The deconstruction and reconstruction of sports coaching: An interview with Professor Robyn Jones. A commentary

Introduction

I first met Robyn in 1996 while attending an AIESEP conference in Lisbon, Portugal. Our next contact was when I was on a panel interviewing him for a Senior Lecturer position in Sport Coaching at the University of Otago. He subsequently was appointed and we were colleagues at Otago between June 1999 and March 2002. When Robyn arrived at Otago, I was not researching, or teaching, in the area of sport coaching but in 2001, for reasons previously explained,¹ Robyn and I proposed to write the book Understanding sports coaching. Social, cultural and pedagogical foundations of practice. The acceptance of that book proposal coincided with Robyn leaving the University of Otago and returning to the northern hemisphere (Note: Paul Potrac replaced Robyn Jones on staff and became part of the writing team.). Since then, apart from writing two subsequent editions of Understanding sports coaching^2,3 (and co-authoring one paper with Laura Purdy (our joint PhD student),⁴ our professional lives have run along somewhat parallel, rather than converging, pathways.

Simon introduced Robyn as ‘arguably the world’s leading researcher and scholar in the microsociology of sports coaching’ (p.?). Not surprisingly, when a researcher/scholar is recognized as such, interest is generated in what beliefs and principles orient his/her work. At times, colleagues are asked to deduce the beliefs and principles of world’s leading researchers; for example, Tinning⁵ was invited to comment on Daryl Siedentop’s perspective on content knowledge for physical education. On other occasions, world-renowned researchers/scholars clarify their own research history,⁶ or they are asked to clarify it, as was the case when Simon interviewed Robyn. In this commentary, I focus on one aspect of what Simon deduced, and Robyn clarified, namely the relationship between the latter’s ontological, epistemological and methodological standpoints.

Ontological, epistemological and methodological relationships

It appears it was Robyn’s reflections on, and descriptions of, the relationships between his ontological, epistemological and methodological standpoints that piqued Simon’s interest and was the ‘trigger’ for conducting the interview with Robyn. Much has been written about the relationship between ontology, epistemology and methodology^7,8 as these relationships are important in the development and production of quality research. According to Devís-Devís, any research inquiry is

carried out and based on a series of shared assumptions regarding ontology, epistemology, theory, purposes, and methodology. These suppositions shape a paradigm or a disciplinary matrix of assumptions (Kuhn, 1975), a world view (Patton, 1978), a basic belief system (Guba and Lincoln, 1989), or a particular set of lenses to see and understand the world (Sparkes, 1992). The ways in which these assumptions operate together in a complex manner shape the research questions asked and the approaches chosen to answer them. (Devís-Devís,⁷ p. 39)

After decades working as a critical pedagogue (for want of a better word), Tinning⁶ observed that from his experience the ‘fuel that drives paradigm tensions is based as much on personality and ego as it is on epistemological disagreements’ (p. 191). Tinning’s observation is consistent with Giddens’¹¹ view that epistemological debates have opened the notions of self and identity to scrutiny and that a fundamental characteristic of the late modern period is reflexivity of human action, or more specifically the ‘construction of the self’ (p. 124). Giddens went on to state that in this period of modernity the ‘process of “reaching back to one’s early experiences” … is precisely part of a reflexive mobilising of self identity; it is not confined to life’s crises, but a general feature of modern social activity in relation to psychic organisation’ (p. 33).

When Tinning⁶ reflected on his considerable research journey, which included completing a PhD at Ohio State University with Daryl Siedentop in 1983 (an experience he said ‘owed much to behavior analysis’) and relocating to the ‘critical educational theory “camp”’ at Deakin University he said:

I was rather more suspicious of the grand narrative of critical theory as the only epistemological pathway to a more socially just world. I remember going to a conference of behavior analysis…[and] was amazed to find that there was a group of serious researchers/scholars who called themselves “behaviourists for social action”. Their intentions and their commitments seemed to be no less commendable regarding the mission of making a more equitable world than those critical theorists of the critical project (e.g., Apple, Giroux)’. (pp. 188–189)

Conclusion

If we accept that sport coaching is a ‘multivariate, interpersonal and dynamic’ practice, which requires us to ‘avoid treating coaches as “cardboard cut-outs” (Sparkes and Templin 1992: 118) and athletes as non-thinking pawns’ (Cassidy et al.,¹ p. 5), then arguably we must accept that researchers of sport coaching are also not ‘cardboard cut-outs’. Researchers have diverse ontological perspectives from which varied research questions are formed in the pursuit of understanding and improving the coaching process. As a consequence, researchers will draw upon a range of epistemological and methodological perspectives to formulate and conduct their research. This being the case, if we are genuinely interested in developing our understanding of, and practice in, sport coaching, should we not welcome all quality research as long as it is ontologically, epistemologically and methodologically coherent? Such coherence was apparent when Robyn,¹⁵ upon describing himself as a ‘dysfluent coach’, drew extensively on Goffman’s theoretical work on stigma, interaction and impression management and used autoethnographical methodology to represent his coaching story. That particular article goes some way to supporting Simon’s claim that Robyn is the ‘Erving Goffman of Sports Coaching’.