American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance - AAHPERD

 Issue: February 2004

Applying a Task Progression to the Reciprocal Style of Teaching
Mark Byra

Abstract:
When teaching a new skill to learners, physical educators present a progression of tasks to facilitate student learning. Each task within the progression adds to the level of difficulty or the complexity of the skill being performed. However, physical education teachers do not commonly apply knowledge about task progressions when employing new instructional strategies. Knowledge about the use of task progressions as applied to motor skill development could be helpful to teachers when implementing new teaching approaches, particularly approaches that are complex. In this article, the concept of task progression is applied to the employment of Mosston and Ashworth’s reciprocal style of teaching (C). A brief description of style C and its connection to the national standards for physical education are presented, followed by a sequenced task progression of learning experiences that can be used to introduce style C in a physical education class.

Article category: Teaching