of real-life coaching and feeding them back to coaches to enhance understanding or prescribe practice , results in abstractions that clearly fail to substitute for real life-derived intuitions about coaching ( Lyle & Cushion 2017 ; Cushion 2007 ). Viewed from this perspective , coaches and coaching are connected to a narrow reductionist logic , and this reinforces the concept of coaching as simply efficient technical transfer . This argument is not designed to claim superiority of one method or paradigm over another , but suggest that a reductionist approach being central to understanding practice is problematic , in that it serves only to define coaching both narrowly and unilaterally ( Lyle & Cushion 2017 ; Cushion 2007 ). As I ’ ve argued for some time ( e . g . Cushion , 2007 ), it is these representations that produce , on one hand , the illusion of a ‘ complete ’ understanding but are weak and limited , while on the other hand , are viewed with irony and even cynicism by practitioners and hence fail to impact the practice realm , to the disadvantage of coaching and its professional standing . It is the cumulative effects of these issues that contribute significantly to the failure of coaching research to impact on coach education ( Lyle & Cushion , 2017 ). Indeed , this also raises the issue of how much coaching research is ‘ used ’ by coaches , performers , or coach educators , what is ‘ used ’ and in what circumstances . Although the argument here is the link between dominant research paradigms and the narrowing of the concept of coaching . In this respect , the dominance of psychologically driven research is apparent with simple and seductive concepts ( e . g . motivational climate , coach-athlete relationship , mindset ) that appear readily applicable but contribute to this narrowing of the coaching concept . Alternative approaches informed by interpretive methodologies can identify the complex interweaving of personal , performance , and environmental factors , but have not yet provided comprehensive guidance for practice .
It is important to also acknowledge that some practitioner cynicism is attributable to operating in an inherently conservative and sometimes anti-intellectual culture ( Abraham , Muir & Morgan , 2010 ; Stoszkowski & Collins , 2016 ). In this culture , coaches tend to value embodied practitioner knowledge and its associated sources of informal learning making ( cf . Blackett , et al ., 2015 ), disregarding any non-selfexperiential research ( cf . Cushion et al ., 2021 ).
Coaching Research – ‘ a little less talk , a little more ( collaborative ) action ’
Since the 1990 ’ s ( e . g . Krane et al ., 1991 ; DeMarco et al ., 1996 ; Kidman , 1997 ) researchers have argued for collaborative research – moving from research ‘ on ’ to research ‘ with ’ coaches – as a means to develop coaching practice . Given the issues highlighted here , the relationships between research and practice , and researchers and practitioners , need to be further developed . Indeed , coaching practice informed by , and informing , research is worthy of further and continued discussion and is one way to move coaching from object to instrument of analysis . Practitioners
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