DISCUSSION BOARD

I have been involved in coaching for ten years and have been working as a coach educator for the last five years. The club valued me highly when I was generating income running courses for novice archers. When I became a coach educator I had less and less time available to give to the club as my remit covers the entire UK. Now they are pleased to see me on the odd occasion I turn up to shoot but I am rarely involved in club coaching as this is done by the level 1 and level 2 coaches within the club.

Equally my commitment to county squads has become virtually non-existent as I am usually unable to attend county training sessions. Within the University and NEUAL I am more highly valued and novice students actively seek me out for help. The feedback I get from coach education is consistently good.

Politically and economically archery has had few professional paid coaches though since adopting the coaching framework this is changing. However few club archers request formal coaching. They may ask for observations or tips when trying to improve or change technique. These may be requested off a fellow archer who may not be a coach.

As a coach educator the paper on effectiveness (Vella, 2013) reinforces much of what I have observed in practice. Very few trainee level 1 coaches have formal educational qualifications to degree or higher standards. Most enjoy working in the practical rather than the theoretical. Development of reflective practice, written evaluation and use of mentors is hard to develop. Role play that takes them out of their comfort zone i.e. teaching an experienced right handed archer to shoot left handed is very effective, as is the supported practice element of the training. Getting them to fill in the level 1 paperwork in a SCUK folder is often regarded with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. I had a very interesting discussion with some outdoor activity instructors (RYA DI & SI's) who had recently completed a level 1 BCU canoeing course and complained bitterly about the paperwork.

Cassidy (2010) identifies issues in coach training and development. As a coach educator and assessor I am now at a point where when confronted by a new coach trainee. I can often identify who the coach was who initially trained them as an archer by idiosyncracies in their technique. Archery GB is trying desperately to achieve a consistency in coach training this has not yet been fully achieved. Quality assurance in coaching is also an issue. Coach education and Archery instructor education courses are rigorously quality assured, but once the learners are qualified they are left to their own devices until it is time for licence renewal. Only then is there a paper exercise to look at what they have been doing and have they met the renewal criteria for CPD.

Duffy (2013) links coaching to legacy much of what he describes in terms of setting up the UKCC is familiar to me from training and development at Archery GB. Archery GB initially embraced the strategies and put a lot of time and effort into developing the framework within archery. They employed people with coaching experience outside archery using Sport England funding. They wholeheartedly applied the level 1 and level 2 coaching programmes. They however have not yet achieved functioning level 3 or level 4 programmes as no funding has been allocated to this. Much good has come of it Monthly participation in archery is in excess of 66000. There are about 1400 licenced coaches and about 11000 archery leaders/instructors working outside the sport in leisure activity and outdoor pursuits centres.

There are issues:- Setting up the system and bringing in outsiders has had political ramifications within the sport

Funding and developing the level 1 and level 2 courses has created a hole in finances which has prevented the development of level 3 and level 4 courses.

There is limited uptake of progression from level 1 very few level 2 courses are taking place.

Latest figures (Archery GB, 2014) there are >1000 level 1 coaches, <300 level 2 coaches, <150 County (level 3) coaches and <50 Senior (level 4) coaches. Most of the senior coaches are over 55 years of age and several are in poor health. Consequently there is little quality assurance of the coaching process.

Whilst the Olympics, films, the Paralympics and Invictus games generate lots of uptake in archery at novice level there is a high drop off rate due to lack of performance coaching, unrealistic expectations of what they can achieve with the time they are prepared to devote and resource implications around premises and cost of equipment. There are also issues within archery based on ethnicity and gender. Many archers shoot in open fields with little or no toilet facilities. Many British Muslims are interested in archery and practice it within Madrassa's but they are distinctly underrepresented in archery clubs and competitions.

On the positive side the work being done on talent identification, involving younger people in coaching and judging, the work of Help for Hero's and Battle back in running archery rehabilitation courses for wounded ex-servicemen is bringing more people into the sport some of whom are rapidly rising to compete at international level. County Sports partnerships are running effective CPD programmes which are open to Archery GB coaches and Universities are offering courses in coach education at various levels and formats. The Little Lottery Fund makes grants to enable the purchase of equipment for loan to novices.

Archery GB. (2014). Workforce Management Plan (April 2014 - 15). Available: http://www.archerygb.org/images/content/Workforce_management_plan_-_final.pdf. Last accessed 2nd October 2015.

Cassidy, T. (2010). Understanding the Change Process: Valuing What it is That Coaches Do. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching. 5 (2), 143-147.

Duffy, P.. (2013). Understanding the impact of sport coaching on legacy. International Journal of Sport and Politics. 5 (2), 165-182.

Vella, S.A.. (2013). Increasing the Effectiveness of Formal Coach Education; Evidence of a Parallel Process. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching. 8 (2), 417-430.

I am only 24 and age only spent the last 7 years coaching. I am fortunate to have had success over this time but it was extremely interesting reading these papers. Formal coach education in hockey is very poor. I have been majorly disappointed in the content and delivery of the courses which I have attended, especially considering the cost of each course. It is interesting to consider the impact this had had on my development as a coach. I would say minimal. I view them as pieces of paper which allow me to coach at specific levels, not as courses which have helped me improve how I work with my athletes.

Working in a school environment. Being a coach is looked down upon by teachers, there is mention in Vella (2013) of the necessity to be educated to degree level to become a teacher, whereas to become a coach requires much less formal education. I have done much of my research based on my experiences as a player and from watching other coaches and merging many ideas together to create my own philosophy.  Due to the fact there is minimal formal education - there are times when you do not feel valued in this environment as a coach. 

The he implementation of a framework is undoubtedly a positive move - but when implementation is left to each governing body, there will always be differences in how the framework is implemented  

Within the coaching framework (ICCE 2012)  I am an advanced coach/coach developer/trainer so what I do depends on which hat I am wearing.

As I work at different levels I can be training novices, working with improvers and coaching established archers. Advising the club captain, elected officials, youth organisations, the management of the sports centre and the students union, supervising more junior coaches and taking instruction from a more senior coach who has the responsibilty for a student who is on a national squad.

As a coach educator I can be training coaches, mentoring them on supported practice, assessing them for competence on assessment day, organising the assessment and deploying the coaches to carry it out, observing other coach educators delivery as part of the verification process, ensuring the assessments are fair and consistent as a verifier, sampling completed courses to carry out desk bound verification when required.

This involves what, why, where, how and when.

Before I coach I have to plan what I am going to do, why, where, when and how I am going to do it.  When running the session I may have to change my plan if things are not going as intended. After the sesion I review what I have done and make adjustments for the next sesion.

This will involve assessment plans, lesson plans,  coaching agreements, risk assessments, safety checklists, equipment set up and take down, listening, observation, feedback, praise, criticism, negotiation, drills, mentoring, action planning, goal setting, motivation, checks and balances, safeguarding, psychology, nutritional advice, time management, honesty, respect, trust. I have to tailor my coaching to the abilty of the athlete, their mental and emotional maturity, manage parents and spectators.

I need to be a good role model, uphold the code of conduct for coaches, be upbeat and positive, punctual and tolerant, know my athlete - when to intervene and when to hold back. I need a good knowledge base for my sport, I need tact, diplomacy and resilience, an understanding of diffent teaching and learning methods. People management skills for groups and individuals. For competition athletes I need to be able to periodise their training so they achieve peak performance at the tournament.

International Council for Coaching Excellence (2012). International Sport Coaching Framework. Champaign, Illinois: Human Kinetics. 33,36.

After reading all your posts it seems that dance is very lucky.  There are many different organisation in the world that govern dance very closely, either Dance UK, AusDance in Australia or the Minisrty of Culture in France. Each have different methods to monitor dance but in the last twenty years have all put in place diplomas apart from University course's that are recognised by the goverenment.

I stopped dancing in 2007 when I was forty years old and during the last ten years of my career I obtained my dance teaching Diplomas in France.

In 1989 the Ministry of Culture (France) created the Diplome d’Etat de Professeur de Danse (State Diploma in Dance) (D.E) for of classical ballet, contemporary dance and jazz dance. State funded centres were set up for the training for of professional dance teachers (Grau and Jordan, 2002, p. 40) and all dance teachers in France were from 1989 required to obtain the D.E for them to be able to teach (either in the private of public sector).

This D.E was created, as there was no formal recognition or quality control in France until 1989, dance teachers were often poorly equipped for their particular practice (Grau and Jordan, 2002, p. 40). This is comparable to what the governing U.K sporting bodies found in their studies that a large proportion of the 1.11 million coaches that are active in the UK do not operate with close links to any governing bodies and that only half of those hold some sort of governing coaching qualification (Duffy et al., 2013 cited in North).

Even though I obtained my D.E and then later a higher teacher certificate for dance (Certificate d’Appitude) (C.A) I went into teaching with little actual teaching experience, I had been a professional dancer for 20 years and to teach young students from the age of eight was very different. In the formation I followed we were taught what to teach and when but not how to give the material. Gibbons (2007, p. 5) explains that this is often the problem as some dance teacher preparation programs include little pedagogical theory aside from content knowledge and dance teachers get caught up with teaching steps rather than teaching students. This is comparable with Vella et al (Vella et al., 2013, p. 418) when they write that ‘sports coaches are not given the necessary practical and specific interpersonal competencies and may leave them to facilitate positive development for young athletes’.

I was taught in a performance climate, where students were compared against each other, and favourites were picked. Gibbons (2007, p. 5) writes that often beginning dance teachers teach as one was taught without studying method and content. This climate produced problems later during my career and I knew that I did not want to teach in this mode. Reflecting on my practice now as a dance teacher, I realise if I am challenged in the classroom I fall back in the Performance style of teaching. Like sport teachers, in my formation I had not been given the knowledge of teaching alternative philosophies and associated practices (Cassidy, 2010, p. 145) and it was not until I was doing my undergraduate in Dance Education that I aware of these different methods.

At the moment I am tutoring a young teacher for his State Diploma (D.E) teaching exam and watched him give his first class to a group of 12 to 14 year olds. The content and structure were adequate however how he presented the class, his use of voice; dynamics of the step and how he motivated the students to dance was vague. I do not give the pedagogy classes, as my French is not good enough however after reading Vella (Vella et al., 2013), applying the theoretical principles he has been taught to his coaching practice is now a priority, Vella  (2013, p. 426) explains that educators need to less directive and encourage reflection and

'practical demonstrations are not about showing coaches what to do, but empowering them to draw upon their strengths and resources with the primary concern of equipping them to coach effectively reflecting-in-action and reflecting-on-action'

(Vella et al., 2013, pp. 426–427).

I filmed the class and gave him the video so he could reflect on it, we then both viewed the video and he reflected about what he had seen. An interesting process that was instructive for him, and me; he saw his faults, and I could see in what way he viewed himself and how much he had understood from his pedagogy classes.

In concluding, I see dance and sport have similar problems in the way the coaching process is taught and Vella’s (Vella et al., 2013, p. 428) concept of the parallel process seems to provide one way that the process can be bettered to enable the teacher/coach to be more effective in how they teach rather than just what they teach.

References

Gibbons, E., 2007. Teaching dance: the spectrum of styles. AuthorHouse, Bloomington, IN.

Vella, S., Crowe, T., Oades, L., 2013. Increasing the effectiveness of coach education: evidence of a parallel process. Fac. Soc. Sci. - Pap. 417–430. doi:10.1260/1747-9541.8.2.417