he term ‘pedagogy’ is not typically
associated with the personal
training
industry.
With
the
continuing expansion of PT services into
wellness and health behaviour change
though, today’s trainers cannot afford to
neglect this important dimension of their role.
But what exactly is it?
T
More than knowledge
In ancient Greece a ‘pedagogue’ was someone
who was an expert in the art of instruction, in
‘life-preparing knowledge’, including social
skills, cultural norms and wellbeing. Today,
the art of pedagogy refers to ‘the science
of instructing or coaching’. It is a term
synonymous with teaching practices, from
maths and English to physical education. All
new teachers are trained in ‘the art of teaching’,
and underlying this is the understanding
that teaching is a relational practice – a coconstruction between the teacher and pupil
rather than a one-way ‘solo performance’. Great
teachers know that to be successful in teaching
requires not only purposeful communication,
but also shared understanding. As such, the
practice of teaching requires the teacher to be
both knowledgeable and engaging. This is the
scaffolding that holds the relationship together.
Teachers who understand pedagogical
practices know that it is not just about how
they feed-back to students, but also how
they ‘feed-forward’. How they talk, what
they say and their body language while they
say it drives student learning and, more
importantly, motivation of students to learn.
In pedagogical terms this is known as the
teacher’s emotional (caring) and embodied
(within the body) engagement with students,
both within and around the classroom. For
teachers in today’s classrooms, ‘the art of
teaching’ means being able to draw on a
multiplicity of social, cultural, emotional and
communicative behaviours, all of which are
internationally recognised as enabling ‘bestpractice’ student learning.
From the sportsfield…
Sports coaching also has its set of
pedagogical practices and personal trainers
with Sport and Exercise Science degrees
will be familiar with the many evidenced
recommendations about how sports
coaches can best apply their craft with their
athletes. Sport coaching pedagogy has
emerged from a huge number of studies
situated within sports psychology about the
‘science of the athlete-coach relationship’.
Propelled by the coaching success of longtime San Francisco 49ers coach, Vince
Lombardi, (‘Winning isn’t everything, but
striving to win is’), sports coaches the world
over turned to Reiner Marten’s pedagogy
of coaching in the early 1980s. Although
Martens was specifically researching how
to best coach youth athletes, he was one
of the first sports-coaching researchers to
evaluate and bring attention to ways in which
coaching styles and taxonomies (principles)
of