"You can take a pick and mix approach to theory - but not if you want to be evidence based" - A conversation with the Constraints Collective - The Talent Equation Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi everyone, Stewart here before we get into today's podcast,
I wonder if I can ask you to do me
a favor. I'm hoping that I can get the podcast
to grow to a wider audience. But further it goes,
the more people that it can impact. I often get
letters of messages on social media from many of the
listeners who often talk to me about the impact it's
had on them and the people that they work with.
Sometimes that impact goes as far as family members and

(00:23):
relationships that you hold. I'm hoping that I can get
that message out call wider audience.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Now.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
Obviously, the more people that listen, the more impact the
show can have, but also the more people that subscribe
and download, then that helps me to invest in the
show and put out more content. As you know, my
podcasting of late's been a little bit sporadic, say the least,
and that's partly due to the fact that I've just
been struggling with capacity. Now I'm hoping to be able
to enlist some help so that I can improve the
quality and improve the amount of podcasts I put out there.

(00:49):
But I can only do that with your help. To
please share it far and wide, you know, use social
media if you want to use your networks through WhatsApp
or other messaging channels that you use, or even if
you're face to pay with people, conferences, seminars, those sorts
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sign up and listen. Now, I've got loads of ideas
for a new ways to take the show. I want
to bring on new co hosts other than the world

(01:10):
famous Flow the Dog. I want to do some live
streamed episodes that people can interact with and do Q
and as live Q and a's, and I'm also thinking
about doing live podcasts from conferences as well as bringing
on some big name guests. But I can only do
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if you want to go a bit further than that,
then there is a Patreon page, and if you go

(01:30):
to the Patreon page, there's opportunities for you to buy
me the equivalent of a cup of coffee. If you're
are to do then that's amazing and that's massively supportive,
but it's not essential. The main thing is if you
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And if you can do that, I'd be enormously grateful.

(01:53):
Thanks in advance via support.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
Welcome to the Townent Equation Podcast.

Speaker 4 (02:00):
If you are passionate.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
About helping young people join leash their potential and want
to find ways to do that better, then you've come
to the right place. The Talent Equation podcast seeks to
answer the important questions facing parents, coaches, and talent developers
as they try to help young people become the best
they can be. This is a series of unscripted, unpolished

(02:22):
conversations between people at the razor's edge of the talent
community who are prepared to share their knowledge, experiences and
challenges in an effort to help others get better faster. Listen, reflect,
and don't forget to join the discussion at the Talent
Equation dot co dot UK.

Speaker 5 (02:43):
Enjoy the show.

Speaker 6 (03:10):
Okay, welcome to the latest Constraint Collective podcast. We've got
an old friend and guests today. I'm Stewart, I'm Mstrong.
Welcome Stuart, how.

Speaker 4 (03:21):
Are you hi? Hi Keith?

Speaker 6 (03:23):
Great to see you both, Yeah, and good to see
you in, yeah, and Keith there, so Keith and Sheffield
Stuart in the Barmey, Southern England Sunshine something like that.
I apologize for the lighting in my house and just
in the new house, and I'm quite got everything set

(03:46):
up in terms of lights and everything yet, so we
just have to put up with it as well. So
this podcast really came about from our latest pod that
we've least really which was entitled Let's digch the Ecological
Information Processing Dualism, which seemed to peak Steve's interests, so

(04:10):
he contacted and asked if we come on and have
a chat. Apologies, we can't get Martin on. I think
he's had to go out to work, whereas Keith and
I don't really work well Keith, so we thought we well,
Steve's on, we might have a bit of a chat
at general things about what's interesting is and then really

(04:31):
sort of get into the discussion around that paper or sorry,
that that podcast that we did. So where do you
want to start, gents?

Speaker 5 (04:42):
Well, I mean I'm always fascinated to hear what's happening
in Stuart's world, been obviously following his work for years,
you know, a trusted colleague. So Stuart, how things are
going with you. Perhaps you can start by talking to
us about any sort of issues of interest that are

(05:05):
attracting your attention at the moment.

Speaker 4 (05:08):
I mean, I think so.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
I think most people who've been following my Companion podcast
that's have an equation, you know, been very much exploring
the world of the ecological approach, ecological dynamics, constraints and
a lot of the work I've been doing. Up until

(05:31):
recently I was working in the policy space, working for
Sport England, one of our national agencies, like leading sort
of coaching policy and all those sorts of things. One
of the things has been really interesting for me as
well is to see how organizations have been responding, I think,
to that kind of approach. So a lot of my
work been in the coach education world. How do we

(05:51):
develop coaches, help coaches develop, help coach developers develop, and
more importantly, I suppose start to professionalize coaching and coach development.
With the emergence certainly in the UK of new professional
standards and then new educational programs that are enabling coaches
to be educated in a different way. And one of

(06:13):
the ways, interestingly enough, that they're being educated is not
just in a technical specialism thinking about the technical aspects
of a sport or a sports activity, but actually educated
also in a recognition of the environment that they're operating
within and a recognition of the people that they're working with,

(06:33):
the population specific standards being developed. So when I think
of that, I think of a constraints triangle, and I
think what we're now starting to see emerging is an
educational paradigm for coaches that takes into account who they
work with, where they work, and what their specific role
or task is. And so you know, it makes me

(06:54):
think of a kind of constraints triangle to a certain extent.
So that's emerging, and what we're seeing is is sports
organizations responding to this sort of new emergent approach which
was set in the wheels in motion for that were set,
you know, five six, seven years ago we sort of
said that, you know, we wanted to move away from
the very traditional linear qualifications approach which we had under

(07:16):
the UK Coaching Certificate, towards something that was much more
responsive to people individual.

Speaker 4 (07:22):
Needs and therefore would meet the needs of participants better.

Speaker 1 (07:26):
So if you like, you know, without it necessarily being
explicit and you know, explicitly derived through you know, any
sort of theoretical paradigm. What's emerged, I think as a
response to a need for coaches to be educated and
developed in a better way to meet the needs of
participants from a broader range of environments and situations with

(07:48):
a range of different needs. What's emerged has been essentially
a constraint led approach to coach education, certainly in the
policy space. How that then materializes in the educational world
in terms of how coaches are actually physically educated and
how they're provided with training and all that sort of
stuff is the thing that organizations are struggling with. And
that's kind of what I do now because when I

(08:09):
left Sport England and went into the consulting space, and
now I've joined a major learning and development agency called
future Fit, and I'm going to be developing my own
sort of company within that group called called future Coach.
We are specializing in helping organizations to meet that kind
of unique challenge because you're having to move away from

(08:30):
a very sort of structured and traditional, to use that
word traditional inverted commas educational paradigm to an entirely different
way of educating coaches that takes into context, takes into
account their context. So I felt like that might be
a useful starting point just to talk about that a
little bit in terms of the way things have shifted
in certainly in UK coach ed.

Speaker 5 (08:53):
That's fascinating too. Here it is reminiscent of some discussions
I remember maybe twelve thirteen years ago, Rick Shutterworth and
I kicking around this idea that constraints that approach can
be applied to the level of coaches, trainers and professional practitioners.

(09:17):
And we might have mentioned it in a paper or
two that we wrote, But then Matt Wood came along
and Matt did his PhD looking at the application of
a constraints model at the level of coaches and coaching,
whereas Rick and I were talking about it not just

(09:38):
in terms of the coaching processes but also coach education.
And what you're talking about now is again the applicability,
the potential applicability the model or the ideas the concepts
of the model, but the level of policy and design,
and you know, the level of sort of the organizational

(10:03):
structure of coach education and the preparation of coaches for
as you say, the future, and things like that, which
which for me is fascinating and it's perfectly logical as
well because the constraints model. Remember, the constraints model came
from a developmental psychology area, broader psychology, which is focused
on human behavior. So it's not something that was born

(10:26):
in the sports world of physical education world. It's a
model of human behavior. It's applied. It's been applied in
motor development, motor learning thanks to Carl Nuhl and colleagues
and others, and of course in terms of sport performance,
sports practice, et cetera. So it's I think it's shows
the quite you know, the white wide reach outreach of

(10:49):
the model.

Speaker 6 (10:51):
What do you what are your biggest challenges trying to
help help people with this newer approach.

Speaker 1 (11:01):
St Well, I think it's sort of this week, I
guess relates a little to probably the subject matter we're
going to go on to. But this language of traditional Interestingly,
I think educational models and educational paradigms often I think
flow from sort of other areas of how educational works. So,

(11:24):
for example, so surprised that when the UK Coaching Certificate
was first created, I mean, we're going back what you know,
early part of my career. Right, so we're talking twenty
five odd years ago, whatever it was. And you know,
the when it was mooted that coaching in the UK
needed to be put on a more kind of professionalized footing,
and therefore these qualifications frameworks were created UK Coaching Framework.

(11:50):
When that was first designed, the idea of environmental specialism
and all those sorts of things was originally pulled into
a play. It didn't materialized. And the reason it didn't
materialize is because coach education had to map onto other
forms of education in order to become funded. And so
it's the money that makes everything work, isn't it. So fundamentally,

(12:11):
then coach ed became like built on the same models
that I've seen in formal education, and therefore it followed
a more linear and prescriptive approach. And it was about
you know, kind of competency structures and you know, assessment
and you know, you do your educational course and you know,
you package it all into one you know, weekend or
something like that. You get a load of knowledge thrown

(12:33):
at you and then apparently that's supposed to transfer and
materialize into skills. And I was struck by you know,
when you were talking about that you guys are talking about,
you know, knowledge about, knowledge of and the idea of
actually a lot of coach ed is very focused on
the idea of we're going to give you a lot
of information about coaching, not not, but we're not necessarily

(12:53):
going to recognize any any aspect of you know, how
you then take that knowledge about coach and turn it
into practical applicable things. And there's a huge knowing doing
gap in coach education and most people kind of understand
that and recognize it and recognize that coach education is
probably at best, they say it's necessary, but it's not sufficient.

(13:14):
But the problem is no one's ever filled in then
the okay, well, how are we then going to provide
that supportive side of things? And it's hard, it's really difficult,
right to This stuff is hard to wrestle with. And
when you couple that, so you couple the fact that
you've got an educational paradigm that people are used to
because they've had it in education, therefore transposed it into
the coach educational landscape, and then you then and people

(13:38):
are hired to do those kinds of jobs which are
very it's very process driven. So it's very much around
this idea of yes, you're going to come and do
your course, you're going to get some assessment, you're then
going to get certification, and then there might be some
sort of cpd ish perhaps but not necessarily. And the
problem is when you when you're used to working in
that paradigm, to then break free of that model is

(13:59):
really difficult. It's risky, it's challenging, it feels like uncomfortable,
and a lot of people are really struggling with it,
and to a certain extent, just almost like pop, we
just go back to doing what we always did. And
then if you couple that with the fact that's culturally
resilient beliefs surround education and learning, there's constraints on resources
because the people running the programs they want to do

(14:21):
it better, but they're massively under resourced in their organizations.
And then you and they haven't necessarily got investments in
the technology that might be needed in order to be
able to make this happen.

Speaker 6 (14:31):
And then you.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
Combine that with the fact that they're working in organizations
where they have very little sort of explicit sort of
you know, kind of directive power necessarily within the organization
to direct policy, and very often they've got a leadership
group who are saying, look, we just want you to
basically do the basics, give people a basic education, and
then let's let them off into the world and just
do whatever it is they're going to do. And that's

(14:53):
driven also by an economic model whereby there is a
revenue to be generated through a coach education. You canbine
all those constraints, if you like, together, makes it very
hard to shift and change. So I guess the advocacy
piece that we've been working towards, particularly in the policy space,
has been let's create the conditions for change. They're now
in place, and now they can be built upon. Now
what we need to do is to help people with

(15:15):
the kind of the mindset shift required at a leadership
level and then at the at the actual sort of
system builder level if you like, to be able to
enact that this shift, to be able to take advantage
of it. And the fin the final bit to say
is that so I don't necessarily I don't place any
blame on the people who in the system building roles.
They're just tasked with certain roles and they're working under

(15:35):
the constraints and it's really challenging. My goal now is
to sort of enable them through strategic thinking, advocacy, work
with their leadership groups to give them the tools and
resources they need to do the job that they really
want to do in the first place.

Speaker 4 (15:49):
So it's kind of an interesting place to be.

Speaker 5 (15:53):
Fascinating. I mean, it strikes me that. I mean, one
of the things that Rick and I spoke about many
years ago was a notion called system capture and the
idea of these systems being quite powerful and having a
historical legacy, something that Martin Rothwell's PhD was focused on

(16:14):
the historical socio cultural constraints. It's not just Martin, but
Luis Yuhara, for example, examining the powerful influence of socio
cultural constraints in the way things are done. Hence the
term traditional meaning you know that where practices are operationalized.
As we were talking about, the notion that these things

(16:37):
are operationalized and put into practice in systems, and the
idea being, oh, you need some sort of structure, you
need some sort of system, otherwise it will be chaotic,
and the focus pretty much being on professional practice, which
is which is appropriate with coaching, but taking us the
operational emphasis, taking us away from the you know, is

(17:03):
what underpins why everyone's there in the first place. In schools,
in sports organizations, all these sorts of educational establishments is
to facilitate learning. The emphasis on learning and having a
theoretical understanding of how the learner learns and the model

(17:23):
of the learning process, as it were. That's what Rick
and I were sort of, if you liked, we were
slightly having a little bit of a mini rant. I
remember it was in an office at one time, and
we had a great discussion over lunch, you know, and
the idea being, you know, this is really what we're
all here about, so let's not go too far. Hence,
in inecological dynamics, the term learning design, you know, tongue

(17:49):
in cheek, suggesting that professional practitioners are actually learning designers,
which means that the learning process is put at the
center of it all the operational side. I'm not saying
ignore it completely, but you know, that's like putting the
cart before the horse, as it were, in the spaces

(18:09):
we work in.

Speaker 6 (18:11):
Do I think I remember sitting in John Lyle's office
in Murray House in where it was it mid ninete
late nineties, and of course John's the key guy really
to develop start developing researching to coaching and the coaching process.
And there was all this debate about what is coaching,

(18:34):
you know, and John was pretty clear about coaching is
about trying to help people improve their performance in the
context of competing. Do you think there's a challenge around
this in terms of at the lower levels of is
it more of a leader, you know, leadership role rather
than coaching or do we have we got coaching now

(18:56):
people to understand that at the beginner level or the
junior levels it's ultimately about helping them get better within
the context of the six or the rate, or is
it sort of seen as something that comes later when
it becomes more about high performance sport or performance rather

(19:18):
than participation.

Speaker 1 (19:21):
It's interesting, actually, take me back a little bit. We
asked ourselves the same questions when I was writing Sport
England's first ever strategy for coaching, which still fascinates me
by the way that you know, major sort of policy
making funding body didn't necessary didn't necessarily have a position
in a policy position on coaching and coach development and
coach education, given that so much of the funding would

(19:45):
end up in you know, directing or guiding at some
point somebody who's providing a participation experience for somebody else,
and the recognition that that's actually a pretty important kind
of interaction is pretty key. But we asked ourselves question,
We said, you know, what is coaching? And this was
at a time in when the kind of landscape, if

(20:08):
you like, the political landscape had kind of shifted and
had moved in a slightly different space, and we'd moved
away from sort of a more traditional sport development how
do we develop in the sport towards a sport for
development model, whereby we were as interest Yes, we're interested
in people doing sport and getting better at it, but

(20:29):
we're also just as interested in people being involved in
sport and physical activity as a means to derive some
other social health, you know, economic benefits, and government policy
and strategy had moved in that direction and talked about outcomes,
you know, physical outcomes, individual outcomes and all these.

Speaker 4 (20:50):
Sorts of things.

Speaker 1 (20:51):
So in recognition of that, we had to sort of
think about what the definition of coaching was, and it
had to also recognize that we needed to look at
coaching in a much more in a more broad way.

Speaker 4 (21:04):
I e.

Speaker 1 (21:04):
You know, if you're a personal trainer, for example, are
you a coach, You're helping somebody become more physically active,
develop physical competence, and develop the ability to be able to,
you know, do whatever it is you want to do. Yeah,
well that's probably a form of coaching, isn't it. Likewise,
you know somebody who does group exercise zumba classes for example, Well,

(21:25):
group exercise is the like the singular biggest form of
physical activity participated by women who are often marginalized from
sport and physical activity. So those people at the front
of those classes helping people be physically active and creating
if you like, the physical activity experience that people really want.
Are they coaches? Well, in my mind, yeah, they probably are,
because they're motivational, they're providing, you know, they've got to

(21:48):
have a foundation of knowledge in order to be able
to do what they're doing. They have to meet a
range of different people's needs, and that skill set is
really really increased. So I think what we started to
see was that actually coaching, or the act of coaching,
as opposed to being our coach necessarily, was actually inherent
in a load of physical activity roles. And so what

(22:08):
we wanted to do is to say, well, actually, if
we're going to have an educational policy that looks at
all these different roles in this sort of more sport
talent performance space or community space or in the sort
of health fitness type landscape, we needed to think of
it in a slightly broader and different way. So we
made a reference to it being about specialized support, and
it was about meeting people's needs and aspirations, and that

(22:33):
did have some performance components to it because it enabled
people who were on a performance journey to do that
kind of thing. But at the same time it also
recognized that it was actually perhaps just about enabling people.
I say, just it's not just enabling people in you know,
kind of areas of social deprivation to have a physical
activity experience which wouln't otherwise be there for them, and

(22:53):
recognizing that that was really skillful role that was often
not really given very much resource.

Speaker 4 (22:59):
I guess.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
So it's a very roundabout way of answering your question,
which is to say, I think it shifted a bit,
but I'm hoping it's shifted for the better because it's
got a broader and more inclusive recognition of the skill
set to people in these different roles.

Speaker 6 (23:12):
I think it's worth probably, I mean, correct me if
I'm wrong, because you were closer to it and involved.
And I'm going back twenty odd years here at least
thinking about the way that this emerged was the brilliant
Sue Campbell worked out that the pots of money and
government were the Home Office and the Health Service and
if we can target sport to attract money from that,

(23:36):
it was pretty powerful. So I'd see she was pretty
strong in influencing that.

Speaker 4 (23:43):
Definitely.

Speaker 1 (23:43):
I think that she was a very powerful voice as
far as that's concerned, and the strong advocate for the
role of coaching and the fact that coaching had made
a bit overlooked by some of the policymakers over the years.
And actually I remember Sue being in the early days
again of my career in coach development and coach education.
Sue a strong proponent, you know, alongside Pat Duffy for

(24:05):
the architecture, if you like, of what was the UK
Coaching Framework, and many of the principles and ideals of
the UK Coaching Framework I think are still really relevant,
not least of which, as I just just alluded to
earlier on the idea of coaching becoming a professionally regulated vocation.
That was the language used of the time, and I
think we're on the right on the just on the
edge of that now, of coaches being genuinely recognized for

(24:26):
their professional expertise and being given the opportunity for professional
recognition through the chartered institute that now exists simpce but
enabling coaches to gain chartered accreditation. A charted coach, I mean,
for the first time ever, you can become a charted coach,
like in become a chartered accountant or a chartered surveyor.
It's just putting coaching on a whole different level. But
the educational models and systems behind that haven't really caught

(24:49):
up yet. They're catching up really quickly, but there's a
lot to be done.

Speaker 6 (24:54):
So I think a lot of it again, I'm going back,
but when the National Coaching Foundations started to do those modules,
you know, you get the module in nutrition or in
I don't know, coaching children or whatever, and you go
along and I was a tutor on some of those

(25:14):
and sitting in a you know, a cold canteen in
a sports center on a Sunday morning with no technology working.
You remember those days, But as an additive model, wasn't it. It
was a very traditional model. You go and do this knowledge.
I remember going to a sports psychology one up at
Durham University for two hours. You get all the knowledge

(25:34):
and then that's it. Off you go and you're expected
to apply that and adapt it into your work. So
it was very linear, very sort of everybody in the silos.
So it sounds like things are moving on from that
in terms of the quality of education now.

Speaker 1 (25:54):
Yeah, very much so mitigated by technology where lots of
we're going totions through COVID shifted their delivery into an
online space. You're now seeing much more blended learning. So
knowledge about is being provided through either e learning or
virtual classroom because of its ease of access, and it
means you can get you know, people in It doesn't

(26:16):
mean you can have lots of people that have to
get you know, into a into a physical space. So
that democratizes the access to learning and development mitigated by technology.
And then what they're then doing then instead of bringing
people you know, traveling hundreds of miles to come to
a center to then sit in the classroom and listen
to somebody talk to them, and what they're now doing
is saying, actually, if we're bringing people together, let's actually

(26:37):
get physically active and actually practice practice what we've learned
and the knowledge and then and then insit you learn
together through appear supported social learning construct but also through
you know, kind of having the guide there, if you
like the learning guide there, putting into you having learning
experiences and then you can be given you know, kind
of critical reflection, peer feedback, all those sorts of things,

(27:01):
so that people get the opportunity to take the knowledge
that they've gained and actually start to play with it
and apply it. And that's the shift is actually the
move towards more experiential lead. I'm quite influenced by a
guy called Nick Shackleton Jones, who's a strong advocate for
different models of L and D in the corporate world,
and he talks about something called the effective context model.

(27:22):
I went a training course with him not long ago,
and he wasn't very aware of the kind of ecological psychology,
but actually when you read a lot of his stuff,
it's really influenced by that, maybe without him fully realizing it,
but he basically advocates for context being the strongest driver
of learning and talks about how you can help people
to do their job better. Why because you're understanding what

(27:43):
they need to do their job better rather than saying
you've got to do this training course, because at some
point in time you're probably going to need the knowledge
that you're going to gain from that and the recognition
that really doesn't transfer and it's usually very compliance driven.
But when you know, talking to Nick and also his
looking at him models, he's talking about the idea that
basically most educational paradigms are driven by sort of ideas

(28:07):
around pedagogy, you know, developing or children learning, and it's
based on the assumptions that children have, you know, essentially
their empty vessels and they need to be filled with
knowledge in order to be able to go out and
do things in the world. Well, actually, when it comes
to coach ed and coach development, you're dealing with adults,
so you need more androgogy, which is to recognize that
these people come with a whole range of experiences and

(28:27):
knowledge and skill from a broad range of their you know,
their kind of life experiences, and we should recognize what
they're bringing to the table and then help enhance that.
And if there are gaps in either knowledge or skill,
just focus on how we can help people fill those
gaps rather than they assume everybody starts from zero and
then they all have to go through the same educational model.
So it's a really interesting place.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
To be absolutely, yeah, I think as well if you
ally that approach with technological developments and historical developments as well,
like a pandemic that suddenly emerges and then changes things,
changes environmental constraints so much, and people adapt really quickly,

(29:11):
so that's, you know, a really positive side. And then
you get this sort of online learning which was very
kind of clunky to begin with, and everybody finding their
way very quickly adapting, and now we've got this sort
of blended approach. What that actually does is also globalized,
so you talk about the context. It actually enhances awareness

(29:35):
of the different contexts variations in context of learning, so
you get a globalized approach, so where you might I mean,
it was fascinating and listening to you both discussing the
UK system and characters in the UK who've influenced coaching,
coach development, coach education development, et cetera, but globally, other

(29:57):
people in different parts of the world would also have
different experiences.

Speaker 5 (30:01):
So for me, taking it where where you've focused on
people who contributed to developing an understanding of what knowledge is.
How there's different forms of knowledge and we've historically preferenced
one form over another, and you've got various sort of
traditional methods of teaching, coaching and emphasis on that side

(30:23):
of things that delivery the operations rather than the sort
of theory of learning. That's that's a global that's for me,
that's a more global concept that we can share the
learning rather than the operational models, because people have got
different histories, different cultures that influence the way that the
practice is shaped. You know, So from a from a

(30:45):
motor learning especially, I would say this wouldn't I, you know,
a motor learning theorist, focusing attension on that, going back
one layer below all the practices and then infusing that
what we what we learned from that theorizing back into
the way we operate.

Speaker 6 (31:03):
He it's fascinating, King. I've just as you know, but
still won't. I've just come back from Bangladesh where I
was doing a run scoring workshop with the four the
Bangladeshi Cricket Board and Ash Ross, who I went with
who is a brilliant coach, developer, practitioner. We really tried
to ensure that everybody understood we were there for them.

(31:27):
It was their program, it's their culture. We couldn't just
come and you know, like be Australian about it and
go sort of Australian anyway about it and go this
is how we do it in Australia, this is how
you need to do it. So it just doesn't fit
with their culture or any culture in the world. And

(31:49):
this is a real challenge I think for coaches who
are you know, very mobile now and there's lots of
coaches in different countries and moving on and really doesn't
work if a coach goes in and says, in this
country we do it like this, so you should do
it like this. And it's really fascinating talking to the

(32:09):
Bangladeshi people who you know, are wonderful so keen to learn,
very open to ideas, never never seen this approach before.
We showed them and they were playing these games and
they go, we never, we don't do this. We do
very much. We tell we do, you know, you must
do it like this. But their culture is the families.

(32:30):
There's three generations live together, so the children never get
really the chance to make too many decisions on their
own and fail and get it wrong because they've got
so much support, which is a good thing, but also
in the context of playing a sport like cricket where
you've got to make decisions in the moment and you know,

(32:51):
take responsibility, it's quite difficult for them. So one of
the guys who's there had written his own book on
it is brilliant. He gave me the book and it captured,
you know, their culture and the limitations of the coaching
of the society. Really that's not in a negative way,
but this is what it led to our players not

(33:12):
being good at and being able to do. So they
were really bought into the approach. Yes, we need to
be more skill adaptability became the theme, but we're going
to get And I said to them, your challenge is
how are you going to get this across in a
society where it's very much of you know, do as
you told type of thing. So it's no different to

(33:35):
the to the challenges that we have really, you know,
in Australia or in England or in anywhere in the world.
But fascinating how culture plays such a big part in
framing or work.

Speaker 5 (33:49):
I mean, one of the things that picking up on
that in one of the things I've reflected over the
years is traveled around and worked in different countries, is
how we're in countries where you have an intergenerational family
model that's dominant, a different generations living under the same roof,

(34:09):
et cetera. In my experience, they tend to be quite
conservative society, small c you know, kind of traditional, and
it's hard to shake off historical practices, et cetera. As
you say, the perhaps the younger generation don't have as
much of an influence over how things are done and shaped,

(34:33):
as you know. This is a generalization. I accept that completely.
But generally, I think the pattern is that that's what
it's like, that there's a sort that they tend to
be a bit more resistant to rapid change as it were.
Doesn't mean it never happens, but it might be a
bit more resistant. So people may need to factor that

(34:53):
in when they go and coach in those sorts of societies.
And I can think of European countries like that, as
well as countries in other parts of the world as well.

Speaker 1 (35:04):
Yeah, I think the I think the sort of contextual
aspect of of educational provision is really interesting one. And
I've definitely experienced this because I have clients in different
parts of the world and I've had these kinds of
conversations with them over the years around the ways in
which we can, you know, they can sort of look

(35:24):
at different educational models. It's really interesting as well, though,
because you've reminded me of some of the work that
James Vaughn has done. I think James is now at
Waikato with yeah he is, yeah, so and we will
or Roberts and he in James's research did did He

(35:46):
looked at actually like different playing styles adopted by different
countries like Scandinavian countries, Spain and England, and talked about how,
you know, kind of it's interesting how playing styles in
different sports he was talking about football soccer, you know,
kind of mimics some of the sort of cultural heritage
of those particular organizations, you know, say Spain being much

(36:06):
more about kind of individual creativity and flair and these
sorts of ideas, whereas perhaps in the UK it's much
more based on sort of ideas around you know, ideas
that probably emerged from you know, kind of industrialization and
muscular Christianity and all these sorts of things, and you
sort of see how this sort of parallels and then
coaching practiceic mimics that, who and I think, and I

(36:27):
then think that coaching practice mimics that, and then also
coach educational models mimic that. So it's just I read
a book recently by it's called Uncivilized by Sabadra Das.
I think I've got the name right there. I probably
got it, probably butchered it completely, but it actually talks
a lot about some of the sort of colonial heritage

(36:50):
around educational models. And she talks about her own experiences
growing up in India and Indian family coming over and
then working in the West and some of the Western
notions and how they've dominated and made me think about
some of the you know, what you might call the
dominance and the hegemony that certain educational paradigms have held
over kind of the world. So if you talk about

(37:11):
like when you know what you were talking about, like Bangladesh,
for example, where you know, historically a lot of education
would have happened within family families or villages, or or
it would have been passed down in a sort of
a folk pedagogy approach, and it would have been you know,
storytelling and very naturalized approach and all those sorts of things,
you know, whereas in the West it's we began to
prize and this was largely driven by class struggle, you know,

(37:34):
kind of like knowledge, you know, high knowledge was the
thing to prize. That was the thing of where that
was your way of gaining social status and moving and
you know, climbing the social ladder if you like, and
that held a hegemony. And I can see how that
has still like sort of played a role in educational
paradigms where that sort of you know, kind of higher

(37:56):
knowledge is still given.

Speaker 4 (37:57):
And practical knowledge. And I've had this with a few.

Speaker 1 (38:02):
Higher education professionals over the years, where we place less
emphasis and we give less credit to practical knowledge. Look
how that maps out even today, right with apprenticeships still
seen as being a lower level of education. But these
people are working practically and then evidencing their skill as

(38:23):
they work practically, solving problems, learning from others, and developing things.
But because they don't go to an institution, and I
know you guys have spent most of your careers in
these institutions, So I know I'm probably speaking to people
who might have a different perspective, but they haven't into
an institution and gained this knowledge and done this writing.
It's almost seen as that there's not as much value
in that vocational experiential learning model as there is this

(38:46):
sort of knowledge based model, and it holds it still
holds a cultural hierarchy in society. And that's one of
the things that I'm struggling to have come as well,
is to say, there are amazing practitioners out there who
do an amazing job but don't necessarily get the piece
of paper. But can't we find a way to give
them the piece of paper to recognize how great they
are as practitioners.

Speaker 6 (39:09):
See, you know, how much are you paying for an
electrician to come out for a plumber somebody with amazing
skills that APPLE have a clue with. They're earning more
than your average sports science graduate. I reckon, they've got knowledge.
It's brilliant.

Speaker 5 (39:26):
Yeah, And I think I think that is slowly making inroads.
I think that in the past, in some talks, I've
discussed the idea that there's there's similarities between the role
of a scientist and academic and the role of a coach.
A good coach experiments with with methods what they're trying

(39:49):
to do, doesn't sit still. And and the main point,
the main similarity between them both academia, say, and coaching
as a practical area to practice skills is that knowledge
is not unitary, is not one way of defining knowledge.
It's not static, it's dynamic, it's multi faceted. And I

(40:12):
like this distinction, which is not a distinction to say
that or is you know, I don't know a hierarchy
between experiencial knowledge and empirical scientific knowledge, but the distinction
that they are bodies of knowledge, but they're also they
also overlap like a ven diagram, and they inform each
other because a theory. In a lot of sports science

(40:35):
research is actually conducted under laboratory settings because of the
traditional model in science that you control all these external
variables that might influence and shape your results, your outcomes.
But on the other hand, Stewart, they provide the context
that you said was really important, which is true to

(40:57):
understand that these things don't operate in the vacuum, but
there is a context behind it, a historical way of
viewing certain the way things may be done, et cetera.
So's it's a tricky thing, but I think a starting
point is to understand that there are different sources of
knowledge and at different times they're useful for you in

(41:18):
different ways and relevant. But the important thing is for me,
the underlying thing is that people are still learning. And
to go back to one point, I thought about, you know,
really interesting insightful comments you made about coaching in the past.
I think that there are elements of the coaching skill

(41:39):
set that are used in a variety of context, even
something like parenting. You know, parenting isn't just about do
this or else. You know, if that was the way
that you parented, I'd be a good parent. You know,
it's given instruction, the child follows, it's done, you know
it's completed. How simple a life instead all these sort

(42:02):
of wrinkles and aging effects on you. Because children are
like their individual beings, they need the content. But there
are elements of coaching that are useful, supporting, enabling, facilitating, guiding,
sometimes instructing very rarely, but underlying it all actually, as

(42:24):
to go back to it, I think is learning the
importance of people continually adapting and realizing that we live
in a dynamic world. Behavioral context of dynamic and changing
and learning is the thing that helps you to get
through it and flourish in that world.

Speaker 6 (42:42):
So I think we need to move on to our topic.
Just a chat, I said, let's ditch the ecological information
process in dualism, and I just want to put out
in a couple of context. In the early two thousands,
I went on an NCF course down to Wuster to
be trained to teach the module on skill acquisition, and

(43:05):
at that point in time there was absolutely no ecological
dynamics in it. Well, ecological dynamics probably haven't emerged quite
by then, but there's no ecological psychology, no dynamic systems.
It was pure information processing at that point in time.
And I tried to sort of make comments what about

(43:25):
got nowhere. And even as late as John Lyle and
Chris Cushion's book in twenty seventeen, I think the second
edition was when they talked about coaching ecological psychology didn't
get a mention at all. So the traditional approach was
a cognitive behavioralist or a constructivist, etc. Etc. So, really,

(43:48):
when we talk about constraints has been what is it
forty years now, Keith, isn't it since the all wrote
his papers? Roughly, it didn't. It's still twenty years later,
thirty years late, forty years later, it's still not sort
of been acknowledged in the coaching world. So I guess
it isn't the new kid on the block. And therefore

(44:10):
a lot of people have taught in a traditional way
and I've had success in that way. So when somebody
else comes along and has a new idea, I think
that instinctively, there's going to be pushback, you know, and
I think probably you know, we haven't necessarily helped ourselves
originally by going here's a new way, you should buy it,

(44:33):
you know, And people are going, why I've been successful
for the last twenty five years, why should I change?
So I think that again it goes back to your
parenting idea that this is not going to work if
you come in and tell people that they're wrong, and
you're going to So here's the challenge. Here's the challenge
of trying to bring a new way of looking at it,

(44:55):
and it's our day to day problem, I guess, or.

Speaker 1 (45:01):
It's it's kind of It was a nice segue, actually,
so I thought it was a good pointed to jump
into the conversation because the reason I reached out to
you was, well, firstly, you piqued my interest because you said,
let's let's ditch the dualism. And I guess I've been
an advocate for bitching drills, so already there was a
symbiosis in the in the in the way you titled it,

(45:22):
and of course I first The second podcast I ever
did was essentially me walking through London from my station
to my office, having just taken this policy making role,
ruminating about the idea that around this idea that basically
coaches are still hanging on to these particular approaches and

(45:46):
methods and what utilities, and basically posing the question of
their utility and asking why we still utilize these approaches
when in actual fact they're not that enjoyable for the participant,
not particularly that enjoyable for the practitioner administering them, and
there isn't a great deal of supporting evidence to suggest

(46:09):
that they have a particular you know, value in terms
of helping individuals become more adept at a particular sporting activity.
So that was the central thesis. You wouldn't believe the
response it was like it was as if I'd suggested
that we should bring back hanging, public hanging or flogging.
I mean, the response was it was genuinely incredible. I

(46:29):
was quite taken aback by some very learned individuals as well.
I was really quite struck by it. And the response
in general was this idea of you know, how dare
you dare you say that that's the wrong way to
do things? Who are you to say this? And also,
in your position of responsibility in policy making, you should

(46:50):
not be making such proclamations, et cetera, et cetera. It
just went on and on. Anyway, But when you were
talking about this, so I to some extent from that
point on, I guess I was maybe probably driving towards
saying I think we need to explore this alternative learning paradigm,
and we need to explore the theoretical underpinnings of it and

(47:10):
the assumptions that are there, and we need to question
some of the assumptions and the theoretical framings and the
assumptions that we've been operating under for a long time,
probably uncritically. And so it was a call for I
guess a more critical evaluation of coaching methods and coach
education for that matter, but particularly coaching methods as a

(47:30):
means by which to create more positive experiences a sport
in physical activity, creating a lifelong love for the activity,
et cetera, et cetera, on the basis that you can't
develop a child who doesn't come back. So if we
can meet their needs and we can provide them with
an experience it's going to be enjoyable whilst also giving
them something that's going to be sort of nourishing from
a physical movement development capacity. But then that's the win

(47:53):
win proposition. It's what I call the broccoli burger. It's
the ideal thing, you know, tasty whilst also nourishing. Right now,
the challenge for with that, you see is that like
some people are saying, no, no, no, no, I'm hanging on to
this stuff right some what may or they're saying, And
this is what you guys. It was interesting And this
is something I wanted to just ask you about, Keith,

(48:14):
because you said it really I wrote it down because
I had to stop and was walking the dog out
to stop and write it down, right. But you said,
because you were talking about there's another dog. There's a
bit of a dualism. There's a bit of a dualism,
the idea of you know, it's sort of created camps,
hasn't it. And this often happens in social media, that
you have these camps and throwing things at each other.

(48:34):
And I've definitely been at that in that space, largely
because I'm trying to defend a stance, right. But what
you said was you were saying, you can't really do it.

Speaker 4 (48:45):
You can do pick and.

Speaker 1 (48:46):
Mix, a pick and mix approach, a theoretical pick and mix,
like I'll do a bit of this theory, a bit
of this theory, but a polly theoretical approach, right, which
is by some is advocated by some people as being
the the you know, the rational stance, the right way
to be, the pragmatic approach.

Speaker 6 (49:02):
Right.

Speaker 1 (49:03):
You can do that, but you can't do that if
you're also espousing a scientific evidence lad or evidence based approach.

Speaker 4 (49:12):
And I thought that's.

Speaker 1 (49:12):
Really interesting insight that I kind of wanted to sort
of unpack a little bit more with you, because interestingly,
those advocating for the poly theoretical approach are also advocating
for a more evidence based approach to coaching.

Speaker 4 (49:27):
We can't have it both ways.

Speaker 1 (49:29):
So I'm interested just to sort of maybe pose that
and see where we go with the conversation.

Speaker 5 (49:34):
Yeah. I mean, honestly, Stuart, this is such a good question,
and it's a great opportunity because I think that the
first thing to start with is when we talk on
a podcast, when we write a paper, it's really just
the introduction of these ideas. You know, Really unpacking them

(49:55):
and going into detail is much better because otherwise people
get confused by it. They may pick up the wrong thread,
go down the wrong alleyway, and suddenly you know, years later,
go oh, I always thought that that's what you meant,
et cetera. So it's really a great opportunity to clarify
these things. What I mean by the you can't pick, well,

(50:19):
you can pick, let's go back to that, you can
pick a mix, but you can't then claim to be
following a scientific approach because from the philosophy of science perspective,
and I'm not a philosopher of science. I'm an applied scientist.
That's how I see myself working in the context of
sport performance, if you like, that's my role. But philosophers

(50:42):
of science, and there are some really talented ones, very experienced,
like at least Alifia Juerrero, the American Hispanic American academic
who's worked in She's a theory, a theorist of science.
She's a philosopher of science, et cetera. And she has
traced back the idea that when you adhere to a

(51:06):
scientific theory, when you use those principles, she talks about
the backstory and the implicit assumptions. This is, this is
the thing that when people may read and applied paper,
applied scientific paper or a scientific paper, the backstory is

(51:29):
that if you like these scientific ideas and you agree
with them, and you think, I'm going to use this
as principles to underpin my practice, my professional practice, you
are implicitly agreeing with those scientific ideas, those philosophical ideas,
the so called meta theoretical foundations, the implicit assumptions, and

(51:51):
these go back, you know, thousands of years. And the
challenge is is that one scientific theory and people will
you know I've expressed this that we actually we we
we inhabit a rich, vibrant space where there are lots

(52:13):
of different theories. That's not a negative. Some coaches say, oh,
why are there so many theories? You know, just somebody
just tell me the way to do it. No, that's
passive coaching. You know. People need to really develop a
bit and get a good understanding. And there's some good
coaches out there that do that really well, some great
role models who embrace the science, grapple with it, and

(52:35):
then they work out where they're where they lie, as
it were, where they practice lives, and where they're understanding lies.
You know, that's what people need to do. There's there's
lots of different theories, and often these have different meta
theory theoretical assumptions. These meta theoretical assumptions clash. They sort

(52:56):
of say this is the model of the learner and
the learning process, and others say this is the model
of the learner learning process. And when you read a
paper because of the word limitations, because of general limitations,
you can't say, oh, yes, well we need to go
back to the filsator for every single paper. You know,

(53:16):
people would get fed up with it anyway. But essentially,
what people need to do if they're following an evidence
based scientific approach is to go back to the implicit
assumptions that underpin that theory and see whether they agree
with them, how the learner learns what the model of
that human being is, and how that might then shape

(53:36):
your professional practice in terms of principles. And that's what
I meant by that that you can't pick a mix
because sometimes they clash and they contradictory, they go in parallel.
It's like driving on a motorway. You can't just suddenly
go think, I think I'll go on the the use
the lane on that side, that sid identity. I'm in
a jam. You just can't do that. You know, it's
incoherent was the term I used. I think. So that's

(53:59):
the first point to make. I don't know whether Ian
wants to jump in or you want to jump in
at that point and make a comment you go, Steve.

Speaker 1 (54:09):
Yeah, I mean I I think I felt that that's
what you were trusting towards. But that's kind of what
I wanted to unpack a little because I guess I've
sort of made or presented a sort of similar viewpoint.
So Ian, you made reference to this earlier on around

(54:31):
how you know the constraints let approach and the ideas
behind ecological psychology have been in existence for quite a
long time that they haven't materialized into coach education curricula
or been given a space in coach education curricular or
kind of in the learning design models that have been

(54:52):
presented to coach practitioners to this day, in very very
few settings have they materialized. So the point trying to
make is that if we're going to advocate for an
evidence led approach, if we're going to advocate for you know,
dare I say it, you know, professional judgment and decision

(55:14):
making being central to the kind of the coaching practice
and it should guide coaching practice that idea, then at
the very least you would want, or you would need,
or you would want to advocate for practitioners to.

Speaker 4 (55:27):
Be given a range of.

Speaker 1 (55:32):
Or a broader range of knowledge about birth, knowledge of
different learning theories and how those learning theories then are
put into practice so that those practitioners can be genuine
critical thinkers and can then effectively practice professional judgment and
decision making from a basis of a broad knowledge. What

(55:54):
you can't do is say you can only have an
evidence led approach and used professional judgment decision making from
the singular paradigm around human learning that you've been given
implicitly or explicitly, because there's an implicit driver there because
of the kind of currict the way the curricular are
designed and what's in them, there is an explicit one

(56:14):
as well. So what you've started to see is is
that you know, kind of like what you might call
independent media in coach at Independent coach head right, and
emerging using through these platforms you know, constraints, collective type equation,
Rob Gray's stuff and all you know, the guys in
the emergence guys. There's a whole army of people out
there now starting to talk about alternative paradigms and what

(56:38):
they're not being given is and that's being done outside
of the kind of formal educational curricula, right, because it's
the only place at which the practitioner can be exposed
to these alternatives. And what you're finding is I read
your blog post sort of companion blog post of the podcast,
which is where you talk about almost that overlap as
you talked about earlier, Keith, about the ceriential kind of

(57:01):
knowledge of the practitioner with the empirical knowledge and the
sort of the overlap is where the exciting interesting things.
And you've always been an advocate for that. What I
think is happening, though, is that when people this certainly
was my experience, and lots and lots of people who
have subsequently come to know about who are becoming more
ecologically informed practitioners. What's happening is is that their experiential knowledge,

(57:26):
what they their lived experience of coaching, found the explanatory
power of the sort of cognitive informotion processing framing, which
had sort of been the dominant model that they were
utilizing to sort of support their practice, whether they knew
they were doing that or not, was unsatisfactory. It was
causing problems and challenges and issues. And what they found

(57:49):
was that their experiential knowledge, once they found the explanatory
power of the ecological approach, began to map onto their
real world experiences, and then they become very, very powerful
and strong advocates for it because they want other people
to have that transformative experience. And so what I think
is happening is is almost like what I felt was
happening anyway, was that there is a real need in

(58:12):
my mind to be able, I think, to expose coaches
in their core educational curricula to a range of different
theoretical framings so they can start to make effective choices,
and at the moment they're not given that. They're given
one diet and they're not given the other, and then
they have a problem. And then it's later on in
life that they experience this, but they have to go
through so much pain in order to get there. And

(58:34):
I was thinking about this from a morality perspective because
I am a philosopher. That was sort of where I
started my postgrad work, and I think about morality and
ethics a lot. And I started to think about duty.
What's the duty on the educational provider. It's a duty
to expose these broader paradigms out there, but it's not
being provided and so I think we're failing as educators

(58:55):
when we're educating coaches by not providing them with the
right information to be able to start to make crito choice.

Speaker 6 (59:02):
There's a couple of things I'd like to say on
that is that there's probably two routes to getting education,
isn't it. There's the tradition, Well, the coach who's a dad,
or you know a coach who's not been through academia
who comes upon of course and he's given a two
hour block on skill acquisition, you know, so it's not

(59:25):
what you put in, it's what you leave out within there.
So in two hours, how many theoretical approaches are we
going to try and tell them about? And the danger there?
Then he was we confused to accuse them, like Matt,
you know you do this, you do that one, you
do this one. You know who's going to decide which
ones to pick? You know, of all the three four

(59:47):
models that there are. And of course on the other
side of it, is it in academia it's a similar
I mean, thirteen weeks sounds like a lot of time
to learn a topic, but again it's not and often
often to try and go you know, I've listening to
some I think it was John Hatty today. You know,
so we sometimes we need to go deeper rather than broader,

(01:00:10):
you know, right rights our education system is that so
how deep do we go? And we've been marginalized in
terms of skill because I mean, I guess we've emerged.
We were always a little part of sports psychology, won't
we You got six weeks of skill act in a
sports psyche module. But within that, so we've got six
weeks what we're going to cover. Well, if I want

(01:00:32):
to get ecological dynamics in any depth, it's going to take.
And you're saying thirteen weeks, I'm just giving you a
taste of this. I'm giving you some broad concepts. And
maybe that's my fault, who's not been a good enough
educator to be.

Speaker 5 (01:00:44):
Able to do it.

Speaker 6 (01:00:45):
But we've got the other problem? Is that or another issue?
I think because skill act has emerged from from psychology,
it was often taught by psychologists without the depth knowledge
of mode of learning and skill acquisition. So if if
you're asked to teach something and you don't know in depth,

(01:01:06):
where you go, Well, I'll find the you know, they'll
find the textbook. What's the textbook's out the biggest one Schmidt,
Schmitt and Lee or Schmidt and Risburg or McGill. Okay, yeah,
I don't know about it. Oh look, they give me
thirteen weeks of lectures here back. So now I'm getting

(01:01:26):
that approach. So so the depth you can go into
because you don't know it necessarily as well as you
want to, you can't give them.

Speaker 5 (01:01:34):
You that's a that's a really good point in because
I think we're now picking up the pieces of that
and Stuart, you know, for I remember I would at
the beginning this was sort of came back forty years.
For the first two decades, I was sort of beating
my head against brick wall and saying, no, no, this

(01:01:56):
is a really good theoretical approach, this is how you
should coach, and then being quite disappointed when coach's practitioners
reacted against that. They were fantastic. It was like intermittent reinforcement. Really,
you know, it's almost like a gambling effect of winning
and gambling. You'd get a hit and suddenly be go, oh, yeah, yeah,

(01:02:18):
you know this is good. But it was. It took
me a while to realize, no, no, that's not my role.
My role isn't the sort of Saint Paul on the
Road to Damascus type of role, the Damascene role, as
they would say, it's really too and this is how
I've operated for maybe about twenty years now, and it's
much better for my mental health and personal well being,

(01:02:40):
et cetera. But you put the ideas on the table,
the coach makes a decision. But what you said today
I think has taken that a bit further, which is
they I think coach education platforms need to pick this
up and run with it. And it's part of critical thinking.
I think it's set, you know, it should be a

(01:03:01):
case of presenting it and saying these are the insights,
these are the concepts, but also infuse this idea that
learning doesn't just occur in this formal program, in this classroom.
You're okay to do your own learning. That doesn't mean

(01:03:22):
getting on the website and just reading any old guff
and then going, oh, I'm learning. You know, it's about
being critical all the time. And that's what makes learning hard.
That's what makes you know, professionalization as in any sphere
really hard. It's ongoing. That's why they call, for example

(01:03:42):
CPD continuous professional development. It's ongoing because things don't stay
the same. It's dynamic, and I think that would be
the most important thing that we can infuse future coaches
with the skills to keep on learning.

Speaker 6 (01:03:58):
I think the other sorry, Steve, go ahead and carry on.
I think the other challenge is that, you know, the
the people who advocate for a cognitive model, we say, well,
it's not you know, you're you're claiming to build straw men.
You're claiming what it looks like but the games we've

(01:04:19):
moved on, But those messages are not getting out to
coaches if they've moved on. You know, the stuff that
we see every week when you go out and watch
a game on a Saturday morning, or I go and
watch somebody coach is still drill, you know, and our
students like we do a yearly survey, or used to

(01:04:40):
do a yearly service. I don't do it now. Brendan
moy will do it at QT. Do a little survey
with our first year pe students who come into the
course and still ninety five percent of them have been
taught using a traditional approach, and that may warm up
drill little game. If you looky at the end, you know,
that is the standard of what's still going on. So

(01:05:04):
I loved the comment, and I remember reading the comment
up the paper we wrote recently on looking at you know,
the traditional approach versus what ecological dynamisis often was a
Martinique quote which I think we talked about in that class, sorry,
in the last workshop, about we need to make this
as real as quickly as possible.

Speaker 4 (01:05:25):
Brilliant.

Speaker 6 (01:05:26):
I agree, completely, doesn't happen. Doesn't happen, So there's there's
the problem. And again that's back to probably depth of
understanding of whichever theoretical approach that you want to come from.
So again we've got to help get better at helping
people know more about these ideas. And I think, to

(01:05:49):
be fair, the real top coaches, I've got to have
a thirst for knowledge and they go, you know, I
remember going to working with a coach in Canada. I'm
going such and such a yeah, but Joan Vickers says
this or you know, or did it at art, So
they're really well read. They really get stuck in and

(01:06:12):
like the theory I think as well, and a knowledgeable
enough to challenge, challenge or discuss around that. So I
totally agree with Keith on that. But we just need
to learn more, I guess.

Speaker 5 (01:06:26):
Yeah, can I just before sut I head over to you, sorry,
just to pick up a point you made there In
is Lately I've been talking to groups, so you know,
I'll get an invitation to speak to a group. It
could be in a different part of the world, et cetera,
and I'd say, well, how much do you know, et cetera.
And they'd say, actually, we're quite familiar with the ecological dynamics.

(01:06:49):
When that happens, I'm starting to go great. I won't
do a presentation. I'll lead a question and answer session
with you, which is an exchange of ideas, and then
you know, I can give you my view a point
in the direction of some reading if you want to
know more about it, et cetera. And I think that
could be a way to go now. And for me,

(01:07:09):
the fact that I'm getting that feedback from them, they're
telling me, well, actually, we're quite familiar with ideas. You
can do a presentation of whatever you want. And I think, well, now, actually,
let's share ideas. Let's just have a Q and A
and a discussion could go in any direction. And in
a sense, this is like not a Q and A,
but it's like an exchange of ideas and it's going

(01:07:29):
off in different directions and exploration of thinking. And I've
read this, you know, I've heard that, et cetera. And
for me, this is really valuable and it's a real
sign that the area is progressing, moving on, you know,
and for me it's a good thing.

Speaker 4 (01:07:45):
Yeah, yeah, I agree entirely.

Speaker 1 (01:07:48):
I mean, I guess where I'm where I'm coming from
with this, and One of the reasons I thought that
the notion of a dualism was interesting is and I
think you guys, really you drew this out, I think
in the podcast really nicely, which is.

Speaker 4 (01:08:03):
The dualism is just there. It's inherent, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:08:07):
The the ideas, the sort of the theoretical explanation around
how humans learn, and the sort of scientific underpinning around
the notion of how humans learn. They they're just coming
from very different perspectives around learning.

Speaker 6 (01:08:25):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:08:25):
One is very information based, knowledge based that is put
into the human to be then trans transferred or transformed
into movement, you know, and that's where you know, activities
like drills where you know, it's based on pure movement.
Repetition or stop standstill. Stop standstill still exists everywhere. Stop

(01:08:48):
standstill right I'm going to tell you do this, do this,
do this, off we go right now. Somebody coming from
that theoretical paradigm thinks that that's a perfectly good way.
And I think Martin referenced somebody had on the course,
didn't it. If you don't do that, it's not coaching.
That's the only form of coaching they understand and recognize.

Speaker 4 (01:09:04):
And that's true.

Speaker 1 (01:09:05):
Actually culturally, a lot of people, if they don't see
instruction direction repetition, they don't feel it's coaching, because that's
what people assume is coaching. So you present an alternative
paradigm that feels alien to them to some people, but
you also talk about some explanatory power. And if you say, okay,
we reject the notion that learning can only happen via

(01:09:29):
this singular modality, i e. Information goes into the brain,
is processed.

Speaker 4 (01:09:34):
And turned into movements.

Speaker 1 (01:09:36):
What if we were to present an alternative paradigm, or
just at the very least do this consider there might
be an alternative. And the alternative is that a human
is in an environment and the environment asks them to
move in a certain way. Why because it's presenting them
with tasks or whatever it might be, in order to
be able to do things and the process of being

(01:09:58):
in the environment. And I still use a quote from you,
Keith in one of my presentations, which is, you can't
adapt to an environment you don't inhabit. I don't know
when you said it, but you did anyway, and so
probably on my podcast in the early days actually, And
so what I'm saying is is that if we look
at learning as that model. Right, we're going to be
placing someone in experience. Constraints will be utilized as a

(01:10:21):
mechanism to sort of support the exploratory process and a
self organization. But it's the human themselves in the environment
is where the learning is enriched from. And it's through
a kind of rich synergy of all their senses operating
at all times, you know, And obviously there's a cognitive
component to that, but it's not the only thing that's
the predominant paradigm.

Speaker 4 (01:10:42):
You look at those two.

Speaker 1 (01:10:43):
Things, right, they are just at completely opposite ends of
how you even think about how humans learn in the world. Now,
if you say, oh, well, what I'm going to do
is right, I'm going to be a thoughtful practitioner and
I'm going to use both those paradigms to use, Well,
what you're not recognizing is that there is a compromise

(01:11:04):
to be made there.

Speaker 4 (01:11:06):
You are going to compromise practice because if you believe,
you believe that this is the.

Speaker 1 (01:11:10):
Way humans learn, and it's it's and it's actually not
just the way they learn, it's a way that they
learn that that's actually inherently enjoyable.

Speaker 4 (01:11:19):
It's how humans have.

Speaker 1 (01:11:20):
Learned for ages through you know, evolutionary periods. It's very natural,
it's you know, organic, it's very individualized that that human
can come at that that solving the problem their own way.
If you believe that, and then you go, well, what
I'm going to do is I'm going to force you
into some sort of robotic boring movement repetition exercise because

(01:11:43):
I feel it's really valuable to use all these different modalities.
Or what you're basically saying is you don't really believe
anything about anything, So.

Speaker 4 (01:11:51):
I've sort of said that.

Speaker 6 (01:11:53):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:11:53):
My view, My stance has been, if you want to
explore this stuff, just really explore it to its fullest,
you know, so you're going to let go of a
few things to give it its chance. Otherwise, if you're
always doing the pick and mix approach, what you're always
doing is doing a little bit of everything, and therefore
you're not really going to get the full experience of
learning learning about what this could do for you as

(01:12:15):
a practitioner. If at the end of all that you
decide and you said this yourself, Keith, there's no knockout
blows by either camp here, right, We're still evolving and
learning and gaining more knowledge. If after all of that,
you say, I'm still now going to say I'm gonna
do a little bit of everything, because I don't believe
one or one side, one one theory or another theory

(01:12:36):
has enough explanatory power to warrant me just staying in
one space.

Speaker 4 (01:12:40):
At least you're making an informed choice about that. Most
people aren't making informed choices. They're not being critical about it.

Speaker 1 (01:12:46):
All they're doing is saying, I want to do the
best of both worlds because I'm not ready to let
go of what I've let go of.

Speaker 4 (01:12:53):
It's just an interesting space to be.

Speaker 1 (01:12:54):
And so I actually think about this sort of a
moral lens, which is to say, as a practitioner, I
actually have a very firm belief in the power and
the explanatory power of the ecological approach as a theoretical
framing for my practice. So I am going to utilize
that to its fullest extent within the limits of my
current skill set and knowledge, because I have a further

(01:13:16):
belief that it's a really powerful model and it comes
with all sorts of additional benefits. And I'm not going
to be told by somebody somewhere else that's wrong because
I should be poly theoretical.

Speaker 4 (01:13:28):
I'm going to say no, no, no, that's my choice.

Speaker 1 (01:13:30):
Likewise, if someone say, actually, I'm going to stay with
the traditional process because I really believe in them, that's
their choice. I'm not going to criticize them for doing so.
I'd like to give the opportunity to expose them to
some different ideas.

Speaker 4 (01:13:41):
But that's their choice. Fair enough. I'm not gonna you know,
that's fair enough anyway. Sorry, I'm ranting now, but.

Speaker 5 (01:13:48):
Really really good points and I completely agree with it, etc.
I mean a couple of things to pick up here
is that historically these ideas have been explored before. So
when this debate erupted in the late eighties and spilled
over into the nineties and then round about the mid nineties,

(01:14:09):
behavioral scientists, the sort of the motal learning theorist, sports psychologists,
all those practitioners, etcepter. For movement scientists particularly, they decided,
you know what, we need to go out separate ways
because they explored it to thatath. In nineteen eighty nine,
there was a conference held in Amsterdam, you know, wonderful

(01:14:31):
social liberal city, and there was all these experts from
the two different paradigms were brought together. They were invited
to make presentations. So the key leaders made presentations, and
then there was questioning and answers, and then there was
a book published on it, and they explored. What they
talked about was the compatibility between ecological and information processing

(01:14:58):
or cognitive approaches. And the conclusion at the end was
we can't integrate because all these issues were explored in depth,
and it was realized that you know that no one
could produce and still can't produce the knockout blow that
says this shows that these methods, these theories don't work.

(01:15:20):
You know, I can't hand on I've said this so
many times, but I'll say it again. This is the
nineteen twenty five version of it. I can't hand on
heart say if you use a traditional information processing approach,
there won't be any learning. It's really a case of saying, no,
am I using learning theory to the full powerful effect,

(01:15:43):
and I believe that you're not. I believe that a
better learning theory is the ecological approach, and I've explained
why in lots of books, chapters, et cetera. And so
in fact, actually more recently the integrated approach was so
the second time it was rejected as well. In that period,

(01:16:04):
what has happened is the I guess this is sort
of a historical path, at least according to my view anyway,
is the cognitive scientist the real information process. In hardliners,
some theories have recognized the role of the environment. They've
realized that actually this abstract internal representational model that's been softened,

(01:16:26):
and that's okay, that's good, you know, recognizing the role
of the environment. But it's still in what's called the
interactionist meta theory, which basically says, here's the person with
all these internal properties, genetics and representation models of the world,
abstract models of the world that they build in their mind.

(01:16:47):
That's how that's the model of learning and the learning process.
That's how we learned. That's that you know, the person
here is here, the environment is here, and they kind
of clashed together interact like Isaac Newton's you know, the
balls cannoning off each other, action, reaction, etc. It's a
bit like that. The ecological approach sees them as the
person environment relationship. That tip that point, that focus is

(01:17:11):
the proper a scale of analysis, not the person, not
the environment, but just that point of analysis. And that's
still the big difference between them. Now, I think to
sympathize with some of the coaches who might be saying, yeah,
but you want me to read all this philosophy, psychology,
you know, I haven't got the time to do that.

(01:17:31):
To sympathize with those coaches, some of the words are
used in the same way. So take practice, for example,
and repetition in practice. There's key differences in the implications
for the cognitive approach the ecological approach. The cognitive approach
is a bit more about repetition, as you say, you know,

(01:17:53):
and it didn't help, you know, The deliberate practice approach
didn't help. Where the focus was on ten thousand hours,
what you did within that time wasn't really the focus.
It was just on the sheer time, the volume of
time that he's spent in practice. So repetition, rehearsal, et cetera,
reproduction that all leads to learning. It does, but it's limited,
it's boring, and actually it's been discredited because the idea

(01:18:17):
of this notion of ten thousand hours as an average,
according to Ericson and his colleagues, has been dismantled by
Zach Hambrick and people, for example. But if you look
at some so on the eclogical side, you've got repetition
without repetition. So that's a key difference the way that
you view repetition, rehearsal, the way that you conceptualize practice.

(01:18:40):
There's a key applied difference. Here's some that learning will
occur but in a limited way, and another way learning
will be enriched. And I believe anyway, from an ecological perspective,
much more effusive. You go back to here Salvinsburg and
John Van der Kamp at the University of Amsterdam, they
wrote a really influential paper that's kind of laying in

(01:19:03):
the back, written into the year two thousand and they
looked at the concept of information. So you've got information processing,
the commnitive approach, powerful concept and of course James Gibson's
theory of direct perception, where information is a really important concept.

(01:19:23):
So the same word but used in thoroughly different ways.
So they pointed out Salvelsburg and John Vandercampt pointed out
that from a cognitive perspective, theories and practitioners talk about
information in terms of the magnitude of information that's present.
So you can go back to a paper in nineteen

(01:19:45):
fifty six by an American psychologist called George Miller, who've
talked about number the idea of seven items of information.
You can hold seven items of information plus and minus
two in your mind and that's what you can process.
That's the kind of limits of process processing at the time.

(01:20:07):
So it's about processing information and the magnitude or the
amount of information that you can store and use short
term memory, etc. That was what the information. That kind
of summarized how the information processing approach views information. James Gibson,
on the other hand, talked about the structure the richness
of information, and the idea in learning is that you

(01:20:30):
focus on specifying information that is the information that helps
you to regulate your actions. But you can enrich that
by focusing on the different types of perceptual systems. So
it's not just visual information that James Gibson talked about,
but haptic information. In fact, Michael Turvey and colleagues considered

(01:20:53):
that haptic information or dynamic touch they called it, is
more influential than visual information in their view, that is
touched from fingertips to touch with your feet on the floor, etc.
Pro perceptive information. We all know about that acoustic information,
and so it's about the richness of the information that
ecological psychologists are focused on. So you may be not

(01:21:17):
realizing it. But when you use the term information and
you're saying, oh, yeah, I can pick and mix, well
they're completely different conceptualizations, and so you'd have to explain
that again, just to pick up a point. You made
a really good point at the beginning. You can pick
and mix, but you can't claim to use a scientific approach.

(01:21:39):
You can just say, well, I'm being pragmatic and I'm
just using these approaches because I like the idea. I
like this idea of practice from here, but I like
this idea of information from there. And you can pick
and mix. And if that works for you from your
own experience and you had the evidence to support it,
who am I to say no, no, or what you're

(01:22:00):
going about it the wrong way. You may be limiting
yourself and you may surprise yourself. But that's that's all
I can add to that.

Speaker 6 (01:22:11):
I think defending the professional coach, and let's say a
golf coach or a tennis coach. If you came along
after years of telling practice, giving feedback, telling them what
they're doing wrong, definit detecting, and didn't do any of that.

(01:22:32):
You just shape the environment and didn't say anything like
is that a threat to your livelihood? You know, like
you're not coaching. You know, you're not coaching me. You've
not told me what I'm doing wrong, you know. And
I was on a discussion with a basketball coach in America,
very high level NBA coach today and he's going, We

(01:22:55):
literally had that, like the front office said to me,
I don't know who's in charge here. You're just you're
not doing anything. You're not going in and correcting the elbow.

Speaker 5 (01:23:06):
You know.

Speaker 6 (01:23:07):
And he's going, and he had, you know, and that's
the conversation piece, isn't it, of going, well, this is
what's what I'm doing. This is why I'm doing it.
So it's why it's really important that if you're going
to try and implement this approach, you've got to bring
everybody with you. You know, You've got you've got to
explain to the front office this is the philosophy and

(01:23:27):
if you don't the threat when it goes wrong, if
you don't win, you know, he get sacked, you lose
your job. The side of it, that's the other side
of it is there's quite a lot of people going
out now acting as consult you know, coaching consultant working

(01:23:48):
with it. Now, if you come from a very strict
this is my theoretical position. I believe in this, and
you're going to try and work with enough coaches to
earn a living again, and they go, well, I don't
agree with you. I'm not going to work with you.
You're reducing your potential client base. I guess, so maybe

(01:24:08):
it's maybe it's just pragmatic to go Actually, I don't
really have a theoretical position because I want, I need
to work with people. And again I've said, you know,
we if you go in and tell people they got
it wrong, then you're not going anywhere anyway. So don't
do that, you know, go in and work with people

(01:24:29):
in terms of where they are now, you know. And
I think that is a real position. Have you thought
of this, like, you know, be the naive observer. I'll
talk about this a lot. Be the naive observer. What
are you doing? You know, why are you doing that?
I don't understand, I don't understand your sports. Tell me
why you're doing that and then explain you go, oh, okay,
have you thought about what happens if you know? Or

(01:24:52):
let's do a bit of myth busting a little bit.
You know I did that in Bangladesha a little bit
with the idea, oh, we do repetition after repetition because
we you know, we want the repeatable model, a repeatable technique.
Well do you think it's possible?

Speaker 5 (01:25:08):
Automaticity? Automaticity? Just to say there and you know that's
surely that is part of a skill set of a coach.
That is how a coach should be looking at their
professional practice and saying, you know, it isn't the case
of I tell you what to do, you do it,

(01:25:31):
you repeat it, we repeat it or ad nauseam. You know,
you make it automatic. I'd be a coach otherwise if
that was coaching. But it's not. You've got to use
different ways of unpacking. You know. I'm picking the thread
as it were.

Speaker 6 (01:25:45):
And it's the same in any industry. It's about change management,
isn't it. It's about it's about getting people to move
with you. So as I just said on one of
the early puget it's about building relationships. Yeah, you can't
build a relationship with a coach, don't matter what theoretical
approach you're going to use, because they're not going to
listen anyway. And that's the same with the players, you know,

(01:26:06):
Like I always say, you know, you saying like it's
not really been taken up. Stude Like there's sort of
the same issue around teaching games understanding, which which is
arguably you know a lot of people argue from a
constructive perspective. I've always thought that it's more ecological when
you talk to Rod about it, about where it emerged

(01:26:27):
and you know his history of looking for information in
birds spotting and twitching whatever it's called. But that's not
been taken up, you know, and that's been going just
as long, and you know it's we're seen as being, oh,
you're just advocating it's just another games approach and everything. Well,

(01:26:48):
there are similarities and there are differences, which we've explained elsewhere,
but that's not taken so sport education not taken up.
So why I.

Speaker 1 (01:26:59):
Guess the teaching games for understanding that was my kind
of gateway drug into this rabbit hole. That's what started
the journey, the exploratory journey, this addiction a little bit.

Speaker 4 (01:27:15):
Well, it's I guess it was.

Speaker 1 (01:27:17):
You know, this was in the you know, the days
before we had you know, all the information you could
possibly ever want in the palm of your hand, you
know it when you would read books and go to
libraries and all that stuff. Yeah, and uh and you know,
I it was just a search for answers because in
my own practice, I was I was doing things that

(01:27:40):
just didn't map on to my own experiences as a child.
You know, I grew up in Papua New Guinea, you know,
just just the other island above you Ian. We're you know,
playing alongside kids from sort of you know, kind of
the indigenous population and playing poor. Playing against them in
the village is watching amazing skill.

Speaker 6 (01:27:57):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:27:57):
We went to an international school, all the coaching and
everything else, and we used to get hammered twenty five nil.

Speaker 4 (01:28:03):
I was in goal.

Speaker 1 (01:28:03):
It was not much fun, I'll tell you. But these
kids were so skillful, so quick, so athletics, so nimble,
so agile, so adaptable. They played with a togetherness that
just was amazing. You know. They had almost a sixth
sense about the way that they would move off each other,
and none of it was was like pre prescribed.

Speaker 4 (01:28:21):
You could just see.

Speaker 1 (01:28:22):
It was all very much about what was in front,
and all that largely driven by what, you know, playing
I guess pick up games, because they probably weren't I
don't know for sure, but I don't doubt they were
being given loads of prescriptive, repetitive drills. I'm pretty sure
they were just getting the playground playing. And that's sort
of an indigenous population that's presented, you know, with amazing
you know, these amazing skill sets, and obviously that applicates

(01:28:42):
throughout the world. And so my childhood was about games.
It was about creating, inventing, and playing games with whatever
we had around us, and then making it as fun
as we possibly could. And then when I started coaching,
we got rid of all of that and we started
just it was all about structure. It's all about repeatability, structure, prescription,

(01:29:05):
being more organized than the opposition, and it got me success,
no doubt about it. It got me success because if
you're a bit more organized than the opposition, you generally
would be okay until they did something we didn't expect,
and then we fell apart like House of cards, and
it was a search for answers.

Speaker 4 (01:29:21):
Why does that keep happening?

Speaker 1 (01:29:23):
Why it's pro frustrating And it's like, then I found
Rick Charlesworth designer games.

Speaker 4 (01:29:30):
Ah wow, that's interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:29:32):
Oh he's only just gone on one two back to
back gold medals with the hockey ruse, he must be
onto something with this idea of designer games teaching games
for understanding. Rick Shuttleworth then completely destroys my worldview on
all things human development. New questions are ask ecological dynamics.
You guys come into the frame and that's it. Now
I'm lost. I can't come back from it. But anyway,

(01:29:54):
but my point being is is that I actually genuinely
one of the reasons i'm so I so strong an
advocate and about it is firstly, I think we just
have to accept that there are some differences in terms
of the way people are thinking about learning, and I
think it's I think it's a duty to share that
with others because it's been such a revelatory experience for me, joyous,

(01:30:15):
I nearly stopped coaching, and it really reinvigorated my whole
approach to coaching. I could learn, I could be a
learner alongside the learner, the guide you know we could
discover things together, and it's just such a rich experience.
I feel a genuine duty as policymaker, system builder, coach,
developer to provide people with that experience, you know, the

(01:30:38):
knowledge behind that experience that I had that was so joyous,
and I feel if we don't do that, then we're
you know, we're only sort of partially well, I feel
like we're failing. We're failing coaches, and then we put
put them into difficult positions where they're forced to make
compromised choices with participants which could fundamentally either mean that
they cause harm or potentially they find themselves in a

(01:31:01):
difficult situation where they're having to make these choices around
the practice that they know isn't really that helpful for
young people, but they don't really know what the alternative is.

Speaker 4 (01:31:10):
So again I do.

Speaker 1 (01:31:10):
I see it as this sort of a moral stance
where it's about it's a duty to provide these alternatives,
which is why I've enjoyed chatting to you guys today.

Speaker 6 (01:31:19):
Two very quick stories I want to tell you to
support your PMNG stories. Jim McKay, we've we've been working
with who was Wallaby's backs coach of one the Super
fourteen fifteen sixteen or whatever it was with the Reds
was brought up under Bob Dwyer down at Randwick. He

(01:31:40):
tells the story and Carl Marshall, who just finished his
he's just submitting his PhD with us on Creative within Rugby,
talks about the Elas and Maitreville High, which is a
state school, beating Joey's which is one of the poshiest
richest schools, and smashing them, I mean a game because

(01:32:01):
they played on the street. They learned lamp post et cetera,
et cetera. But anyway, well, we're better to take this
up another time because I think we're desperately running out
of time. I know you've got meetings to go to,
but this is just the start of a conversation as usual.
Thank you so much for your time, fascinating conversation. Thanks

(01:32:25):
Keith for your insights.

Speaker 5 (01:32:26):
Again, honestly, this has been one of the best conversations
I've had. Thanks for bringing this up and prompting us to,
you know, rethink about this. And yeah, it's been a
long podcast in terms of the length of our typical podcasts,
so I think, yeah, we definitely due another one in
the future, maybe to part two of this.

Speaker 1 (01:32:46):
I think thanks for having me on and I appreciate
you taking the time and responding to my email and
the way you did.

Speaker 4 (01:32:52):
I've really enjoyed it. Thank you, Thank you all right.

Speaker 3 (01:33:00):
Thanks for listening to the Talent Equation podcast. If you
like the show, then please consider supporting it by leaving
a review on your favorite podcast player, telling your friends
about it, or even becoming a hero and show your
appreciation by becoming a patron. Just head over to the
Talentequation dot co dot uk and click on the becoming
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"You can take a pick and mix approach to theory - but not if you want to be evidence based" - A conversation with the Constraints Collective

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}"You can take a pick and mix approach to theory - but not if you want to be evidence based" - A conversation with the Constraints Collective