Is Coaching Overrated?
Coaching is a relatively recent activity, and an even more recent profession. Some of the most outstanding players in the history of most sports emerged from an era in which coaching did not exist – or was treated with disdain. So how did Barry John or Don Bradman become so skilful? Would they have been even better if they had emerged from Talent Identification programmes, and been subject to daily individual tuition of the type now widely available in all sports to teenagers? We will never know. However, the evidence would suggest that this level of performance must be achievable without the constant attention of a coach.
Leaving aside individual activities, such as swimming, or sports based on a level of physical conditioning, eg Athletics the central question appears to be: what conditions cause young players to become skilful at games?
How this question is answered is absolutely fundamental to how games lessons and sports coaching are organised and delivered. It would be reasonable to expect this topic to appear weekly in the meetings of PE teachers and games coaches, as they wrestle with the issue central to their profession: how do players become more skilful, better motivated and develop a love of games. Sadly, it would appear that this issue is frequently lost beneath the weekly agenda of filling first aid bags, lost cricket bails and arranging lesson cover.
It is probably uncontentious to suggest that the conditions that promote player motivation and improvement are purposeful practice and meaningful game play. The issue for coaches would appear to be to deliver these conditions consistently and effectively. And the challenge for a school is therefore to assure the quality - to ensure that all coaches of all games adopt the same approach and deliver to the same standards.
Another fundamental question relates to how young people are taught games. Do they learn from listening, or doing? If those who lead games learning in a school believe that they latter is more effective, then this has clear implication for the structure of the session, and the number and length of stoppages for coach talk. Research suggests that a 70 minute games lesson has an average of 18 minutes games learning activity, and more than 30 minutes of teacher talk. (The rest is accounted for by administration – registers, explaining mechanics of practices, arranging cones and sorting out teams – and non game based activity such as running around the field). Conduct your own research. It is a straightforward task for an injured pupil to hold a stop watch and run it when pupils are active, and stop it when they are not. The levels of activity within sessions, and the consistency of these between sports, teachers and sexes is a fundamental dimension of quality controlling games teaching across a school.
The activity factor is also influenced by the use of practices which depend on players queuing for attempts at a skill. Whether pupils learn from listening or doing may be debatable. It would be difficult to argue a case that they learn from, or are motivated by, standing in queues waiting for an attempt. Waiting for a role in a practice develops neither skill nor motivation.
There has to be a distinction between instruction and coaching. The former depends on constant intrusion and is based on specific “do it like this” commands and incessant.“you did it like that” feedback. Coaching is much more subtle, and has to have a place for letting activity happen. Without undue prescription or constant comment. The industry of coaching which employs people (many in schools) to “coach” assumes that there has to be an incessant instructive process, with a constant prescription of tasks, interspersed by technical comment and “teaching points” specified in advance. The question for a school is whether this reduces the effectiveness of “learning by doing”, whether it is sufficiently active, whether it promotes experimentation and understanding, and whether it is fun.
Creating the environment
It is well documented that a major factor in skill development is persistence in practice. Inspiring application and intrinsic motivation to seek improvement in performance has to be a principal aim of coaching. The way in which tasks are presented will be a significant factor here, and the process is underlain by the question: “Is learning a duty or a pleasure?” If a teacher (or, better still, a school) believes in the latter, then this has implications for the structure of the learning environment, particularly the start of sessions, the open endedness of tasks, harnessing the power of play and the policy for praise and feedback.
A further vital question concerns the optimal type of practice activities to develop skilled performance. Certainly, the number of times a player attempts a task is a proven factor in determining the likelihood of mastery, and this will be a significant concern when structuring practice activities. The more complex the practice activity, the more time it will require to explain the mechanics by which it is conducted. The more frequently the practice activities change, the more often they will need to be explained. It would be a mistake to confuse the extensive repertoire of the drill master – coupled with the complexity of his cone and equipment distribution - with the quality of his coaching. Again, the industry of coaching has occasionally seen an advantage in laying out courses of equipment that would do credit to “It’s a Knockout” interspersed by configurations of cones conducive to the landing of light aircraft.
The neatness of the practice activity is a deceptive factor. It is indisputably possible to choreograph spectacular drills in most sports. The central factor in these is to specify a single outcome, and to create a continuous stream of activity. This may have a place in mastering a basic technique, used sparingly. The capacity of these practice methods to generate skill transfer into more open ended activities is extremely limited. A single outcome is also restrictive, especially for the more able pupils, who will soon become underchallenged by this. This raises the question of the coach’s attitude to error in practice. If error is always bad, punished by negative comment, or pointless activities such as press-ups or running round the field, then a climate of experimentation (and joy in learning) cannot be created. A policy of rewarding the attempt to do the right thing builds a different learning environment, which can support a wide range of ability in a way that dependency on prescribed drills cannot. It would be reasonable to assume that a task conducted at 100% success was underchallenging for all except the least able.
Skill transfer is a huge challenge for games teaching. Introducing skills in a way that allows extensive repetition, but also promotes understanding and generalisation, is not easy. The ultimate criteria of the success of these activities is the extent to which those skills transfer into the fluid, unpredictable environment of games. The more limited, static and prescribed a practice situation is, the less effective any transfer will be. The more open ended and dynamic the practice, the more chance there will be of skill transfer. However, the practice will look less neat and tidy, and there will be a greater level of error and failure. The irony here is that the practice that looks less effective, and messier, may well turn out to be developing a higher level of transferable skill.
So, what are the implications for the structure of the games coaching session? Consider the following:
Introductory activity allowing relatively free play within a confined area and subject to constant movement (eg play with the balls in this area; you can dribble, beat people or pass: Passes can’t be more than 5 metres and you have to keep moving all the time whether you have the ball or not)
A small range of simple, open ended practice situations that don’t require extensive explanation
Simple feedback strategy that rewards effort, and the attempt to do the right thing, rather than achievement
Reduced coach intrusiveness. More time active and less time listening
More time in games, with varying team sizes and rules. Brief game stoppages to ask questions and reinforce points, but harnessing the power of play and being willing to let experimentation happen. Game play (not necessarily full size, open warfare) might constitute at least half of any session.
Much depends upon how important the coach perceives himself to be. If he believes that he is the provider of all knowledge about skilled performance, and that this cannot develop without his specific instruction, then he will have a lot of prescribing and explaining to do. He will need to provide details of what pupils should do, and information on why they are failing to be successful - and how to redress that. That is a lot of talking. If, however, he believes that effectiveness in games playing is about more than learning techniques, and that persistent, purposeful play can create an environment in which pupil learning can prosper, then a different approach is justified. In such circumstances, the coach’s role evolves into establishing circumstances – human and physical - in which activity, experimentation, involvement and play are encouraged and rewarded. Coaching, therefore, becomes a process of providing a playing environment and shaping performance within it through developing skill, understanding, creativity and motivation. This is fundamentally different from an approach based on the primacy of technique, which paints white footsteps on the field for pupils to follow in the hope of reaching the end of the task without error.
Coaching enhances performance: instruction is overrated.