Athlete learning in a community of practice: Is there a role for the coach?

Abstract

Authors (e.g. Cassidy et al. 2004, Lyle 2002) have recently suggested that coaching should not only be defined through a list of instructional methods to use and/or a specific sport knowledge content to deliver, but rather that it is a much more complex activity. According to Jones et al. (2004: 106), ‘coaching is essentially a social practice created in the interaction of coaches, athletes and the club environment’ and therefore coaching should be seen ‘as a complex social encounter’ (Preface). They also suggest that this special encounter takes place in a ‘pedagogic setting’, referring to the term defined by Leach and Moon (1999: 268):The term pedagogic setting encompasses a setting as a whole: the interactions between all its participants as well as individual actions within it as one process. It is the interdependence of all its parts over time that make a pedagogic setting a single entity. Participants create, enact and experience – together and separately – purposes, values and expectations; knowledge and ways of knowing; rules of discourse; roles and relationships; resources, artifacts; and the physical arrangement and boundaries of the setting. All of these together and none of these alone.From this perspective, athlete learning should not be perceived as an exclusively individual process resulting from teaching or coaching, but also as an active participation in everyday activities. Using a social theory of learning, Wenger (1998) has presented the concept of ‘communities of practice’ (CoPs) ‘for thinking about learning as a process of social participation’ (Preface).