The Sports Coach as Educator

Re-conceptualising Sports Coaching

Robyn L. Jones

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781134209682
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Physical Education

Teaching athletes to improve their performance is the essence of sports coaching. In response to new government-led initiatives to invest in and develop coaching, this book is the first introduction to pedagogical theory for coaching. Bringing helpful insights from educational theory to bear on coaching practice, The Sports Coach as Educator expands and enriches the role of the coach and allows professionals to approach their work in new and inventive ways. Exploring the nature of coaching, this text covers:

• educational concepts in coaching
• coaching, teaching and leadership
• athletes' learning
• coaching communities and the social process
• reflective practice
• mentoring
• developing expert coaches.

Part I
Introduction
Coaching as an educational
enterprise

Chapter 1
How can educational concepts
inform sports coaching?

Robyn L. Jones

Introduction, aim and content

Despite a recent upsurge in scholarly interest, coaching remains an illdefined and under-theorised field. Indeed, it has been argued that no conceptual framework currently exists which adequately deals with the complex reality within which coaches work and how they can better manage it (Jones 2000, Gilbert and Trudel 2004b). It is a situation that has contributed to the dissatisfaction of many coaches with professional development programmes. The advice given is simply not considered actionable as it ignores the many tensions and social dilemmas that characterise their practice (Saury and Durand 1998, Cushion et al. 2003, Jones et al. 2004). Consequently, although there is increasing realisation of the value to coach in a more holistic, contextually sensitive fashion, the predominant theoretical discourse continues to constrain professional development as it is perceived by practitioners as lacking relevancy. Similarly, the strong thread of time-honoured beliefs seen running through coaching, provides a compelling argument that coach education programmes are having a very limited impact on practice (Cushion et al. 2003, Gilbert and Trudel 1999a). This leads us to question current conceptions of coaches, coaching and coach education.

The aim of this book is to present a re-conceptualisation of coaching. It marks an attempt to widen and enrich the theoretical lens through which the coaching role and how coaches are prepared for it can be viewed. It is based on the notion that at the heart of coaching lies the teaching and learning interface, and the myriad ways through which coaches influence athletes to develop and improve. The concepts discussed within the book come from the field of pedagogy, which, in turn, is viewed as a social process. They rest on a different set of assumptions about the nature of coaching and the coach’s role than currently operate. These include that coaching, like teaching, is an inherently non-routine, problematic and complex endeavour; that a great deal of untapped, tacit knowledge already exists in athletes and coaches; that coaching is an activity primarily based on social interaction and power; and that, like teachers, the challenges that coaches face are partly localised and need to be addressed on the ground (Toole and Seashore Louis 2002). It therefore embraces the belief that coaching is not limited to styles of delivery, sport-specific knowledge and sequential management of a set procedure, but is also infused with the dynamic rings of invisible social contexts that surround the coach–athlete relationship (McLaughlin and Talbert 1993).

The theoretical notions presented within this book are an attempt to expose some of these invisible contexts, so we can better manage them (Toole and Seashore Louis 2002). The goal is to enable and to encourage us to look at coaching through fresh eyes (Duckworth 1997), thus breaking free from the cramped confines of the familiar. The concepts aim to inform an enhanced understanding and refinement of the role of the coach and how to teach it through developing more discerning strategies to deal with the complexity and constraints inherent within both. In this way, it is hoped that improved conceptual insight and clarity will lead to increased knowledge and understanding of coaching and how to do it well. It builds on earlier published work by Jones et al. (2004) and Cassidy et al. (2004) among others in problematising sports coaching, thus further developing the critical tradition currently lacking in the area. By doing so, it pushes the case for coaches, like teachers, to be recognised (and educated) as professionals who constantly need to make decisions in the interests of their charges based on astute contextual considerations (Toole and Seashore Louis 2002). The purpose then, rather than providing a set of ready-made answers, is to make coaches and coach educators reflective of previously unconsidered theoretical notions, thus giving them the options to think in different ways about their practice and its consequences. Ultimately, it is to improve coaches’ understanding and discretion, to provoke thought, questions and discussion among them as to why they coach as they do.

The text is largely in response to recent calls to widen the search beyond the usual suspects of content knowledge that has traditionally informed coach education programmes if imaginative, dynamic yet thoughtful practitioners are to be developed (Cushion et al. 2003). If the challenge is ignored, we run the risk of getting a souped-up version of the same coach education fare, which has been criticised by coaches and some scholars alike as being fine in theory but divorced from reality (Jones et al. 2004, Gilbert and Trudel 1999a, Saury and Durand 1998, among others). Consequently, in going beyond the known to new theoretical horizons, the book is concerned with developing more realistic analyses and understandings of what coaches actually do while suggesting ways to do, and teach, it better.

Following a brief illustration of the traditional teaching–coaching divide and the current inability of theoretical concepts to cross it, this chapter questions the necessity for such a situation. It makes the case that there are many more similarities than differences between teaching and coaching, particularly with regard to their complex leader–follower natures; a complexity that precludes any paint-by-number plans that practitioners can easily stick to (Toole and Seashore Louis 2002). Drawing predominantly on the work of Armour (Jones et al. 2004) and Bergmann Drewe (2000a) it views coaches as social pedagogues and argues for expanding the conceptualisation of coaching to include attributes that have been traditionally viewed as having to do with the educational enterprise (Bergmann Drewe 2000a, Jones 2004). Hence, it both problematises the coaching context as a learning environment, while emphasising the need to coach holistically if the potential of athletes is to be fully realised. Finally, it frames the theories presented in the book as threshold concepts (Toole and Seashore Louis 2002), which can act as signposts to new ways of seeing and understanding.

Before embarking on the discussion, however, definitional clarity is required in relation to the term ‘teaching’. Here, as opposed to the narrow instructional act, it is taken as being akin to educating; as a holistic developmental activity connected with a wider set of beliefs about social learning (Bergmann Drewe 2000a). Consequently, although Garforth’s point about the elusive nature of teaching or educating is well taken, in the context of this book, both terms are viewed synonymously as a ‘deliberate process of manipulating the environment by a variety of means in order to influence, modify and improve human beings’ (Garforth 1985: 21).

The traditional teaching–coaching divide:
a forced separation?

Elsewhere, I have argued the case that the bio-scientific assumptions on which dominant conceptions of the coaching process lie have limited potential for either a theoretical understanding of coaching or for guiding practitioners (Jones and Wallace 2005, Jones 2000). The tendency to view coaching from a rationalistic perspective reflects the assumption that it is feasible to establish a clear and uncontroversial set of fully attainable goals, whose achievement can be unequivocally measured. Such an approach is flawed because the complex and dynamic nature of the coaching context itself doesn’t allow for such clean treatments (Cassidy et al. 2004). The many diagrammatic models that characterise coaching literature can similarly be criticised for unproblematically representing complex dealings (Jones and Wallace 2005, Meyer and Land 2003). Such models allow students to plot hierarchical relationships and interactions without generating an understanding of the functional complexity that lies behind and between them. It is a perception that has not only simplified a very intricate process, but has also restricted a more complete conceptual understanding of coaching through its marginalisation of more critical analytical paradigms.

Conversely, research indicates the coaching context to be multifaceted, constantly in a state of flux, where coaches must continually make decisions in a variety of contingent situations, which themselves are influenced by any number of factors to varying degrees (e.g. Saury and Durand 1998, Jones et al. 2002, Potrac et al. 2002). Such work highlights the nature of coaching expertise as requiring the flexible adaptation to relationship-imposed constraints, as the actual immediate task of a coach cannot be ‘totally defined or specified in advance’ (Côté et al. 1995: 255). Such arguments closely mirror those made in relation to teaching. Indeed, recent studies have confirmed that coaches view their work, not as physical trainers, but as educators or guides in developing and growing athletes (Jones et al. 2004). This begs the question of whether pedagogic concepts should take a more central role in coaching analysis and coach preparation than is currently the case. Let us examine some of the reasons why so far they haven’t.

It can be argued that the division between teaching and coaching has been developed and accentuated by the dominant discourses used in the perceived parental disciplines of education and sport science. Specifically, as physiology, psychology and biomechanics have dominated sports coaching literature, coaching itself has come to be associated with training. Demand has thus been placed on the ‘specialist knowledge of the coach to provide technical direction and proper sequence’. It is a discourse that ‘privileges factual knowledge over interpretation’ (Prain and Hickey 1995: 79). This is at odds with the more holistic and problematic emphasis often given to teaching through its strong connection with education. Lee (1988) clarified the effect of these differing associations in concluding that while teaching or educating is seen to be more about an individual’s total development, coaching has been viewed as the sequential attainment of physical skills and their testing in competition. The distinction has been further emphasised in studies on teacher–coach role conflict (e.g. Chelladurai and Kuga 1996, Staffo 1992), which have underlined the perception that differing skills and knowledges are needed in the differing domains (Bergmann Drewe 2000a). Teaching, and the pedagogical theory that informs it therefore, has tended to lie outside traditional conceptualisations of coaching.

Despite this division, a pedagogic function to the coach’s role has been acknowledged (e.g. Martens 1997), although it has been varied and scant in nature. The reasons for this marginalisation are many. They include the traditional conception of psychology and physiology in particular as coaching’s guiding disciplines, the absence of a definitive coaching role frame, that is, a consensus about what the job ought to entail (Gilbert and Trudel 2004b), and a limited interpretation within coaching literature of the term ‘teaching’. In respect of the latter, teaching appears to have been narrowly conceived as being synonymous with direct instruction. For example, in searching for conceptual clarity for the coach’s role, Lyle (2002) stated that coaching is, above all, a process, with any teaching within it confined to participation or recreative coaches as manifest in the episodic act of developing a motor skill in others. Consequently, teaching is judged to be largely absent from performance or higher-level competitive sport. Teaching and coaching, then, are pretty much viewed as distinct entities. This divide is presented as being so definitive, that Lyle doubts if there is enough commonality of purpose between practitioners who operate in both sporting domains to justify one form of membership of a professional body. It is a belief somewhat reflected by coaches themselves, who have been found to bracket their role and what it entails according to the competitive level of their athletes (Gilbert and Trudel 2004b). Clearly, in making this distinction, the notion of pedagogy as the essence of coaching gets limited appreciation.

This dichotomy, fuelled by different discourses and competing interests, which has grown up to distinguish teaching from coaching, has had a negative influence on both fields (Prain and Hickey 1995). This has been particularly so on coaching, as educators have not seen it as their territory, while coaches have not looked to educational theory to inform their practice. The situation has retarded an adequate conceptualisation of coaching particularly in relation to acknowledging it as a pedagogic and educational endeavour. Regardless of common ancestry, then, in terms of improving the performance of learners, it seems that coaching and teaching have been talking past, as opposed to, one another (Cassidy et al. 2004).

Coaching as pedagogy

Despite this separation, some scholars, while acknowledging that both activities are sometimes driven by distinct goals, consider that the line of demarcation between teaching and coaching is not so obvious or, indeed, necessary. For example, Bergmann Drewe (2000a), while agreeing that many participation-level coaches are obviously involved in acts of didactic teaching, concluded that just because performance ‘coaches work with fewer people and at a higher skill level, does not negate the fact they (too) are involved in teaching – teaching their athletes skills, technique and strategy’ (p. 81). Perhaps the point to remember is that there are many ways to teach and things to learn, even at the highest level. For example, sensitively facilitating a small innovation in a high-jumper’s technique, or proactively introducing new lines of defensive organisation through guided discovery in a team invasion game, can easily be interpreted as pedagogical or educational acts. Similarly, so can attempts to cultivate athletes’ responsibility and creative engagement with game-related problems, or to generate greater fortitude in them to cope with anxiety-provoking situations.

This was reinforced by the recent work of Potrac (2000) and Jones et al. (2004) among others, who found that both instruction and facilitation loomed large even in the practice of top-level coaches. In other words, the pedagogic role, including that of pastoral care and mentorship, was an important one in the make-up of these coaches’ personas. Indeed, Graham Taylor, the former coach of the English national football team and one of the coaches interviewed in this body of work, went so far as to proclaim that ‘coaching really is a form of teaching’ in that it primarily involves communicating, learning and maintaining positive relationships with those being taught (Jones et al. 2004: 21). Even Sir Clive Woodward, the victorious coach of England’s 2003 World Cup winning rugby union team, was recently quoted on the issue as stating that ‘[t]he best coaches are good teachers’ (Cain 2004). It is a view that has been constantly emphasised in the multitude of coach behaviour research carried out over the past two decades, which has been unequivocal in reporting instruction as the dominant act engaged in by coaches at all levels while coaching (e.g. Potrac 2000, Hodges and Franks 2002). It also echoes the recent work of Corlett (1996), who argued that the supportive pedagogical component in the athlete–mentor (coach) relationship is vital in allowing performances of courage, originality and even genius to occur. On closer inspection then, perhaps the constructed divide between teaching and coaching is not so wide or deep as we have imagined it to be.

In analysing interview data from several top-level coaches, Armour (in Jones et al. 2004) concluded that the practitioners under study could be viewed as modern-day pedagogues and, hence, that coaching has much to learn from pedagogical concepts. It is a position that places the wider notion of athlete learning as opposed to mechanistic performance at the heart of coaching practice, and is based on the belief that the coaching role involves more than knowledge of method and content. Indeed, the coaches interviewed considered that caring for their athletes was a crucial component of their practice, as was the establishment of a positive and supportive working climate. They likened it to a holistic and realistic philosophy of athlete development. Such a view echoes the work of Day (1999) in education, who concluded that caring for and about pupils in a broad sense was central to good teaching practice. Similarly, the educational philosopher Vygotsky’s belief that individual development is linked to contextually sensitive guided practice scaffolded by more capable others (Beltman 2003), resonates clearly with how these coaches perceived their roles.

Additionally, it appears that, like teachers, the coaches studied by Armour (Jones et al. 2004) based much of their practice on folk pedagogies (Bruner 1999), which consist of a set of beliefs about what and how people learn best. Far from being rational, such theories are based on individual per...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Part I Introduction Coaching as an educational enterprise
• Part II Re-conceptualising the role of the coach
• Part III Re-conceptualising coach education
• References
• Index