The topic of this week’s lecture was ‘The Expert Pedagogue’. Keith introduced us to a couple of extremely
successful coaches. One of the coaches
was John Wooden, a college basketball coach.
Wooden wrote a book about coaching, it was titled: You haven’t taught until they have learned. This book speaks about teaching principles
and practice. I think the name of this
book is not only a fantastic title but also a great motto for anyone to coach
by. I think it simplifies coaching. These words remove all the distractions that
can develop with coaching and brings the task back to the basics. Coaches can then simply implement the necessary
teaching strategies which will ensure their athletes/pupils are learning and
improving.
Keith also introduced us to a psychologist, Carol Dweck. She alludes to the idea that people are in
charge of their own intelligence. She
states that being smart is not a gift, nor is it a product of genetic good
fortune. The idea is that the brain is
like a muscle, and the more you use it, the stronger it gets. This is illustrated in the picture below. Furthermore, Dweck poses the question, ‘How
often do you laugh at babies for being stupid?’
Babies aren’t dumb, they just haven’t learned yet. This idea can apply to people of any age,
simply because someone doesn’t know something doesn’t mean that they don’t have
the capacity to learn it. This concept can
be directly translated to coaching. It
may be unfair to deem players who perform below standard, or struggle with
executing a particular skill as having no ability. Instead, they may have simply never learned
the skill and only need it to be taught to them to understand how to perform
it.
Dweck’s opinions and thoughts can be seen in more detail in this YouTube video.
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