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The Sports Coach as Educator:
Reconceptualising Sports Coaching
Robyn L. Jones (Editor)
Routledge, Abingdon, UK, 2006
xvi +185 pages; hardbound;
ISBN-10: 0 415 36759 X; ISBN-13: 978 0 415 36759 2;
Extended Book Review by Simon Jenkins
OVERVIEW
This book is based on the premise that “coaching is fundamentally intertwined with teaching
and learning within given situational constraints” (p. xiv) and it addresses “both practical and
academic cultures with the theory presented being a thought-provoking pre-requisite to
experimentation, innovation and progress in coaches’ practice.” (p. xvi)
The first part of the book makes the case for coaching to be re-conceptualised as an
“educational endeavour.” The second and third parts of the book deal with this proposed
change in terms of the coach’s role and coach education, respectively.
COACHING AS AN EDUCATIONAL ENTERPRISE
In “How Can Educational Concepts Inform Sports Coaching?” Robyn Jones argues that
“good coaches, like good teachers, constantly engage in much reflection, not only on what
they do but why they do it.” (p. 9) Jones questions the ‘kind’ of stuff that coaches know,
rather than whether or not they ‘know their stuff’ (“as many clearly do”). (p. 10) While Jones
advocates the use of educational concepts, he recognizes that,
…there is no assertion that the field of education has somehow got it right, and that
coaching therefore ought to unquestionably copy it. Rather, recognizing that coaching
and teaching are perhaps not so conceptually far apart as previously considered, and
that education continues to be theorized to a much greater degree than coaching, it
appears appropriate to short-circuit some of the growing pains experienced by teaching
by using some of its concepts to better interpret coaching. (p. 12–13)
In “Coaching as an Educational Relationship,” Felicity Wikeley and Kate Bullock argue
that “coaching needs to be seen as an educational relationship with the emphasis being on
the relationship.” (p. 24) Without really dealing with the concept of ‘power,’ Wikeley and
Bullock argue that any coach-athlete relationship need not come to an end as athletes
outgrow the knowledge and skills of the coach:
Positions of power will shift as the [coach-athlete] relationship develops but that shift
will not always be in one direction. The creation of the independent athlete will not
always mean that he or she moves on beyond the influence of the coach but that a
different set of strategies and resources need to come into play. These will relate to both
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