” (Sensevy, op. cit.) as a condition of positive issue of didactic situations can be linked to implicit “loosing-loosing games” aiming at playing other didactic games. In these cases, strategies are used by learners : i.so that teachers believe that they play the same game ; ii. to show that the game played is not the right way to involve skills and performances. This interpretation can explain a part of “student’s job” (Perrenoud, 1998), which consists in acquiring the guiles and the routines which allow to carry out the tasks with economy of time and ways. Athletes’ guiles consist here in adopting behaviors both academic and allowing to reorient the didactic interactions, thanks to power given by their skill to finely play on motor parameters. It allows them to show or to hide their real possibilities of integration of technical instructions. That is largely facilitated by the uncertainty on the nature of contents and even knowledge aimed. Generally speaking, we can consider that the joint research for the efficiency factors re-configures the underlying process and the distribution of power (Foucault, on 1975), which impacts and complexifies the joint aspects of didactic interactions. We could extend this study to situations in which learners are in some ways more experts than teachers (physical education lessons using sports, in-service training sessions for adults…). This type of comparative didactic analysis could be useful within the framework of a comparative educational European program focused on "the educational phenomenon such as it is lived by the actors of education and such as it can be investigated by the researcher. This implies to re-place this complex-in-essence phenomenon, from the actors speech, on its historicity and in the spaces which are relevant for them." (Frenay, 2008, p. 6).

References

References Brousseau, G. (1997). The theory of didactic situations in mathematics. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Brousseau, G. (1998). Théorie des situations didactiques. Grenoble : La Pensée Sauvage. Clark, H. (1996). Using language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clot (1999). La fonction psychologique du travail. Paris : PUF. Foucault, M. (1975). Surveiller et punir. Paris : Gallimard. Frenay, M. (2008). Les tendances actuelles en éducation comparée en Europe. Recherches & éducations [online]. URL : http://rechercheseducations.revues.org/57 Le Paven, M. (2008). La relation didactique entraîneur/athlète en lancers (doctoral thesis non-published). University of Rennes II, France. Perrenoud, P. (1994). Métier d’élève et sens du travail scolaire. Paris : ESF Sensevy, G. (2008). Le travail du professeur pour la théorie de l’action conjointe en didactique. Recherche et formation, 57, 39-50.

Author Information

Maël Le Paven (presenting / submitting)
Université de Franche-Comté
La Chapelle Thouarault
Mathilde Musard
Université de Franche-Comté - ELLIADD
BESANCON

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