WHAT IS SKILL?

The term skill, like the word learning, is difficult to measure and interpret. It may have various

connotations, depending on what is to be defined and who is defining it. The Winston dictionary

states that “skill is knowledge of any art together with expert ability to put that knowledge to

use”.

Skill can refer to a particular act performed or to the manner in which it is executed. All physical

education activities may be considered the skills or as being comprised of skills and the degree of

proficiency attained by individual reflects his skill level.

Skill is a relative quality, not to be defined in absolute terms. Performance displayed by an

individual may be so outstanding as to warrant his being considered skilled, by comparison with

the group of his peers on the neighborhood football field. The same person when placed with

members of thevarsity team may appear relatively on skill. Skills as demonstrated by

performance can be greatly influenced by host of factors that may have psychological or

emotional origins. However, it is usually thought that a highly skilled individual will be able to

perform fairly consistently regardless of the factors present that might cause the “average”

person’s performance to fluctuate.

ABILITIES AND SKILLS

It is not unusual to hear the terms ability and skill used quite often, many times interchangeably.

Yet, although related, they describe different behaviors. The similarities and differences between

ability and skills are subtle. Explanations of these terms were already stated and therefore do not

need to be repeated again. As might be expected, there is much more agreement among testing

specialist regarding the way they measure a particular skill or knowledge about some subject

matter than there is regarding how to evaluate cognitive or psychomotor abilities. Because

abilities presumably underlie the potential of success and skill, and should theoretically be useful

as predators of task proficiency, and accurate assessment of abilities is quite desirable.

It should be expected therefore that there are many more skills than there are abilities. Skills are

easy to observe and measure but the designation of abilities is more conceptual in nature.

Abilities are derived by (1) general analysis and subjective appraisal or (2)statistical techniques,

such as correlational and factor-analytic models. The former is convenient but superficial

approach. The latter includes the rigors of research and the application of statistics.

Unfortunately, inspite of these efforts, an acceptable taxonomy of psychomotor abilities has yet

to be created. A little later we will examine the current status of our knowledge on this topic.

When a number of different tests scores correlate well together, the assumption is that there is

something in common among them. This underlying characteristic is termed ability. Thus, the

presence of ability to a high degree increases an individual’s probability to perform well on those

tasks to which the ability contributes. If accurate ability taxonomy were in existence today,

prediction of task achievement from entering abilities could be a reality. However, such concerns

are still in the development process. We must realize, though, that we do not know how to

measure ability in a “pure” way. That which is refered to in the literature as an ability score is

invariably a score registered on a specific test, or skill.