ABSTRACT
Positive Pedagogy for sport coaching is an athlete-centred, inquiry-based approach. There is considerable overlap between these two terms but my use of ‘athletecentred coaching’ refers to coaching that places the athlete at the centre of learning, as an active learner. Additionally, it picks up the notion of a humanistic approach to coaching developed from humanistic psychology (see Maslow, 1968) within which the coach considers the athlete as a thinking, feeling person who has a life outside the sport (see Kidman, 2005). In doing so, it challenges the mechanistic reduction of humans as complex and interconnected beings to a set of separate elements such as the mind, the body or the spirit. My use of the term ‘inquirybased learning’ refers to a range of inductive approaches to teaching that find their origins in Dewey’s proposal for an inquiry approach to teaching science in schools well over a century ago. He challenged what he referred to as ‘traditional’ teaching by arguing that students should be actively engaged in their learning with the teacher adopting the role of facilitator or guide (Barrow, 2006; Dewey, 1916/1997). He suggested six steps for an inquiry approach to teaching that involves the students:
1. Sensing a perplexing situation 2. Clarifying the problem 3. Formulating a tentative solution 4. Testing the hypothesis 5. Revising with rigorous tests 6. Acting on the solution
My suggestions for taking an inquiry-based approach to coaching team games (Light, 2013a) and Positive Pedagogy for individual sports (see Light and Harvey, 2015) are based upon these steps proposed by Dewey. In the practical examples and suggestions discussed in Part III, the coach typically (but not always) creates a
problem to be solved by imposing a constraint and facilitates an inquiry-based approach to solving the problem. Dewey’s original ideas on an inquiry approach to teaching have more recently inspired a range of variations that include inquiry-based learning (IBL), problem-based learning (PBL – Schmidt, 1998), discovery learning (Bruner, 1961), inquiry learning (Papert, 1980), experiential learning (Boud et al., 1985) and constructivist learning (Steffe and Gale, 1995). All these approaches sit upon constructivist epistemology and the belief that
learning is a process of constructing new knowledge through the interpretation of learning experiences shaped by prior knowledge, experience and dispositions (see Bruner, 1990; Piaget, 1950). Prince and Felder’s (2006) suggestions about the features of inductive approaches such as these offer another useful guide for developing coaching that takes an inquiry approach. They suggest that inductive approaches:
1. Are learner-centred and focus on student learning rather than on communicating content or knowledge;
2. Emphasize active learning as learning by doing which typically involves students discussing questions and solving problems;
3. Develop self-directed learning skills in which students take responsibility for their own learning;
4. Are based upon constructivist theories of learning, which propose that students construct their own meaning of reality and knowledge (see Dewey, 1933; Vygotsky, 1978; Bruner, 1990).
