Topics

 

Kin 487 Motor Development

Welcome to Kin 487 Motor Development at San Francisco State University. This course is designed to familiarize students with changes in motor abilities and capabilities that occur over the lifetime. An emergent properties perspective, which emphasizes the role of task, environmental, and organismic constraints on behavior, is used to help students understand the processes underlying motor development. Special attention is given to the practitioners role in facilitating motor development.

The course should be of interest to those who want to pursue careers in fields such as rehabiliatation, education, human factors/ergonomics, nursing, or sport. Particularly for those who are interested in working with children or older adults. Alternatively, anyone who has an interest in developmental change should find this a valuable course.

 Course content includes:

  1. What is Motor Development?: Provides historical background on the study of motor development and includes discussion of terminology, theoretical views, research methodology, critical issues, and important people.
  2. Analyzing and Classifying Motor Behavior: Here we engage in the process of task analysis and classification. The skills acquired in this section provide the foundation for describing and evaluating movement, action, and skill.
  3. Factors that Influence Motor Development: Consideration of the multitude of task, environmental, and organismic constraints (factors) that regulate behavior and its development are introduced in this section.
  4. Changes in Perception-Action Across the Lifespan: This section examines the progression from involuntary to voluntary movement. Special attention is given to the development of postural, manipulatory, and locomotor skill. An important part of this section is a discussion of the characteristics of skilled and unskilled behavior.
  5. Facilitating Motor Development: The final section examines the practitioner's role in facilitating motor learning and development. The importance of early foundational activities for the development of later movement competence is stressed.

     

    Page author:David Anderson
    URL: http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~danders/topics.html
    Last updated: 7/11/97

     Copyright David Anderson