One of the primary reasons for initiating a second edition of the book was the significant expansion of academic writing since the publication of the first edition in 2002. As we will demonstrate, the academic study of sport coaching has increased in depth, breadth and quality. This is evident in the number of academic departments and staff in universities, the range of disciplinary lenses being applied to the subject and the number of dissemination avenues open to the researcher. The number of postgraduate programmes, PhD completions and peer-reviewed publications is testament to a rapidly evolving field of study. It is important, therefore, to begin by charting some of the developments that have taken place. We do this, not only to provide context, but because we believe that an adequate interpretation of the field of coaching science requires a measure of conceptual appreciation. Our belief is that the diversity of academic enquiry is in danger of creating a rather fragmented and polemical field of study, without an understanding of the conceptual framework that could bind it together. The aim of the second edition is to provide just such a conceptual framework.
The purpose of this short introductory chapter is to provide an overview of the principal developments in academic ‘thinking’ about sport coaching in the past 15 years. Clearly, the scope for a descriptive account of each ‘school’ or disciplinary approach is endless. This is not our intention, however. Some selective readings are offered, but readers can easily follow-up each of these approaches in detail. Rather, our purpose is to identify the major schools of thought as they apply to sport coaching and to offer a critical interpretation of their ‘positioning’ in relation to the conceptual framework. Therefore, the issues that will be raised relate to definitions, boundaries, domains, modelling, key questions, place of performance objectives and the role of the coach. We hope to demonstrate that attention to a consensual conceptual framework would allow better communication, a reconciliation of positions and a unifying mechanism for aggregating academic contributions to education and development.
We take the view that the distinctive disciplinary positions, with their concomitant methodological paradigms, are not inimical but take different perspectives and merely address different questions – a question of focus and scope rather than validity. Nevertheless, we are also aware that academic writing in our field is often unnecessarily adversarial in nature; perhaps more concerned to identify the shortcomings of other perspectives rather than highlighting the strengths of their own. We invite you to consider whether the practical implications for change and evolution in coaching practice are as evident as the identification of limitations in existing practice. The developments in academic writing and theoretical scaffolding have taken place alongside much enhanced coaching provision in schools, high-performance development programmes, talent development pathways and coach education programmes. Nevertheless, our own experience as coach developers suggests to us that earlier warnings that there is a theory–practice divide have not yet been overcome. It is our hope that greater attention to the conceptual framework for sport coaching will facilitate greater communication between academics and developers.
Rather than be overwhelmed by the mass of published work on sport coaching, we have adopted a more pragmatic approach of identifying the key categories and offering a critical interpretation of their relationship to some of the conceptual framework constructs that were introduced in the first edition and elaborated in this. In one sense, we are attempting to raise the profile of these concepts, which we will then deal with at much greater length in subsequent chapters. Useful theoretical and philosophical categories are identified by Gilbert and Trudel (2004), Gilbert and Rangeon (2011) and North (2013). One option available to us was to group writings under thematic headings, and we would commend this to you as a useful exercise – such themes as expertise, planning, goal-setting, pedagogy, career development/socialisation and effectiveness. We have selected a balance of thematic and discipline-based approaches and have categorised recent academic approaches in the following way: behavioural, cognitive, complexity, social and conceptual (a much fuller account of theoretical approaches is provided in Chapter 9).
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN THE LITERATURE
Behavioural approaches
Many of the references cited in the first edition were based on behavioural research. In general, such an approach looks for regularities in coaches’ behaviours through observation instruments that identify observable behaviours. These are quantified and categorised according to constructs such as praise, negative feedback, questioning, instruction and so on. Such an approach can be criticised as being positivistic and insufficiently sensitive to contextual variation. In addition, the search for ‘correct’ or ‘appropriate’ behaviours that lead to effective coaching may be criticised as perpetuating a ‘one way’ approach to coaching and coach education.
INTERPRETATION
■Behaviours are correlated with personal characteristics or ‘effectiveness’ criteria (satisfaction, enjoyment, self-esteem) and rarely, if ever, with performance-related outcomes, athlete objectives or practice contexts.
■The use of observation instruments has been easier to conduct in controlled situations, i.e. coaching sessions and to a lesser extent competition, and this has focused attention on intervention behaviour. This ‘episodic’ emphasis may account for the association with instructional behaviour.
■The language of coaching domains would provide context to such studies – the role of the coach, practice behaviours and judgements of ‘what, when and why’ need to be situated in an appreciation of domain regularities.
■Expertise is couched in terms of the ‘what’ rather than the ‘how’ of intervention behaviour, although mixed methods work has begun to address this issue.
This approach continues to be used with more technologically advanced instrumentation (Cushion et al. 2012) and an attempt to provide more contextual background (Horn 2008) or reinforcement from coach interviews. There has also been some attempt to model appropriate behaviours (Jowett 2007) and a considerable literature on coaching efficacy (Feltz et al. 2008).
It seems clear that attention to the conceptual framework in terms of expertise, effectiveness, role of the coach and coaching domains (which would include process boundaries) would enhance interpretation of this type of research. Criticisms are largely based on the methodological paradigm adopted, but it is important not to criticise this approach beyond what it claims to achieve. In our view, the search for regularities in behaviour continues to be useful, but a more nuanced contextual siting is required, particularly if related to performance outcomes.
Cognitive approaches
The first edition of the book paid particular attention to decision making as an important feature of coaches’ behaviour and practice, building on some earlier work (Lyle 1992, 1996, 1999; Côté et al. 1995), and introduced Naturalistic Decision Making as an appropriate paradigm to explain coaches’ decision making. Since publication in 2002, the cognitive approach to conceiving of and understanding sport coaching has become a major school of thought in this field. We conceive of coaching expertise and operational coaching as a cognitive exercise. This means that there is a need to identify, understand and develop the cognitive structures, organisation and processes that facilitate the coach’s behaviour. This is evidenced in the work of Abraham and Collins (2011a, 2011b), Lyle (2003, 2010), Vergeer and Lyle (2007, 2009), Debanne (Debanne & Fontayne 2009; Debanne et al. 2014), Nash and Collins (2006) and Harvey et al. (2015).
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