ABSTRACT
Competence in psychomotor skills has an important influence on children's learning, including concept learning. Teaching psychomotor skills involves many of the basic techniques discussed in the teaching of content and in developing motivation in the classroom. This chapter presents the key elements in teaching psychomotor skills. Work in the field of psychomotor objectives is not so advanced as in the cognitive field; however, work by Harrow gives us an indication of some important considerations. Harrow takes an approach resembling that of the Bloom taxonomy. The nature of the teaching task determines by ascertaining the learner's existing abilities and comparing them with those demanded by competent execution of the skill. The Harrow taxonomy helps in suggesting the relationship between different types of abilities. The chapter presents an illustrative analysis of the task of teaching handwriting and task analysis of discrimination between ascending intervals of a major scale.
