Estructura de los logs de usuario

The scope of the summary in Table 5.3 really brings to light the demands that formal coach development practice faces. Becoming a professional coach cannot be a quick process, indeed gaining the minimum professional standard in medicine requires 5500 hours of structured development. A similar commitment is therefore presumably needed to become a professional coach. Unfortunately, inspection of the literature examining coaches’ experiences of formal coach education (e.g., Abraham et al., 2006; Cushion, Armour, & Nelson, 2009; Piggott, 2012) reveals an obvious irony. While literature identifies how expert coaches are developing their athletes through a

systematic and structured process, coaches’ own development has generally been un- coordinated, serendipitous and experiential in nature. Furthermore, the role that formal coach education has played within this development is generally small and potentially even irrelevant (Abraham et al., 2006; Cushion et al., 2009; Piggott, 2012). But why would this be the case? A common reason may be found in Druckman and Bjork's (1994) general comments about the teaching/training techniques they reviewed:

One problem with many of the techniques examined was that they were largely responses to consumer needs – proposed quick fixes from widely recognized problems. If they had been developed in conjunction with knowledge gained from research and evaluated in a systematic manner, the techniques would have benefited from the latest advances in theory and methodology. Such benefits could well have rendered them more effective for improving performance. (p.5)

Reinforcing this view in coaching, Cushion et al. (2009) identified a lack of quality in formal coach education available in the UK. Collins et al. (2014) suggest that the biggest contributing factor in the lack of quality has been the inappropriate and uncritical yet consistent application of a competency based training philosophy to coaching development. The system seems obvious, identify what good people do, train other people to do the same and then assess to see if they can do it. There are,

however, four fundamental flaws in the philosophy. Firstly, the focus on doing typically goes no further than looking at behavioural outcomes rather than cognitive processes such as knowledge or decision making. Secondly, the philosophy may work for relatively simple and limited behavioural tasks requiring little judgement, since a job can be behaviourally defined in a few statements, e.g. frying chips at a fast food outlet. However, as soon as tasks become more complex, so too does the list of required competencies, showing almost exponential growth. Thirdly, the reason why PJDM is so important is because coaching is a relative role. As contexts change so too does the

need to make a new decision – such relativeness cannot be acknowledged in

behavioural competencies. Fourthly, and as a consequence of the first three reasons, learners very quickly feel controlled and unwilling to take risks in such controlling circumstances (Deci & Ryan, 2008), thus reducing intrinsic motivation. All four of these issues are succinctly captured by Thompson (2000);

Competences are very much in keeping with technical rationality. We also need to keep in tune with the uncertainty and messiness of the ‘swampy lowlands’. The standardized nature of competences can encourage a uniform approach and, in so doing, discourage creativity and imagination; What counts as competent practice is predefined. Practitioners, too, must have a say in what constitutes good practice rather than accept it as a given. That is, we need to adopt a critical approach; The competence-based approach recognises the importance of underpinning knowledge but offers little guidance in how it can be used. Therefore working towards achieving competences will not, in itself, facilitate the integration of theory and practice. (p. 121)

5.4.1 Applying PJDM to Coach Development Practice

As identified in Chapter 2, one of the core reasons for introducing PJDM as integrative theory is because it is so parsimonious for all professional practice. That is, whether talking about a coach, a doctor or indeed a coach developer, the theory offers a view on how professionals should practice. Consequently, if one applies the theory to examine the quality of researched approaches to coach development practice the evidence would suggest that judgement has been less than expert or professional. Therefore, if PJDM is required to create educational programmes for the development of professional coaches, what professional knowledge is required and what decision have to be made?

The ideas contained within this thesis suggest that the use of formalistic rules, mental models and declarative knowledge should underpin a PJDM process. The constructive alignment concept already presented in Table 5.1 offers one such formalistic rule, against which the development of formal coach education could be considered. It is of note, therefore, that in creating support documents for UK national governing bodies (NGBs) Abraham et al., (2010) and Lyle, Abraham, Morgan, and Muir (2010)

suggested a model to guide the process of creating coach development programmes, shown in Figure 5.1 and referred to in section 5.1.

Drawing on the initial educational work of Shulman (1986) this model of educational practice states that an organisation and/or professional coach developer can make

effective decisions on programme development through consideration of the creations of; goals, needs of the learner (the coach), the subject matter to be covered (i.e. the coach development curriculum), learning, teaching and assessment (i.e. adult learning) and the culture within which they operate. In combination, the constructive alignment model (Table 5.1) and the coach education decision making model (Figure 5.1) offer a basis to both explore the declarative underpinnings of coach development and direct decisions towards creating formal coach development programmes. It is against these ideas that the following sections explore some key research and concepts that can guide the judgements of coach educators in making decisions about the development of formal coach development programmes. Each section will also, where possible, offer some examples of application.

Figure 5.1. A model to guide coach education decision making processes (ALT: Assessment, Learning and Teaching)

5.5 FORMAL COACH EDUCATION GOALS – COMPETENCES