Paper on Saturday Softball

1. Introduction
Learning has traditionally been associated with formal education and work environments. However,
there is increased research interest in how learning takes place in informal cultures because they
provide opportunities to understand identity formation, social interaction and independent learning in
sustainable ways and in its implications on designing learning environments (Aittola, 2000). The first part
of this paper looks at a 19-year-old social softball community and discusses the strengths and limitations
of using Anderson’s Adaptive Character of Thought –Rational (Act-R) and Lave’s Situated Learning
Theory to understand learning in a sustained way in this community. It then proposes some
improvements for this learning community and suggests principles which may be applicable to other
learning communities.
Background
The case study involves a sustained, recreational softball community which has played the game every
Saturday afternoon at the National University of Singapore (NUS) sports field for about 19 years. Calling
themselves the Saturday Afternoon Recreational Softball team (SARS), the group attracts between 15 to
28 softball players from different age groups, nationalities, occupations and genders to play ‘pick-up’
games weekly. Table 1 shows the profile of the members of the community. It was initially formed for
United States (U.S.) exchange students from NUS and the U.S. Education Information Center by a history
professor, Daniel Crosswell, in 1993 who has since relocated back to the U.S. By 1995, more local players
joined as peripheral ‘neophytes’ (Crosswell, 2012) and the movement grew to become more
cosmopolitan with even interested bystanders invited to play. Before long, these social softball sessions
became a weekly affair and became integrated with the social activities and identities of those who
formed the community.
Table 1
Description of Members
Social Age Gender Country of birth No. of active Occupations
connections to Range participants
SARS (at least once every
two months)
NUS teaching 35 – 55 Male USA, Australia, 4 Professors in higher
staff & family years Britain , Canada education
members
Ex-NUS students 26 – 42 Male and Singapore, 7 Teachers, grad
years female Malaysia. students, research
assistants,
Current NUS 18-25 Male and Singapore, 7 Students
students years female Malaysia, Korea,
China.
Ex-Montfort boys 24 – 32 Male and Singapore 4 Students, HR,
and friends years female banking, sales,
business, F&B,
nursing, etc
New York 30 – 52 Male and USA, Puerto Rico, 4 Musician, IT,
University Tisch years female Canada, Singapore photographer,
School of the banking, teacher

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Arts Asia &
others
The main source of data collection was derived from one of the researcher’s involvement
in the group since 1994. To triangulate the information, email correspondence was carried out
with Crosswell and informal interviews with SARs members Other sources of data information
came from their blog and social media which tracked the origins, development and weekly
scores, photos and comments from the group.
Act-R Theory
Anderson (1990) proposed that knowledge is initially stored in declarative form as facts, images and
sounds and is interpreted by using general procedures towards more automatic processes which
become procedural. According to Act-R theory, knowledge compilation comprised of three
distinguishable stages of expertise for skill learning (Anderson 1990).
a. The cognitive stage takes place when learners commit to memory a set of facts relevant to the
skill which increasingly become proceduralised through practice. This stage is prone to errors
because declarative knowledge about the task process may be incomplete or incorrect. It
involves conscious manipulation of declarative representations of the method for performing a
task and as a result, tends to be slow and halting in nature, and often takes verbalized forms.
b. An associative stage where declarative knowledge is used together with heuristics and a means-
to-end analysis to perform tasks. After continuous repetition, proceduralisation takes place and
uses the repetition of contexts to the action, creating procedural knowledge which takes the
form of ‘if-then’ production rules and chunk matching. This removes unnecessary and useless
search paths related to active declarative knowledge.
c. The autonomous stage occurs where the tuning of production rules and the composition
process is aimed at reflecting the process by optimization of the task and require few attentional
resources (Anderson, 1993; Anderson, 2007)
Because Act-R theory looks at cognition as an information process which is derived from the interactions
of a visual module, a problem state module, a control and goal module, a declarative module and a
manual module that programs manual response (Anderson, 2007), it was felt that such lenses could be
used to analyse how beginners learn basic fundamental skills for batting a ball, catching a groundball or
fly ball, processes which involve proceduralisation and automacity associated with muscle memory. As
the learner moves towards expert status, pattern learning of particular game patterns and situations
could also form a way to study tactical learning associated with how Act-R theory is used to study
chessboard moves. (Anderson, 1990).
Act-R and batting
Most beginning players from SARS find hitting a complex skill because it involves
hitting a moving ball travelling at about 16 kilometers an hour with a 5.7cm in diameter bat. This
gives you less between two to three seconds to judge if it is within your hit zone. Expert hitters in
major league baseball who hit .300 or three-out of-ten at-bats are considered competent. As such,

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proceduralisation and automacity are important processes in the act of hitting a ball (Lebiere,
Salvucci, Gray & West, 2003). Explicit instruction and ‘batting practice’ is therefore carried out
by certain players to accelerate learning of this skill and corresponds to the Act-R theory’s notion
of improving ‘speed and accuracy’ through ‘tuning’ (Anderson, 1990). This explains why some
players from the SARS community take batting practice before and after the game to hone their
batting skills. Players with a cricket or golfing background also usually take a relatively short
time learning how to spray the ball across different parts of the field because this positive
transfer is related to Act-R theory’s associative stage of skill acquisition where learners have
advanced to the point where they can ‘associate’ the softball hitting technique as a similar pattern
to cricket or golf.
According to Anderson’s Power Law (Anderson, 1990), learning can have high levels of
retention and can be maintained over years with little or no retention loss. This explains why
Contrary, a Canadian who had not played softball in two years went 4 for 5 and was able to put
the ball in play after just a couple of at-bats in October 2012. This principle also explains why
those who are familiar with the ‘rules’ and situations of the game seldom make base-running
errors or ‘mental fielding errors1’ even though they may not have played in years (Of course,
depending on their level of proficiency attained). According to Anderson (1990), performance
of a skill improves as a power function of practice and has modest declines over long retention
intervals.
Hitting to the opposite field is an unnatural but very valuable skill for baseball and
softball. As such, some players from SARS team who are proficient in opposite-field batting
reported that at the initial learning stage, they were coached to verbalize their thoughts to have
executive control of their bodily functions by saying aloud, “Keep your head down, eye on the
ball, drill it the other way”. Some players were trained using various drills and practices which
involved using a batting tee and side flips to isolate functions linked to the visual, goal and
manual modules elucidated in Anderson’s Act-R information processing approach (Anderson,
2007).
Act-R and game situations
Act-R’s procedural system of ‘if-then’ rules is also very applicable to game situations. At
an informal discussion on game situations over drinks one day, professor at NUS shared that
experienced players compute the following questions in their head before a fielding play is made,
“What’s the score? What inning is it? Who and where are the runners? Who’s the batter? What’s
the pitcher throwing? Where are the outfielders? Who’s the catcher? Where do I hit it? These ‘if-
then’ rules operate in very complex ways for an expert player to decide where he throws the ball
after fielding it. This is similar to chessboard expert patterns where the variables represent
‘recognisable chunks in problems’ which are ‘patterns of elements that repeat over problems’
and represent a tactical form of learning (Anderson, 1990, p. 298). Baseball coaches and
aficionadi call such skills ‘fundamentals’ and players improve such skills when there is isolated
and explicit practice on these game situations and problems. The game rules and specific
situation is cognitive, not necessarily declarative, but its flawless execution relies on
proceduralisation and automacity.

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Act-R limitations and implications
There are however aspects of Act-R theory which do not fit with SARS. Even though automacity
and proceduralisation are important game skills, procedural knowledge does not necessarily have
its origins and co-exist from declarative knowledge. Several players like Gino, an international
student from China at NUS, was a very competent in the field without naming the different kinds
of batting stance or hitting philosophies associated with the likes of Walt Hriniak, Ted Williams
or Tony Gwynn2 as a philosophy. Neither does it explain why this community has sustained
itself for such a long time.
In retrospect, Act-R Theory is useful in understanding cognitive acquisition of objective
knowledge and skill. It suggests explicit skill training sessions and rehearsed game situations to
improve automacity and proceduralisation associated with individual skill improvement.
However, Act-R fails to view learning as contextualised in group action and practice and as such
fails to link it closely with identity formation, intrinsic motivation and the sustained nature of the
SARS community.
Situated Learning
Because of Act-R Theory’s limitations, we will pursue the premise that skill learning
among SARS members is a situated activity which involves not only specific skills learnt by the
players but also more importantly, the experience of meaning and identity formation in the
players participating in SARS (Lave & Wenger, 1991). In such situations, the way the players
get involved and take part in the community of practice is influenced by the actual physical and
social organisation of the activity and explains how SARS members learn through participation
in specific social practices (eg. skill learning), and how the they ‘stay there’ (Holt and Mitchell,
2006).
According to the social theory of learning, learning takes place in a social context, or to
be more specific, in a community of practice comprised of ‘a set of relations among persons,
activity, and world, over time and in relation with other tangential and overlapping communities
of practice’ (Lave and Wenger 1991, p. 98; Wenger 1998). Knowing and learning is situated in
activities and trajectories of apprentices whose new skills are developed (Lave, 1991). Learning
is integrated into the generative social practice in the lived world and not an independent
reifiable process that just happen to be located somewhere. (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger,
1998; Contu & Willmott, 2003). According to Wenger (1998), participation and reification are
complementary in learning as a community. Participation, in time to come, leads to the
production of artifacts such as documents to reify certain aspects of practice in a community (see
Figure 1). An example of this happening in SARS would be the blog that was set up to try to
document its historical beginnings and profile its core members. In this way, learning is a
process of deconstruction and reconstruction as well as a participatory process, rather than the
mere acquisition of knowledge, skills or abilities (Hodkinson & Hodkinson, 2004).

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Figure 1. The duality of participation and reification (Wenger, 1998, p. 63).
Wenger (1998) also identifies the main components of communities of practice as:
a. A shared area of interest;
b. A shared practice; and
c. An engagement in discussion and activities that allows members to share knowledge
with one another.
Shared interest and practice as mediated space for skill development
Shared interest and practice is evident in SARS because of the routinisation and
regularity of how members practice learning in the community. Even after the ‘pick-up’ games
are concluded, players continue with batting and fielding practice for an hour on their own before
leaving the field. This mediated and regular space allows some members to periodically form
their own teams as ‘temporal’ communities to participate in SARS games and on occasion, local
softball tournaments. Some examples of local tournaments include the Softball Mania Co-ed
Tournament (2011 and 2012), Singapore Baseball and Softball Association (SBSA) Slow Pith
Carnival (2012) and the Montfort Secondary Invitation Tournament (2006).
This explains how shared interest and practice provide mediated ‘practice opportunities’ and
‘space’ for individual skill and social capital to form tournament-based teams (Bourdieu &
Wacquat, 1992).
Forms of engagement in discussion and sharing knowledge
According to Lave (1990), learning derives from the socially and culturally structured
world which is situated in the historical development of ongoing activity. An analysis of how
SARS share game knowledge and build social relations is highlighted in two phases which
overlap each other.
• Phase 1: Face-to-face routine social interactions after games over dinner and
drinks (1993-2012)

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• Phase 2: Online communication through social media platforms (2002 – 2012).
In the first phase, an important postgame ritual was to gather at the University Faculty
lounge for dinner and drinks where informal talk about how the game was played, watching
videos of members at bat (2004-2005) and talking about the week’s major league baseball
highlights or other matters provided for informal forms of learning. This social and cultural
activity-based informal learning system fits in with how communities of practice are defined as a
group of individuals who foster individual growth through collaborative relationships and
activities with its members having similar goals, meaning and common histories, located within
a larger system (Barab & Duffy, 2000; Buysse, Sparkman & Wesley, 2003).
In the second phase, advances in the communication technologies led to the expansion of
learning into social media platforms. The postings in the group page may summarised as a
typology of speech acts as shown in Table 2 (Searle, 1969; Carr, Shrock and Dauterman, 2012).
Social media was also used for historical recall or moment making, discussion, sharing of
knowledge and social purposes, even across geographical boundaries, as shown in Table 3.
Table 2
Coding Scheme for Analysing Speech Acts and Quotations in Facebook messages
Speech Act Properties of Speech Act Example (s)
Assertive Statement of fact, getting The right lesson to take away from Rule
viewer to form a belief 6.06 is that the batter’s box isn’t a safety
zone. Eric was out!
Directive Sender gets receiver to do And definitely want Mingwoo back every
something week – as long as he is playing softball!
Commisive Sender commits himself to do There’s a tournament next week. Let’s
something meet at the field and move to west coast
park if necessary.
Expressive Sender expresses feeling Had a great return to the ball diamond.
towards receiver Thanks to all the old-timers who showed
up.

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Table 3
Purpose and Activities on SARS Facebook
Purpose Activity example
Historical recall Scores, line-ups, playoff-the-day and discussion about the game.
Discussion Discussion of game rules and interpretation of controversial game rules.
Resolution over such rules as a ‘safety zone’ to avoid player injuries.
Sharing Snippets and photographs of SARS player at-bats and fielding. Sharing
of baseball news and highlights
Social Group photographs, photographs of social activities (Eg. barbecues,
bowling events, overseas SARS trips, barbecues. Tagging of names, likes
and dislikes functions.
According to Lave and Wenger (1991), a community of practice moves beyond a
‘primordial culture-sharing entity’ (p. 98) with participants having different viewpoints (Cox,
2004). This is seen in social media debates over rule interpretations even after the game was over
for several days. .
P : We were discussing Eric’s play. I have put the MLB rules here, and it
seems that there is NO discussion of judgement on such a play or even of
intent. The batter does not have to make any effort to get out of the way.
Danger : Who are you fooling? There is no batter’s box drawn in our game.
Ke : I face a dilemma. I don’t want people to know that I spend more than
five minutes researching this. The right lesson to take away from Rule
6.06 is that the batter’s box isn’t a safety zone. But rule 7/09 is relevant
too. “It is interference by a batter or a runner.” So, a batter would have to
get out of the way. Eric was out, QED.
Beyond Socially Visible Boundaries
Lave and Wenger (1991) argues that community is loosely defined and does not
necessarily imply co-presence and a well-defined, identifiable group with socially visible
boundaries. Instead, it is ‘participation in an activity system’ with participants ‘sharing
understandings concerning what they are doing both in the past and present which adds meaning
to the participants’ lives and for their communities’ (p.98) (Cox, 2004). This is seen in past core
members of SARS who have left Singapore geographically but who at times, purposefully travel
to Singapore at least once in four years to participate in Saturday Softball as shown in Table 3.
These individuals demonstrate that learning about and learning to be are intertwined with
practice, which in turn shapes participant dispositions, belief systems and identity (Bruner, 1986,
1996).

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Table 3
Examples of SARS Players who have returned Every Four Years
Member Place of origin Current residence
Contrary Saskatoon, Canada Butuan, Mindanao, Philippines
Joyce Chicago, Illinois Washington DC
Rube Donnellson,, Illinois Houston, Texas
The Generalissimo Venezuela Venezuela
Kitty Kyle Kansas City, Kansas Afghanistan
Daniel Crosswell St Catharine’s, Ontario Columbus, Georgia
Legitimate Peripheral Participation (LPP)
Another important aspect of situated learning is distinguishing between ‘legitimate
peripheral participation’ and ‘full participation’, which implies power differences among
members (Lave and Wenger, 1991). In LPP, newcomers to a community of practice at first
participate on the periphery and engage in minimal conversations through which they learn about
how the community is organised. With time, their participation increases and they become more
central to the community of practice (Lave, 1991; Huzzard, 2004). This process sustains and
regenerates the community with periphery members becoming core participants. By engaging in
meaningful activities, periphery members make ongoing contributions, whether in direct actions
or in contributing to the understanding of the actions and ideas of others so that there is mutual
appropriation of ideas and learning.
The changing cast of SARS core players attests to this because current NUS students and
recent graduates increasingly make up the bulk of the members of the SARS team. Without
them, there would be insufficient players to keep SARS going. However, among current players,
not all learners move from peripheral to full participation (Lave & Wenger, 1991). Core
members also move to the periphery for a variety of reasons – geographical distance, family or
career commitments over different life-stages, changing members and as a result being absent
from SARS for so long, or social and cultural dissonance when they do return.
Situated Learning limitations and implications
One issue involved in situated learning theory involves the questions of ‘Who is
perceived as legitimately belonging?’ and ‘Who has influence?’ LPP highlights the power-
invested process of bestowing a degree of legitimacy upon newcomers as a normal condition of
participation in the learning process but ‘hegemony over resources for learning and alienation
from full participation are inherent in the shaping of the legitimacy and peripherality of

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participation in its historical realisations’ (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 42; Contu & Willmott,
2003). Lave and Wenger (1991) stated that LPP is both ‘a source of power or powerlessness, in
affording or preventing articulation and interchange among communities of practice’ (p. 36). .At
its worst, core members construct discourses and impose them on the group through individual
sense-making, and this risks removing the possibility of alternative interpretations or options for
consideration and action which are critical for generativity (Huzzard, 2004).
According to Bourdieu (1984), power is culturally and symbolically re-legitimised
through a habitus. In the SARS community, this habitus involves participation in post-game
rituals, online involvement and SARS social activities which develops and maintains long term
community memory and identity but at the same time, embeds habitus which periphery members
can sometimes feel culturally uncomfortable with. As a result, core members enjoy certain status
within the community and evident from their heightened level of online discussion engagement
and participation in social activities. Such periphery-core inequalities can also slowly become
entrenched in how teams are formed and reported in social media:
Aug 25 :Young ‘uns won by 11-10 in bottom of 9.
Oldies went out to early lead but age caught up with them.
Oct 6 :Young'uns + Lloyd & Kids beat the Oldies (again). 17-13.
This trend can over prolonged periods, result in a community identifying itself too
strongly with just its core, making it susceptible to group-think, closed forms of thinking and
stagnation, possibly community fissure, factionalization and taken to extremes, fragmentation.
Another major drawback of SARS and situational learning is that it takes for granted that
existing SARS processes makes for effective individual learning. It also assumes that periphery
participants have the same kinds of needs as shown in Table 4. Closer analysis shows that SARS
as a community can be inefficient and unresponsive to the peripheral individual needs in terms of
skill development for beginning players and integrating periphery players who may have a
different culture or habitus. SARS also lack formal induction, curriculum or codified rules
because membership only entails full engagement in the game for the whole 9 innings every
Saturday. Its simplicity is also its weakness as a learning community.

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Table 4
Periphery Archetypes, needs and SARS Community Processes
Periphery archetype Needs SARS community Challenges
process/response
Beginner player Basic skills Regular games, pre-game and Knowing someone who is
post-game practice/ already in the community
who will work with you at an
individual level.
Novice player Socialisation Regular games, post-game Comfort level with habitus of
rituals, online involvement. SARS community
Ex-core player Socialisation Regular games, post game Meeting familiar SARS ex-
rituals, online contact core players
In summary, situated learning deals with learners as a social and ‘whole’ person where
learning is a reconstructive and participatory process, unlike Act-R which focuses is on the
individual acquisition of knowledge, skills or abilities (Hodkinson & Hodkinson, 2004). It is a
useful learning ‘lens’ for understanding how communities of practice are sustained and takes
place in ‘situatedness’. However, situated learning also involves core participants having
‘hegemony over resources for learning’ within ‘unequal relations of power’ which requires an
understanding of how practices are embedded in history and language (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p.
42). Situated learning is also limited in its response and effectiveness in improving the individual
skills of players and especially for beginner players who have little knowledge of the game.
Discussion and Recommendations
Based on the strengths and limitations which Act-R and situated learning theories
present, this portion proposes some improvements to be made to make learning more effective
and meaningful for the members in SARS and suggests principles which may be applicable to
other learning communities.
Role of Tournaments
A key feature of putting learning ideas into practice is to adapt them to local
circumstances and to include the people for whom the programs are designed for, as contributors
in the planning as well as implementation of the programs (Rogoff, 2011). Friendly tournaments
have a means to keep SARS teams cohesive as a unit, yet sensitive and attuned to the self-esteem
needs of periphery players.
The last tournament in which SARS participated as a unified team was in 2006. This
tournament was organised based on a co-sharing of responsibilities principle. It was a
community event with SARS sending in two teams (One team comprising of core players and
another a mixed team of NTU/NUS students) and three secondary school teams (comprised of
coaches, parents, students and teachers). The school teams played with a10-0 score advantage
because they were not regular expert players. The event also involved the sharing of costs and

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umpiring duties and was supposed to be celebrated with a barbecue in the evening. This event
made the SARS team train hard as a team to hone individual and game situation ‘fundamentals’
which Act-R proceduralisation and automacity highlights. Friendly tournaments as such, have a
cohesive impact and yet keep SARS core participants sensitive and attuned to the self-esteem
needs of others.
Communities of Practice also exist within broader community system with their own
historical development (Wenger, 1998) and SARS is not an exception. During the 2011 and 2012
tournaments, such teams as the ‘Headhunters’, ‘Dark Side’ and ‘LucasFilms’ are other such
groups which exist. Routine participation in local tournaments which bring these like-minded
communities together in friendly competition is also a means to redress the inefficient and
individualized learning which is needed for SARS as a community of learners.
Cultural Practices as Learning Strategies
SARS habitus developed in the trajectory it has is because its social origins lay in giving
a sense of familiarity, belonging and identity for those who had migrated or lived abroad as
expatriates or international students. As a sport with western origins, it is dominated by white
Anglo-Saxon and the occasional Latin American core participant rather than Asians. Its origins
and resultant habitus as such, explain why few Asians participate in the post-game rituals and
social activities of the SARS community.
There are, however, several core participants who have ‘agency’ as ‘boundary objects’
because they have social capital as core SARS players with social networks which extend to
peripheral participants. According to Bandura (1989), this agency is a ‘temporally embedded
process of social engagement which is shaped and informed by the past, oriented through
evaluation of present towards future possibilities’. By identifying boundary core participants as
important social nodal points for coordinating and routinising exchanges across boundaries
(between SARS players) and co-organising joint activities, it creates multiple opportunities for
boundary crossings, and facilitate dialogical collaborative learning and participation (Akkerman
& Baker, 2011).
One practical example involves an Asian core member’s use of whatsapp social
networking device to keep both periphery and core members informed on which members are
coming for games. Its discourse also involves comments on plays in the field, upcoming events
or even just routine ‘social talk’. It is also a means through which ex-core players or peripheral
members can stay keep connected to the SARS community.
On the field, as is usually already embedded as a practice, attention is also placed on
encouraging, cheering and praising beginner and peripheral players as a means to help them find
hidden richer and layered aspects of the game and to put them in the driver’s seat of their own
learning. It is also means to help them overcome angst associated with beginner learning and
helps build the social connectivity needed for pre-game or post-game practice.
Periphery to Core Participation

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According to Lave (1990), forming an identity with the community involves newcomers
bringing with them their own experience of practice and learning which entails finding
equilibrium between self and the community. How do you bring people from periphery to core
more effectively and efficiently? When a newcomer enters a community, it is mostly competence
that is pulling the experience along, until the learner’s experience reflects the competence of the
community (Wenger, 1998). Conversely, a new experience can also ‘pull a community’s
competence along’ because when a newcomer brings in new elements into practice, it has to
negotiate whether the community will embrace their contribution as a new element of
competence or reject it. One way of encouraging the community to embrace such contributions
would be to provide the opportunity for newcomers to share their competence and beliefs with
the community through shared team building activities embedded in the learning of the skills in
tournament-based situations. These could involve the use of artifacts such as the use of SKLZ
practice nets3, popup playback trainers4 and station-based tournament training.
Accountability and Self-directed Learning
How does one be accountable for one’s learning? How do you to instill a form of self-
directed learning for individuals in the community? Anderson’s (1980) idea that ‘perfect practice
makes perfect’ would help an individual move from novice to an expert learner. Tournaments
would provide the context for discipline and mandated drills and help an individual practise with
contemplation and strife for ‘mindful practic’e. After such tournament games, a social process
which involves analysing or discussing how one played would also help the player to be mindful
of learning points and move his player capacity beyond his current levels. Meaningful learning in
social contexts requires both participation and reification to be in a dynamic interplay (Wenger,
1998).
Outreach to More People
Learning as the production of practice creates divisive boundaries because sharing a
common history of learning ends in distinguishing those who were involved from those who
were not and not because members of the community are trying to isolate others (Wenger, 1998).
How do you expand the community to reach out to more people? Boundaries of practice are not
geographical and not necessarily visible or explicit (Wenger, 1998). Leveraging on technology,
media, social nodal points and boundary core players are means to promote this community by
extending the boundaries of practice and also more periphery participants to the core so that the
community can have generativity.
Reflection and Conclusion
Act-R and situated learning theories have limitations in their application to the SARS
community experience. One limitation of the situated learning theory, in particular LLP, is that it
does not effectively explain the learning of more experienced members in the community as they
move from core to periphery (Lave & Wenger, 1991). In other words, do experienced members
get displaced as more newcomers move from peripheral to core? (Hodkinson & Hodkinson,
2004). A limitation of the Act-R theory would be that it does not take into account what skills
individuals need to practise in order to realize their learning goals given that ‘imperfect practice

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makes for imperfect skills’. Act-R theory assumes that so long as an individual practices, he or
she will be practising the right skills to reach their learning goals. If one is to practise the wrong
skills and form bad habits, then it would be ‘practice’ disabling and limiting effective skill
development.
Learning can be viewed as a process of realignment between socially defined competence
and personal experience. This process can cause positive identification or dissonant identification
within the community. The focus on identity adds a human dimension to the notion of practice. It
is not just about individual learning techniques and dispositions. According to Wenger (1998),
learning involves becoming. For him, knowledge and the knower are not separated. Only with
this perspective can practice be enabling. In this way, gaining a competence is transformed into
becoming someone for whom the competence is a meaningful way of living in the world. The
history of practice, the importance of what drives the community, the relationships that shape it,
and the identities of members in the community all provide resources for learning – both for
newcomers and oldtimers alike (Wenger, 1998).
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Footnotes
1
Mental fielding errors take the form of throwing to the wrong base or failing to throw the ball to the correct fielder.
2
Hriniak proposed hitting the ball up the middle, to swing down on the ball, or to take the upper hand off the bat at the
end of their swing. Williams looked at it as a science and advocated an inside-out stroke and taking the first pitch to improve your
statistical advantage of hitting. Gwynn proposed a balanced stance, pulling the bottom hand and hitting for average.
3
SKLZ practice nets are sturdy and portable batting safety nets.
4
Defensive trainers to allow players to throw hard at small wired targets and to judge line-dri9ve returns and pop-ups.