Developing a Coaching Philosophy (prologue)
Developing a Coaching Philosophy (prologue)
Looking Back at Examples from My Career
I often repeat that we coach who we are. It’s a simple saying but there is so much depth and meaning in “who we are”. While those three words can also represent personality and identity, I want to go in depth on a different part of who we are: what we believe. What we believe shapes how we think, the choices we make, and how we act. The most intriguing aspect of coaching who we are is that what we believe comes through in our coaching even if we don’t know what we believe. For that reason, I think it is valuable to take the time to learn and decide what we believe.
To that end, I will share a series of posts to illustrate what deliberate shaping of your beliefs can look like. I’ll tell my story using one journal article and four books that span many years of my career and I’ll focus on one particular area of my coaching beliefs. I’ll use this prologue to make the case for why making your beliefs explicit matters so much.
“Now that you know who you are
What do you want to be?”
The Beatles - Baby, You’re a Rich Man
I’m going to use this word twice: epistemology. Yes, it is a big, confusing word but that’s not why I’ll avoid it. It is a powerful word but I don’t like it because it feels too stuffy. Epistemology is about theories of knowing, it is the study of, among other things, how we come to know. It doesn’t communicate the importance we place on knowing and learning. Coaching and teaching, as they are generally thought of, rely on knowledge. You have to know your content or sport, you have to know who you’re working with, you have to know yourself, along with so many other things. It can make your head spin. But there’s no denying that theories of knowledge are at the heart of the coaching profession. Rather than relying on that big, confusing word, I’m going to refer to theories of knowing as part of a coaching philosophy.
So why does your philosophy matter? Specifically, why does your learning philosophy matter? I’ll answer using a journal article that I have found particularly impactful on my thinking about development. David Grecic and Dave Collins wrote a paper in 2013 called “The Epistemological Chain: Practical Applications in Sports”1 with the goal of providing coaches with “a useful framework by which to assess their own and others’ actions and behavior” (p. 151). I rely on this paper because the authors sum up a lot of other research and apply it to coaching in a clear way. (I wrote an “Academic Quick Hit” on this paper a while back. Click below to read it.)
Your learning philosophy matters for two reasons. First, it matters because it shapes how you go about your own learning. Second, it matters because it shapes the teaching and coaching you do. It’s important to recognize that each of these areas affects the other, it is the “chain” the authors refer to in the title of their paper. Your beliefs are linked together. The really interesting thing is that you might not hold the same beliefs for your learning as you do for the learning of players. There isn’t anything wrong or bad about those differences but it is interesting to notice where the differences exist.
How does your learning philosophy shape your own learning? It depends on where you locate yourself on a learning spectrum (Grecic and Collins say that spectrum goes from naïve to sophisticated but others may say it goes from absolute to relative).
The naïve end of the spectrum believes more strongly that knowledge is absolute. This means that it “resides in authorities, is handed down rather than developed from reason, and is certain and unchanging” (p. 152). If you’re towards this end of the spectrum, you’ll tend to treat knowledge as something that can be transmitted to you or acquired by you. You’ll tend to approach learning as a search for the right sources and then, having found those sources, getting the knowledge they have. If you think knowledge is absolute, then you’ll think its value is universal, that everyone would agree about the best sources and kinds of knowledge. You’ll tend to treat those who coach at a “higher level” than you as better sources of knowledge and the higher you perceive their level to be, the better you consider their knowledge to be. The best evidence of this is national team and professional team coaches’ convention sessions always being the most popular and well-attended.
The sophisticated end of the spectrum believes more strongly that knowledge is relative. This means that it “is complex, uncertain, and tentative, that knowledge can be learned gradually through reasoning processes and can be self-constructed by the learner” (p. 152). If you’re towards this end of the spectrum, you’ll tend to treat knowledge as something that is created rather than acquired. You tend to see knowledge as uncertain not because you can’t know things but because you see it as a product of situations and contexts. That’s what is meant by “relative”, knowledge isn’t a collection of facts or ideas, it is seeing connections and relationships within different environments. As a result, you’ll tend to look for new ideas inside of situations you’re working in or you’ll find similarities between your environment and others. A great example of this is the coach who, when asked where they learned a particular game or drill, responds that they don’t really know, that they just kind of made it up.
Identifying where you might be on this spectrum matters because it affects where, when, and from whom you’ll learn. It matters because it determines what sources of knowledge you see as worthy and important. If you’re closer to the naïve end, you may not consider yourself and your experiences to be important sources of knowledge. If you’re closer to the sophisticated end, you may get so invested in your own environment that you overlook other environments.
“What did you see when you were there?
Nothing that doesn't show”
The Beatles - Baby, You’re a Rich Man
How does a learning philosophy shape the teaching and coaching you do? Grecic and Collins point out that many studies “confirm a strong connection (chain) across teachers’ beliefs, their classroom behaviors, and the learning environment they create” (p. 153). It impacts how we interact with and treat the players in our care. If you view learning as the acquisition of knowledge from trusted sources then you will position yourself as a trusted source and provide information to players at appropriate times. If you view learning as construction of knowledge based on situations and experience, then you will facilitate learning by creating situations for players to experience. No matter how you describe yourself on that spectrum, you are making choices that reflect your learning philosophy every time you plan a practice. How you interact with players throughout practice is a reflection of your learning philosophy.
Your learning philosophy can give you “a structure against which to reflect” on your choices (p. 159). If you haven’t previously reflected on your learning philosophy, then looking back at how you have structured practices and interacted in them in the past can give you insight into what that philosophy is. Such reflection can be the beginning of the deliberate development of your philosophy.
In this prologue, I’ve set the stage for diving deep into one aspect of my learning journey and philosophy. In the parts that follow, I’ll describe how a learning philosophy can be developed, using my own experience to illustrate the learning and changing that are possible.
Grecic, D., & Collins, D. (2013). The Epistemological Chain: Practical Applications in Sports. Quest, 65 (2), 151–168. https://doi.org/10.1080/00336297.2013.773525