Episode Transcript
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Speaker 2 (00:02):
Good morning. Wow.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Yeah, it's cold, beautiful crisp morning. Crisp is not the word. Yeah, cold,
it's a cold in November.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
There you go. Come a bit earlier than usual.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Normally this weather goes first week of December guaranteed because
that's when we run our junior hockey festival and it's
nearly always completely frozen in the morning. We normally pull
it off, but it's always a bit of a challenge.
So yeah, there you go. It's been a while. Uh yeah,
(00:48):
what's going on. It's pretty heavy, juicy a few weeks.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Months even, But I'm back back on the horse.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Big thanks to Rappa in my in the Guild of
Ecological Explorers, our learning community which anyone could do it.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
It's some great people from.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
All over the world have called it, called it in
from Australia and North America and Brazil and yeah, and
we get together and we have some really big discussions.
But Rappa did say to me at the last last
call that we had, where's the where's the where's the podcast?
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Been?
Speaker 1 (01:37):
Where there even just a dog walk diary would be nice?
I was like, yeah, sorry, hold my hand up, my bad. Yeah,
but got some interesting guests coming so stay tuned and
regular updates coming in from me, albeit maybe just nudging
into some different areas of extra nation. As my world
(02:05):
shifts and changes, different things are catching my interest.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
And.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Yeah, I'm really interested to explore some different dimensions. One
of the things that really kind of comes in my
mind of order to reflect on a little bit today
with you all, was so a friend of the show's
been on the podcast. Steve Wheeland, tennis coach and very
(02:37):
strong ecological practitioner, puts out some great content all over
the place, but particularly I read him on LinkedIn and
a lot of the stuff he's been talking about because
he's currently involved in a pastors and doing a lot
of research and getting into the weeds of stuff around
(03:00):
coach ed, coach dev all those sorts of things, and
of course as a ecological practitioner, he is thinking about,
you know, athletic development in a very different way. He's
thinking about it in a less prescriptive and directed and
instructional way and thinking about it in a much more
(03:28):
I don't know, I guess, experiential way, much more about
how do we marry together context and you know, somebody's
situation and utilized context and environment as the sort of
primary driver of learning rather than using you know, kind
of more decontextualized approaches to learning. And of course, one
(03:51):
of the things he's recognizing in his own coach education
and coach development journey is how much of that sort
of educational paradigm has been dominated by instructional models and
is now questioning the value of those approaches and also
questioning why they have such a geminy dominance in the
(04:13):
educational landscape. You know, many coaches will tell you that
they learn very practically or learn.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
With alongside others.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Co creation type approach, but they that doesn't seem to
be something that's offered very much in coach unless you
get to the sort of.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Very high levels.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
And where you know, you've given usually small cohorts and
you can be much more intensive and because it's high
performance or elite or professional, the investments made because people
can see the directors and an investment of you know,
coach and athlete. But in the community space or the
(04:58):
talent space where you're trying to do things at scale,
those opportunities are rarely presented. And as a result of that,
those individuals working in you know what I would argue
to be equally challenging in difficult environments and equally impactful,
you know, providing early, early participation experiences for people on
(05:19):
a journey into physical activity. Those are make or break,
aren't they? Good ones lead to, you know, the potential
of a lifelong physical activity have it, whereas poor ones
could essentially put people off physical activity or some form
of physical activity for a long time. And the vast
majority of sports are all trying to grow participation, and
(05:42):
they leave I think the people that the sort of
coal face of providing the experiences, they leave them with
little resource and little supports.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
Out in.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
To get ready of the support, and the result of
that the experiences are sort of left a chance. And
I don't think that's particularly smart economics if you're just
looking at it purely economically. There aren't many other businesses
that would think about their service staff given that, you know,
it's a service experience, and they would just sort of
(06:20):
allow them to be given the sort of very basic
modicum of training. But at the same time, knowing how
intensive it is and how challenging and costly it is
to do that at scale, very few organizations have the
budget for that. So what do we do about that. Well,
a starting point from my perspective, and this is what
Steve Willing is kind of questioning, is what if we
(06:41):
were to think about learning differently, and then if we
think about learning differently, have a little different sort of
learning paradigm, so then we can maybe look at the
problem in a different way. So the problem you have often,
I think when people are sort of designing learning systems,
scalable learning systems, is that they're coming from a particular
(07:01):
learning paradigm, whether they're aware of that or not. Sometimes
that learning paradigm is unquestioned. It's just, you know, what's
been seen before in their sort of formal educational world,
or it's what's presented to them by external practitioners who
are steeped in that formal educational world. And that formal
educational world largely operates from a learning paradigm that is
(07:25):
largely sort of directive and instructional, largely based on the
acquisition of knowledge and for that knowledge to then be
transferred or applied in context, as opposed to the idea
of let's learn from the context and work backwards and
make meaning from it, which is the sort of ecological paradigm.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Not just it's not an exclusively ecological paradigm.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
There other learning theories that adopted a similar approach, but
nonetheless those models of learning contectively driven meaning making, sense making,
working backwards from the problem versus teach theory or teach
or instructing, practical movement application, and then apply in context.
(08:05):
Those models have been adopted sort of unquestioningly by a
number of individuals, well the vast majority of organizations involved
in physical activity education, and increasingly there is a recognition
that that has limited utility. But people aren't necessarily able
(08:26):
to sort of break free from that mindset because that's
so dominant in their thinking. So you have to think
about a different learning paradigm, and then you can begin
to start to look at the solutions that might be
available to you in order to be able to apply
or implement that learning paradigm at scale. And when you
(08:48):
have that lens through which you look at problems, you
then look at potential solutions in a different way. And
I see this all the time. So I have a
number of organizations, sorry, a number of sort of startups
that I've started to connect and work with who are
doing some really fascinating and exciting things blending and fusing
educational technology with some of the latest sort of developments
(09:11):
in AI and various of the things, which gives the
ability to take what would be a very labor intensive
process involving humans a human and take some of the
heavy lifting out of that so that it's much more
easy for that humans are human, the valuable relational humans
and human interaction which should never be removed, but more
(09:34):
of it can be done because the labor involved in
it can be made more easy or more accessible. So
looking at it through this lead. When you see some
of these solutions emerging and you look at them through
a particular learning paradigm, you can see the utility. But
I I've noticed others not really grasp it. And what
(09:57):
I've come to realize is is that because they're looking
at learning to a particular lens and they don't necessarily
see how that could particularly a system, which is an
interesting thing to observe. Now, what Steve Wheeling was saying
that I wanted to reflect on this little bit.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
It's a bit of a big old type.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Tangent there from back to my main thread. What Steve
Wheelam was saying is that many coaches don't really understand
that they don't understand what their sort of model of
learning is. And because of that, and this is one
of the posting perhat recently, they then are kind of
a little limited in terms of their learning repertoire. So
(10:38):
they're not even able to offer a mixed menu, you know,
they can't use professional judgment in their offer because they're
only coming from a particular like sort of learning paradigm
less less verse than others and sort of challenging that
notion in education that why are we Why is early
stage education and coaching really focused on practical application of
(11:01):
sports skill as opposed to also considering at the very
very earliest stage is to get those coaches to consider,
you know, they're kind of they're learning paradigms and their
why and understand more about kind of models of learning
in the physical realm, so that they can begin to
have a different level of appreciative inquiry when they still
when they have those conversations.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Why not why can't we do that?
Speaker 1 (11:25):
And I've got a bit of pushback, not pushback, It wasn't
even a pushback, It was just a kind of comments
last question because I commented on that post and I
got a question from really well known individual who is
very you know, kind of very learned and I respect
a lot in the world of coach development, coach ed
sort of saying like, you know, I feel like you've
(11:48):
beaten up on the coaches, you know, saying that they're
you know, they just they haven't got enough you know,
awareness of different things, and it's like they're not really
you know, you know, and saying that you know, all
coaches you need to think much more about you. Okay,
there's quite a few, maybe, but it's not all. And
and she's dead dead right, And it was a good pickoff.
(12:12):
And I think the thing I clarified in my response
was that I I didn't I wasn't trying to suggest
that it's the coach's problem. What I was trying to
suggest is that actually it's the educational systems problem. And
I'm not even necessarily blaming the people in the system
who are designing the system, because actually a lot of
(12:33):
that is downstream from policy and downstream from the way
that coach development of coach education is resource.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
You know. So because people come from this sort of
fairly limited paradigm, they assume that the kind of the
bare minimum if you like, if you know, the sort
of the.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
You know, learn the basics type approach, and it is
very much the basics in the cricket time possible.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Is in us for people who are then.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
Going to go out there and you know, kind of
have the not only the experiences, but the well being
of you know, in some cases thousands of young people,
you know that will be in their responsibility. So the
system is failing in terms of the way the policies
it's adopting, the way it's thinking about the challenges.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
The resources it allocates accordingly.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
And then that leads people who are in the sort
of in the middle, the system builders who are desperate
for support, to be able to do it better. Because
the majority of them are pretty knowledgeable and recognize that
what they're doing doesn't really meet the needs. They find
themselves in the invidious position of doing the best they
can with what they've got, which is great. I mean,
they've got absolutely no problem for that. But my challenge
(13:52):
is supposed to them. Is one of the reasons I
want I work to support people in those roles what
you might call the coach developer developer if you like,
is I want to give them the resources and the
tools and the way of thinking, and potentially some of
the documentation and resources so that they can begin to
advocate internally for the kind of resources that they need
(14:16):
to be able to do what they do. And some
of that is actually being able to provide the people
who make those decisions with really concrete rationales for why
this is important. And it's one of the reasons I
post and butt podcasts quite a lot. But also maybe
it begins, and that's one of the reasons I have
become so passionate and so much of a strong advocate
(14:38):
for the ecological approach, because the ecological approach, in my view,
offers insights and a way of thinking about learning and
education that changes the paradigm and then starts to make
us think differently about the ways in which we want
to support people to learn. And this is particularly important
(14:59):
if we you want to include people who would normally
be marginalized from our workforce because they don't they don't,
you know, fit into these educational paradigms very well. And
I include myself in that, so I have direct lived
experience of this, which is one of the big drivers
of motivated of the motivations to avoid anybody else having
(15:23):
to go through the challenges and pain of a sub
standard educational paradigm or system paradigm.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
A lot of this.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
One anyway, So some thought fragments there. Hopefully that's useful.
I'd love to hear from you if you if this
stimulates anything, any thinking or any ideas. I'd love to
have a conversation with you if you're interested too, so
just reach out, hit me up on LinkedIn.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Or yeah, probably the best way to do it.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
And then we did maybe set up something and we
get up a bit of a conversation, a bit of
an exploration. Lots of interesting conversations happening at the moment
with practitioners and system builders, and there's a lot of
change in the air, so bringing those people together is
going to be a big part of what I plan.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
To do in the new year. Speach you soon, right,