Applied Coaching Research Journal Research Journal 4 | Page 12

APPLIED COACHING RESEARCH JOURNAL 2019, Vol. 4 APPLIED COACHING RESEARCH JOURNAL 2019, Vol. 4 Example: Thinking about this article, some of the knowledge presented here might be new to you. Hopefully, having read this article, the knowledge that you possess about types of reflection will be increased. However, this knowledge does not automatically make you a skilled reflective practitioner. For this to happen, you need to experience those different types of reflection so you can work out whether they do or don’t work for you, in what situations and what support you might need to enhance this process. So what does all this mean? Now you have some knowledge about your knowing! But as we have learned, knowledge is not enough to increase your knowing-in-action! Knowing-in-practice “The agreed way things are done in a coach’s social context or community.” (Schön, 1987) This shared way of working within your sport, physical activity or coaching community is undoubtedly an opportunity to grow your own knowing-in-action. However, due to the pressure of conforming to these social norms, it can be difficult for a coach to reflect upon, and possibly critique, some coaching practices that are long-standing and taken for granted within their coaching context. John Dewey, often considered the founder of reflection, proposed that we need to be open-minded before we can engage in reflective thought. Dewey defines this open-mindedness as: Your knowing-in-action should be put into practice regularly. Example: If you want to build your ways of knowing about questioning techniques, you need to ask questions! As you develop new knowledge about questioning techniques, such as different types of question, you should experiment with them in your coaching. If you discover a great way to ask a question, try it in different scenarios and with different people to test whether and how it works across contexts. Your knowing-in-action should be reflected upon to grow and develop. Example: To build your ways of knowing about questioning techniques, as you do questioning, you need to reflect on the questions that you ask (and responses that you get!) to work out how to ask them more effectively. Consideration of what types of question you ask, how and why, to whom and when, to get what kind of response from different people, will inform your questioning skills. Schön also suggests that an individual’s knowing-in-action can be influenced by the shared knowing-in-practice – the social context in which it is taking place. “The active desire to listen to more sides than one and to recognise the possibility of error even in the beliefs that are dearest to us.” (Dewey, 1916) This approach may be very difficult for some coaches, especially if much of their learning experience has been spent being exposed to views from within the accepted knowing-in-practice. Think about how ‘things are done’ in your sport or physical activity, your club or circle of coaches. Are there any coaching practices you don’t agree with? Have you ever wondered why something is done in a particular way? Why not question this practice by asking coaches or do your own research? The next time you are reading, watching, observing or listening to something new, try to consider the alternate point of view or method – review it with a critical eye, rather than conform. If, as discussed above, knowing is ‘situated in practice’, that same knowing cannot simply be transferred to work in all situations. So, for example, if you observe a coach using a games-based approach, you cannot expect that it will work in your own coaching practice simply by copying that exact approach. The intricacies of the make-up of the group, the task, and the objectives for the session would need to be considered before you use them in your context. This is not to say, of course, that you can’t take aspects of their delivery to try for yourself. There might be some golden nuggets that could work brilliantly for you! Go through the process with a 12 critical eye and think about their context and your own context with a view to working out what might work best for you, considering any tweaks required. Types of reflection There are different types of reflection that take place at different times. Each has a different purpose and can benefit a coach’s reflective practice in different ways. The article will now explore these different types of reflection and discuss ways coaches might use them to best effect. Reflection-on-action “Thinking back on what you did to review and inform how you can do something about it in the future.” (Gilbert and Trudel, 2001) This type of reflection takes place after a coaching session has finished and involves the coach making sense of their practice to improve future action, usually the next coaching session. This is the traditional way that coaches reflect on their practice. It is worth considering when the most appropriate and effective time for you to reflect after a session is. A ‘hot’ review immediately after a session can be good for capturing thoughts and details about events that happened while they are fresh in your mind. However, a ‘cold’ review days later can also add value because you will have had time to remove yourself emotionally from the session and mull things over. A combination of the two could have multiple benefits. Retrospective reflection-on-action “Reviewing at a time outside the action-present, when the coach is not able to affect the process anymore.” (Gilbert and Trudel, 2001) This timepoint outside of the action-present is likely to occur following the conclusion of a coaching programme (eg at the end of a season). It is likely that this kind of reflection will involve a more holistic review with a view to improving the coach’s practice across many areas in the future. This can be beneficial for the coach to review and evaluate the coaching programme as a whole, and start to plan and set goals for how they might want to develop the coaching programme and their coaching in the future. by reporting accuracy due to things like memory and bias. How we remember events unfolding, especially after the event, can be inaccurate and clouded by any subliminal biases we have. Therefore, there is also thought to be value from coaches reflecting in the moment through reflection-in-action. Reflection-in-action “Thinking about what you are doing, while you are doing it.” (Schön, 1983) Reflection-in-action happens in what Schön (1983) describes as ‘the midst of activity’ – in coaching terms this is likely to be during a coaching session or game. Reflection-in-action is a vital skill for coaches who want to be adaptable to the people in front of them, provide challenge to all participants and differentiate activities to suit everybody. This is because by definition, reflection-in-action occurs in a timeframe in which action can still make a difference to the situation unfolding in front of them. Learning through experience The other advantage of reflection-in-action for coaches is that this kind of thinking means learning happens through experience, rather than from it. This gives the coach the opportunity to try out and adapt in the present moment, constantly striving to improve what is happening in the session as it goes on ‘live’. This rethinking of knowing-in-action can not only affect what we do in the current situation but in other similar situations in the future. The coach builds more ways of knowing! The coach’s reflection-in-action comes about through a form of an ongoing reflective conversation with the situation, where real-life problems arise on a minute-by-minute basis. It gives the coach multiple opportunities to practise a cycle of identifying and setting problems, generating strategies to solve these problems, and experimenting with these strategies on the spot. Such problems often arise by ‘surprise’. Something unexpected might happen and the coach (having noticed this) has to turn their attention to the problem in order to try to deal with it in a period of time that can still influence the situation. Whilst both modes of reflection described above are considered to be learning from experience, there are also disadvantages of reflecting this way. For example, there is evidence to suggest that retrospective reporting of events can be affected 13