Swimming against the current: Mobilising ‘post’ thinking to break the ‘iron cage’ of modern sport coaching
Zoë Avner, School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences, Centre for Sport Research, Deakin University, Australia
Contemporary advances in coaching knowledge have arguably given coaches a greater understanding of human performance and more information to support their planning and decision-making. However, these advances have also brought about an exponential increase in the number of variables that coaches need to account for, monitor, and control to be ‘effective.’ At the same time, coaches are urged to be ‘empowering’, ‘athlete-centred’ and ‘autonomy-supportive.’ Herein lies a fundamental control-empowerment tension or paradox whereby coaches are simultaneously encouraged to relinquish control while operating within a contemporary scientised coaching landscape increasingly driven by a quest for precision and certainty – what has otherwise been characterised as the contemporary science-led, technology-rich, and measurement-oriented ‘iron cage’ of modern coaching.
In this keynote, I argue for the value of swimming against the current through mobilising ‘post’ thinking to promote more relational ways of knowing and doing in sports coaching and thus open up new orientations, wayfinding, and horizons which can begin to address some of the paradoxes and tensions outlined above. Thinking with the posts, I argue can not only help coaches to open their eyes to all that their coaching practices do and in so doing support the development of practices that are both more ethical and effective but also has the potential to liberate coaching thought and practice from its current modern iron cage and binary logic.
What can poststructuralism and posthumanism offer sports coaching? Quite a lot!
Håkan Larsson, The Swedish University of Sport and Health Sciences, Stockholm, Sweden.
Some 30 years ago, as a new PhD student, I was asked by a more experienced peer what Michel Foucault’s philosophy had to offer sports coaching. After much consideration, I reluctantly replied: “Maybe not so much.” At the time, I, like most people, I believe, perceived Foucault’s philosophy as mainly a tool for studying sports coaching but not so much a tool for ‘doing’ sports coaching. This is probably related to the fact that Foucault’s project was perceived as mainly epistemological, not ontological. In addition, perhaps Foucault’s most central concept, discourse, was interpreted primarily to be about the power-related content of linguistic statements about coaching rather than coaching itself.
Thirty years later, after many years of studying Foucault’s works and considering recent decades’ posthumanist and neomaterialist turns, I have a more elaborate response to offer my older colleague. Today, I would maintain that Foucault and other thinkers in the same philosophical vein have much to offer sports coaching. This is mainly because I now understand that Foucault, Butler, Deleuze, and Barad, to name just a few, indeed refer to the real world of coaching and not just the ‘talked about’ coaching (even if this also contributes to constituting coaching).
This keynote aims to articulate how Foucault’s and other poststructuralist and posthumanist thinkers’ insights can inspire a more inclusive and democratic – and perhaps also performance-developing, sports coaching. To do that, however, coaches need to be prepared to shake things up about how performance development works and their role in this development process.
Sports Coaching as Pedagogy: A Humanist Approach
Kenneth Aggerholm, professor, Norwegian School of Sport Sciences.
This keynote builds on recent calls to reimagine sports coaching as pedagogy, presenting a humanist framework that integrates novel approaches within sport philosophy and philosophy of education to propose a vision of coaching that centres on human engagement, embodiment and responsibility.
My suggestion for a humanist approach to sports coaching is rooted in a humanism of embodiment. As an alternative to classic humanism and the emergence of trans- and posthumanism, it employs insights from phenomenology to emphasise embodiment, bodily relationships to others, and embeddedness in a natural environment as foundations of human existence. I have drawn on this in my recent outline for a sport humanism, a theory aiming to defend the human element of sport against the dehumanising potential of technological developments, instrumental rationality and efficiency ethos in sport.
In this keynote presentation, I will examine the relevance and implications of sport humanism for our understanding of sports coaching. Drawing on insights from educational philosophy, particularly embodied accounts of Bildung and operative pedagogy, I will argue that seeing sports coaching as pedagogy through a humanist lens can enrich our understanding of coach-athlete relationships in sport. Bildung can broaden the scope of athlete development and offer normative guidance for coaches to direct athletes towards desirable ends that transcend skilful performance, whilst operative pedagogy can throw new light on the practical work of coaches to evoke both existential, practical and moral formation of athletes.
Ultimately, a humanist approach to sports coaching concerns forming human beings in and through sport, prioritising the existential, ethical and ecological dimensions of human engagement in sport, and fostering meaningful and sustainable sporting practices. Seeing this as a pedagogical task can challenge us to reimagine the role and work of coaches, and by reconceptualising sports coaching as pedagogy, this keynote aims to provide a foundation for realising this transformative vision of sports coaching.