Full Time: Man of the Match goes to Personal Learning Enviornments

It's Thursday night of week 14 and thus ends (this chapter of) my journey. I've been rather unfortunate this semester with the Sports Coaching Pedagogy unit. My involvement with the Qantas Joeys camps at the AIS have resulted in me being unable to attend four of our Friday sessions. I have found myself on a journey of guided self-learning. I try to avoid using the term self-directed learning as my explorations have been helpfully guided by Keith Lyons and the Sport Coaching Pedagogy 2012 unit content.

This guided self-learning has all be made possible by the Personal Learning Environment which we have all been a part of in this unit.

"A Personal Learning Environment is a potentially promising pedagogical approach for both integrating formal and informal learning using social media and supporting student self-regulated learning in higher education contexts."

• Nada Dabbagh and 
• Anastasia Kitsantas

Here's a great SlideShare presentation by Steve Wheeler on Digital Learning Futures - I believe it fits right in with everything Keith has been going through with us.

Digital Learning Futures

View more PowerPoint from Steve Wheeler

These personal learning environments have enabled us to progress from passive information consumers, to active co-producers (or produsers as Axel Bruns might say) of content. A simple Google search of "coaching pedagogue" and straight away in the top results I can see work by my class mates from this unit.

I've definitely found myself subscribing to this idea of 'produsage'.

"the collaborative and continuous building and extending of existing content in pursuit of further improvement."

Axel Bruns:  Produsage - A  Working Definition

Whilst at times we not be able to bring something new to the realm of coaching that is backed by empirical evidence, we can certainly share new ways of thinking. As we've covered throughout the unit, people learn in different ways and are more receptive to differing levels of stimulus. It's important that we do look to produse and share the information and resources around us, because we all evaluate and interpret things differently - perhaps our particular interpretation is just what someone else was looking for. For instance. I was racking my brain trying to think of a good way to sum up all these ideas of what a coaches role is. I realised that with a bit of searching in e-resources, that someone else had already basically said what I was after.

Coaching is a multi-faceted, ever-changing role. In today's society of instant gratification, instant messaging, and instant results, the scope of the tasks assigned to coaches is expanding. Coaches are expected to be leaders, mentors, disciplinarians, sources of support, and counselors-simultaneously.

Leif H. Smith - Why Most Coaches Fail

With a bit of tinkering and produsing, I can manage to say just what I wanted to, and perhaps in a way that someone else will also find useful. 

Thank you all for reading my blogs and contributing to my personal learning environment.

The role of a coach is multi-faceted and ever-changing. In today's society, the scope of the tasks assigned to coaches is expanding and a successful coach can not restrict him/herself to the training field and sidelines. Coaches are expected to be leaders, mentors, teachers, disciplinarians, educators, sources of support, delegators and counselors-simultaneously. 
Aidan Brown - Full Time: Man of the Match goes to Personal Learning Enviornments

Coaching High-Level Athletes

Leading on from my last post and still using the Nike commercial series, I wanted to highlight another genuine coaching issue which I feel emerged from the series. From the video below, you can see that as coach, Bryant was dealing with some highly-succesful 'athletes'. All these people are considered successful in their relevant industries, all possessing similar and differing qualities, or skills if you will. Not so different to dealing with any team sport, no?

This idea of coaching athletes who are so to speak, at the top of their respective sports really got me thinking. The talent and ability that some high-level athletes possess may often go above and beyond what a coach can actually 'teach' as such - so how does the coach's role change?

I read a review of this idea by James Marshall in his "Secrets of success with high-level athletes" article. Marshall gathered his thoughts from several presentations at a North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity (NASPSPA) conference and also references some great articles. Marshall suggests successful coaching of high-level athletes involves a more supportive and cooperative approach. These athletes need to have a larger part in the goal setting and structure of their training, as opposed to the do-as-I-say approach with beginners.

Similar to the strategies used for skill development  throughout the cognitive, association and autonomous stages of learning, Marshall likens these to the Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership Theory on adaptive management styles used in business. The theory suggests that based on a combination of competency and willingness of people, the leader (or coach in our case) would be required to do one of the following:

Directing: Appropriate for people who have limited skills and need to be told specifically what to do. Constant feedback is required to allow such people to gauge their progress.

Coaching: Needed when a person has certain skills, is keen to train and can progress on certain tasks without supervision. Once they have reached a certain level, they need new challenges.

Support: For people who have some idea of what they want to do but may need help with the process. They are not as competent as they may think just yet, so they will need guidance.

Delegation: is for people who have reached a level of competence in their skills and have a clear idea of what they want to achieve. They want to retain contact for occasional feedback, but see themselves as partners rather than subordinates.

Situational leadership allows for the development of individuals along a path from high dependence, through interdependence to independence. The model is task-specific and therefore  high-level athletes may still require direction/coaching for instance when teaching new tactics or formations. While these players maybe be beyond competent in skill, they may not have experienced particular tasks/methods which a new coach may bring.

The ability of a coach to adapt their coaching role to athletes is increasingly important in team sports where individuals within the team will have different levels of competency across various tasks and therefore require   differing levels of coach involvement.

Marshall leaves us with four recommendations for coaches:

1.     Plan the entire competition cycle, including individual training sessions

2.     Communicate the plan clearly and regularly, and listen to what players have to say

3.     Involve the players. High-level athletes require more involvement in their own development than beginners and should be allowed time for self-regulated practice. Experienced players, such as the team captain, may be involved in team selection issues

4.     Adapt to the realities of the sporting situation. If things work well, do more of them, but if something isn't working, change it. Having a plan does not preclude the need for flexibility, and injuries, funding problems and venue changes, as well as the highs and lows of sport performance, all call for an adaptable, flexible approach.

That's all from me for this post, make sure you have a read of the articles I linked to and I encourage you to share your thoughts.