Beyond ‘crude pragmatism’ in sports coaching: Insights from C.S. Peirce,William James,and John Dewey: A commentary

Introduction

Jenkins’ stimulus article highlights the importance of language across contexts. The distinction between how “philosophy” is operationalized in formal academic research and applied coaching contexts is striking. Jenkins’ stimulus article identifies the notion that coaches are simply being pragmatic in their approach to working with their teams and going about the business of coaching while exercising considerably less than philosophic thought. This presents a problem, described well by Cushion and Partington, ¹ wherein researchers studying coaching philosophy fail to fully define coaching philosophy for the participants. The result is that participants willingly answer questions regarding their “coaching philosophy” and researchers move forward believing there was shared understanding about what coaching philosophy entails. From a research methods perspective this is measurement error and a problem in quantitative, qualitative and mixed method designs. While those measurement issues are largely contained within a formal academic setting, the applied coaching education context is clearly taking cues from the formal academic context and it is an open question if that is helpful as it relates to coaching philosophy.

Coaching education context

The Coaching Association of Canada (CAC) ² does tremendous work and includes free resources on their website. One freely available resource is an interactive Get Coaching series of short videos with an accompanying sample practice plan. The practice plan has a space for recording “Program Philosophy.” In addition, one of the videos details what makes up a coaching philosophy and why having one is important. The video includes information (i.e., a coaching philosophy is a statement about your attitudes and beliefs about coaching) that could have come from any number of sources (e.g., Burton and Raedeke ³ ) and there are also example statements of coaching philosophies. The fact that the information from the academic context is so clearly represented in a fully applied context should be reassuring to all of us within the field. What may be concerning though is that the problems identified by research ¹ then have also directly carried over to the applied context. Specific to what is meant by a “coaching philosophy,” the difficulty of the task for researchers increases as more coaches will believe they have an understanding of what coaching philosophy means but that understanding is congruent with the significant problems identified by Cushion and Partington. ¹

Another prominent source of information for coaches is the International Sport Coaching Framework ⁴ which identifies coaching philosophy as part of a coach’s intrapersonal knowledge congruent with a cornerstone definition ⁵ of effective coaching. In both the CAC and Coaching Framework examples, the issue identified by Cushion and Partington ¹ is clear: There is no real evidence of philosophic thought suggested by, or encouraged within, any of these materials. Cushion and Partington ¹ refer to that type of a coaching philosophy as an ideology. It seems an open question though when the benefit to coaches and athletes manifests from a coach putting pen to paper and writing out her attitudes and beliefs about coaching. Is the mere act of writing something down enough? Is there any sort of process or framework that would help guide the coach to a more effective philosophy? Would the results be equivalent if the terminology was adjusted away from philosophy? It matters in the formalized academic sense of an improper term being used, but that happens frequently in research alone and across the contexts of researchers and practitioners.

Roberts ⁶ describes a tendency for researchers to prefer creating and using their own terms to those terms already available in the literature. The sport coaching literature also includes at least one example ⁷ about what terminology is most appropriate when describing sport coach learning. It is not clear that the distinction between a coach’s ideology and a coach’s philosophy moves too far beyond a different term that practically may mean the same thing. Of course, there is an idealistic view of wanting all sport coaches to be well-versed in philosophic thinking. The impact coaches have on athletes is not in doubt ⁵ and there seems no legitimate argument to dissuade coaches from thinking more about what they do. Benefits for coaches from reflection have been documented. ⁸ Cue words or triggers are often used in sport psychology to impact behavior change ⁹ and the general purpose behind them is to remind the performer of something. It seems reasonable that a youth-level coach including something about long-term athlete development in her program philosophy statement would be more forgiving of athlete mistakes during the training session. The CAC practice plan listing program philosophy, when thought of as a cue word, seems like a positive addition to the alternative of simply having additional empty space on the practice plan. It seems highly likely there is a cadre of sport-coaching researchers who would rather see a different term on the practice plan in lieu of “philosophy,” but does it matter? If the paper says program “ideology” instead, does that make the practice more fun for the athletes? Will a program “credo” lead to increased performance, or greater revenues, or fewer complaints from parents?

Coaching culture

A greater concern described by Cushion and Partington ¹ is that the unchallenged coaching philosophies present in the applied setting lead to a perpetuation of coaching culture, which is not inherently positive. A team’s culture is a buzzword across elite levels of sport with many books^10–13 addressing the culture component. There is no question that cultures around teams can lead to some devastating social consequences such the recent problems with Harvard University’s men’s soccer program ¹⁴ and the American football program at Baylor University. ¹⁵ Similarly, there is no debate that most coaches, especially in the beginning of their coaching careers, are most inclined to coach the way they were coached as an athlete.^16,17 Tremendous research work has been accomplished in recent decades across the sporting landscape. So much good work has been done, and best practices established, that a 15-year-old athlete today being coached by a 50-year-old coach, coaching largely the way he was coached in the 1970s is a scary thought. The lone exception may be if the athlete was coached by John Wooden, but it is well established that Wooden was a masterful coach. ¹⁸

Focusing on the problem of perpetuating a problematic culture, a pragmatic approach involving reflection seems a viable path forward. The pragmatic part is that coach education organizations are unlikely to be able to accomplish all that they wish to do to train coaches. For example, it is well established that coaches creating a mastery climate leads to positive experiences for athletes. ¹⁹ The same cannot be said regarding whether a coach has a coaching philosophy, coaching ideology, or coaching credo. That is not to imply that Cushion and Partington’s ¹ concerns are not valid. It is to say though that choices must be made in the development of coaches and how coaches use their time. The pragmatic approach to the professional development of coaches may be well served by an increase in reflection for coaches. The literature on reflection is not entirely consistent on what is meant by reflection as Jenkins’ stimulus piece points out. However, the essential piece is that someone is purposively considering a situation.

The purposeful consideration of situations is a key tenant of Sinek’s book exploring the “why. ²⁰ Sinek ²⁰ believes that humans need to have a clear sense of why they are doing something in order to reach their full potential. The use of “why” questions was a critical component to the global success of Toyota in the automobile industry.^21,22 Toyota executives would use a series of at least five consecutive “why” questions attempting to better understand whatever problem they encountered while manufacturing automobiles.^21,22 “Why” questions are also prominent in Berger’s ²³ book on the power of questions and how to use questions to greater effect. Berger ²³ put forward a framework for reflective questioning that began with a thorough understanding of the problem (i.e., why questions), moved on to identify possible solutions to what was found in the why questions by using “what if” questions, and concluded by identifying specific steps of “how” those solutions could be implemented. There is no obvious argument against a coach having a better understanding of her personal why, or actively thinking through situations using reflective questioning. It is reasonable to quibble about if that process leads to a philosophy or an ideology and research may one day demonstrate more positive effects for one over the other.

Conclusion

Ultimately, research on coaching philosophy is neither going away nor is the non-academic use of the term coaching philosophy. In order for the former to improve, researchers must establish what is meant by coaching philosophy for the participants. That will not be an easy task given the pervasive use of “coaching philosophy” as evidenced by national level coaching programs ² and the international sport coaching framework. ⁴ Jenkins’ stimulus article highlights a number of research questions based on valuable critiques of the coaching philosophy literature.^1,24,25 The more basic question though may be does it matter what term is used outside the context of formal academic pursuits?