How do
coaches progress from beginner to expert?
According to
some frameworks, coaches pass through a series of stages or levels. The knowledge and skills at each stage
are, of course, more advanced. But
they are different in other ways.
In other words, the formal processes of coach education in most
countries assumes punctuated development.
According to
Pierre Trudel and Wade Gilbert, though, most coach education is based on an
unchallenged presumption that coaches exist on a single continuum from novice
to expert. My own research, on
behalf of the PGA and others, suggests that coaches tend to share this
view. Specifically, they conceive
of their professional development in terms of a gradual improvement powered primarily
through experience.
So, there
are at least two views of the trajectory of coach education: stage-like or
incremental.
If we assume
for a moment that all coaches need some sort of professional development, the
choice between these two positions is important. If coach educators assume one stance, but their students
another, frustration is almost inevitable. Even if both parties agree, who’s to say they bet on the
right theory?
Where do you stand on this
matter? What is your view?
To help you
articulate your reflections, here are some questions for you to consider:
o
How might
we distinguish between novices in a domain and so-called experts?
o What types of experiences are associated
with learning and progression towards expertise?
o Is learning, either in general or specific
domains like golf coaching, really stage-like? In other words, are there discrete stages with their own
distinctive characteristics? Or is
learning actually an incremental development, with any stages nearly arbitrary
assessment points?
o If learning is stage-like, how can these
stages be differentiated?
o What is the relationship between such
stages and any associated teaching and assessment?
There is
convincing evidence that novices (and for that matter competent performers) and
experts respond to challenges in fundamentally different ways. In addition to obvious differences in
terms of the amount of experience, research suggests that expert coaches deal
with the challenges of their work in qualitatively different ways than their
less skilled colleagues.
The
influential report How People Learn
identifies key principles of expert knowledge and their potential implications
for learning and instruction.
o Experts notice features and meaningful
patterns of information that are not noticed by novices.
o Experts have acquired a great deal of
content knowledge that is organised in ways that reflect a deep understanding
of their subject matter.
o Experts' knowledge cannot be reduced to
sets of isolated facts or proposition, but instead reflect contexts of
applicability, so that the knowledge is set within the context of certain
circumstances.
o Experts are able to retrieve important
aspects of their knowledge flexibly and with little attentional effort.
o Experts have varying degrees of flexibility
in their approach to new situations.
To what extent are findings like
these reflected and used in coach education programmes? If it is true that expert coaches
operate in qualitatively different ways than others, how is such expertise
assessed?
The evidence
from research seems quite clear that expert coaches are not just competent
coaches with a lot more experience.
They coach in essentially different ways than others.
The question
still remains: beyond bureaucratic
expedience, are there genuine reasons to distinguish intermediate phases
between coach novice and expert? This
is not just an academic matter. If
it is the case that there are distinctive stages, then practical implications
follow. For example, different
stages of learning suggest different methods of teaching and different methods
of assessment, don’t they?
The most
influential model of expertise outside of sport is probably that of the
American philosopher Hubert Dreyfus.
His model was based upon detailed observation and experiments with a
range of contexts, including nursing, chess players, aeroplane pilots and car
drivers. Dreyfus identified five
stages of development towards expertise.
Each of these stages has its associated components, perspectives,
decision-making and commitment.
Level
|
Stage of Expertise
|
Characteristics
|
1
|
Novice
|
At
novice stage it is all about following the rules. The novice thinks in terms of rules but has no context or
ability to modify rules. At this
stage the energy is focusing on following the rules rather than thinking.
|
2
|
Advance
Beginner
|
This
stage is still rule based but rules are now situational based. So instead of blindly using the rules
at this stage you start using a set of rule in an A situation and different
set of rules in B situation.
|
3
|
Competent
|
At
this stage you start to realize that performing this skill has more to it
than just following rules or changing rules according to situation. You start to see patterns and
principles and start realizing rules are not absolute and they are guidelines
or rule of thumb. You start
performing the skills more by experience and active decision-making rather
than strict rules.
|
4
|
Proficient
|
At
this stage you start thinking in terms of complete picture. You develop a perspective about your
area of skill or focus.
|
5
|
Expert
|
At
this stage it is intuitively appropriate action without being conscious of
you skills.
|
Dreyfus's
model is clearly useful, and it is quite easy to see how it might be translated
into coach education frameworks.
How does the Dreyfus model relate
to your own existing coach education frameworks?
However, one
potential weakness of Dreyfus model – a surprising one for a philosopher – is
that it does not properly specify the nature or type of the knowledge acquired
at the different stages. On other
words, the model is explicit about the development of skilled performance, but
does not really tell us much about what is being learned.
From the
perspective of coaching the most useful attempt so far to extend Dreyfus’
account to include proper reference to knowledge is that of Paul Schempp and
his colleagues. They settled on a
four-staged framework - beginner - competent - proficient – expert - to
describe the developmental stages of expert sports coaches. This work identifies skills, knowledge,
characteristics and perspectives that are common to coaches at each stage of
development.
So where
does this discussion leave us?
It seems to
me that in this case there are lots of reasons for thinking of coach
development as stage-like. Not the
least among these reasons is the rather substantial empirical base supporting
the view that there are qualitative differences between different stages of
development.
If this is
true, it follows that professional learning is far more complex than often
thought. Not only must the type of learning be considered when
thinking about pedagogy, but it is also important to think about the different outcomes desired. In other words, the teaching methods
used ought to be appropriate to the phase of learning reached by the
learner. This need not be the case
if learning were linear and continuous, apart from a commonsensical
differentiation in terms of, maybe, the amount of the teaching. But with a stage-based model of
learning, coach educators are forced to think in terms of discrete types of
learning experience for the different stages of learning.
And, if it
is accepted that the development of coaching expertise is somewhat stage-like,
then it follows that different teaching and assessment strategies need to be
used to capture the different types of learning and competences being
exhibited.
So, the
question of whether coach development is incremental or stage-like is important
practical consequences. Why? Simply because assumptions about the character
of professional development track into decisions about frameworks and awards.
Remember the
Cheshire Cat …
‘Cheshire Puss,’ she began, rather timidly … ‘Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’ ‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat. ‘I don’t much care where,’ said Alice. ‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat. ‘So long as I get somewhere,’ Alice added as an explanation. ‘Oh, you’re sure to do that,’ said the Cat, ‘if you only walk long enough.’ (Lewis Carroll, 1865, ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’)
If we are
going to escape cycles of reproducing traditional approaches to learning and
education, we will need to reflect on our assumptions and the ways they
translate to practice.
Which way should we go from here?
Further Reading
Bransford,
J. D., Brown, A. L. and Cocking, R. (Eds)(2000) How People Learn: Brain, mind, experience and school. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
Dreyfus, H.
(1992) What Computers Still Can't Do? Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Ford, P.
Coughlan, E. and Williams, M. (2009) The Expert-Performance Approach as a
Framework for Understanding and Enhancing Coaching Performance, expertise and
Learning. International Journal of Sports Science and Coaching, 4, 3, pp.
451-463.
Schempp, P.,
McCullick, B. and Mason, I. (2006) The development of expert coaching in R. L.
Jones (Ed.), The sports coach as
educator: reconceptualising sports coaching. London: Routledge.
Trudel, P.
and Gilbert, W. (2006) Coaching and coach education (pp. 516-539). In D. Kirk, D. Macdonald and M.
O'Sullivan (Eds) The Handbook of Physical
Education. London: Sage
Publications.
