A Level PE: Desirable Difficulties - Skill Classification

“A desirable difficulty (first coined by Robert A. Bjork in 1994) is a learning task that requires a considerable but desirable amount of effort, thereby improving long-term performance. As the name suggests, desirable difficulties should be both desirable and difficult.”

“When planning lessons, we should not worry about students getting stuck, we should worry about them not getting stuck.” Sherwood (2018)

“Making learning too easy leads to thinking that learning has occurred when participants quickly forget and cannot actually apply. Deeper processing is critical”. Shank (2017)

These desirable difficulties have been thoughtfully designed in order to challenge your students to go beyond a superficial understanding of the concepts involved in skill classification.

Challenge your students and ask them to explain why certain statements are true and to elaborate on other statements. This will be difficult and will require them to think hard and construct deeper understanding of the concepts. This is good, because “when learning is easy it is often superficial and soon forgotten. However when the learning is difficult it makes the learning stronger and better remembered.” Brown (2014)

What’s in this resource?

• 20 desirable difficulties concerning skill classification on MS PowerPoint
• Random generator on MS PowerPoint, enabling you and your students to select any of the desirable difficulties at random - perfect for starter and review activities and for spaced and retrieval practice
• Printable PDF of the 20 desirable difficulties to display in class and use as extension tasks
• Printable worksheet of the 20 desirable difficulties for students to work on individually