feedback and my opinion.

TL2133 The Reflective Coach - Assessment 1 Critical discussion (40% of module mark)		Mark Awarded			65
Student Name	Ashley Marsden
Demonstrates achievement of relevant learning outcomes		1st	2.1	2.2		3rd	F
1.       Demonstrate coaching knowledge and evaluative skills to assess your own and other’s coaching practice.			X
(Participation in Discussion)		1st	2.1	2.2		3	F
Did you approach the discussion in a logical and coherent manner i.e. turn taking?		X
Did you exhibit listening skills and an ability to take on board other participants’ views?			X
Did you support other participants by probing and asking questions?			X
Did you actively manage the discussion to enable achievement of learning outcomes for all participants?			X
Were themes discussed in a confident and professional style?		X
COMMENTS:  You took more of a lead during the session and seemed to direct the line of discussion at times. You speak in a confident style and project your ideas with enthusiasm. Take care if you ask questions you give people enough time to answer! At times you did dominate a tad too much – see if this comes across on the recording.
(Content)		1st	2.1	2.2		3rd	F
Did the session plan submitted prior to your practical session provide a structured overview of the session?			X
Did you provide evidence of careful planning with reasons for intended activities demonstrating understanding of content?			X
Did you analyse and discuss the material/evidence supplied in your annotated bibliography?			X
Did you demonstrate critical use of theoretical models/concepts and draw insightful conclusions from them?			X
COMMENTS:  More consistent use of your annotated bibliography could have been used to underpin your points.
(Reflection)		1st	2.1	2.2		3rd	F
Did you reflect on how your session went identifying and discussing positives and areas for improvement?			X
Did you identify things you may have done differently and explore any improvement that could have been made?			X
Were the processes you used to reflect both in and on the session clear, and links with theory/literature made?			X
COMMENTS:  Good awareness of HOW you reflected e.g. in and on action.
GENERAL GROUP FEEDBACK You made a fair attempt at reviewing your coaching session and explored a range of intervention strategies you used, this was in parts informed by theory, but this aspect could have been further developed. Your discussion around reflection was a little one dimensional; it would have helped if you could have all had a view about the reflective processes. However, you did use the reflective processes to help explore the quality and delivery of your coaching session. Your discussion around differentiation was good but lacked any academic credibility to support your understanding. Overall though this was a solid assessment that reflected good knowledge and understanding of the key elements that underpin the coaching process.

Having read through the above comments and listened to the clip again, I thought my group did an excellent job, we used some academic underpinning yet more is required to obtain top marks. I am pleased I obtained the best marks in the group as I was the dominant leader during the practicle session and also the dominant speaker and initiated the vast. majority of the questions. I was confident and assured in what I said and think I covered a lot in the alloted time. I had a good insight and used Van Manen's (1991) reflection types in order to suggest possible improvements, strengths and weaknesses as well as an  insight into our thinking behind the drills and the methods/styles we used. I take on their constructive critisism about me sometimes dominating a little too much, as its something I tend to do a lot and I need to become a better team member. But overall a good mark with room for improvement and a good learning experiance.

Reference:

Van Manen, M. (1991). Reflectivity and the pedagogical moment: The normativity of pedagogical thinking and acting. Journal of Curriculum Studies; pgs., 23, 507-536.

reflective coaching assesment practicle:

Just before the Christmas period, I performed the practical aspect of my reflective coaching assignment one in a group that consisted of:

·         Jonathan Pennington

·         Jared Brooks

·         Ashley Marsden (myself)

As a group we collaborated several ideas on contrasting sports and with contrasting drills, until we came to a unanimous decision to go back to the drawing board and start from scratch; which we did and we collectively came up with a lacrosse based drill, this is a sport we had very little knowledge of or experience in. I believe this worked to our advantage I believe as we had no pre-conceived notions or judgements of the sport/drill so we were not too direct and autocratic in our approach. This allowed the participants to partake in guided discovery which I think allows the learning material to be absorbed quicker as they have a role in learning the technique and skills, this is emphasised by Metzler (2005), who stated, “athletes learn skills, technique, and tactics through guided discovery and through self – awareness”.

The protocol:

We planned to set the session out in the following manner using both guided discovery and whole part whole.

Start with the main session the whole, where the particpants where instructed to manipulate their racket in order to pick up the distinctive team colours bean bag and take it to their team. This provided a fun, opposed start to the session which engaged the participants and allowed us to break it down into smaller parts and gradually improve effectiveness skill and technique. The whole part whole technique worked very well in this situation as the participants got to understand the objectives and the skills required to be successful, before we showed them how to implement and improve these through a variety of questions and demonstrations. This is emphasised by Franco Ferrero (2006), who stated , “Whole part whole allows the skill to be demonstrated in its fullness , then the individual elements that make up the skill are broken down and one learnt, come back to the whole skill again”. The diagram showed below shows how the techniques where broken up into parts.

 

Segment One is the drill in its entirety

Segment two, three and four represents, how we paused the session and through interaction through both questions and demonstrations, we improved and tweaked several aspects such as manipulation of the racquet, techniques on how to distribute and pick up the bean bags.

Segment five is where we returned to the main/whole aspect of the session, with improved technique, skill, knowledge and understanding.

We then tried to progress the session and focus more on receiving and distribution with soft balls, due to the vast improvement made by the participants in order to challenge the participants, some groups where better at this than others, as is usually the case so in order to provided everyone with the same chances and opportunities, we split the group into competent performers and ones who needed more help and thus challenged each group with a variety of passes and distances. (Stoddart,1986)  said “Sport has traditionally been labelled as the great equaliser and the arena in which all persons are treated fairly, regardless of their background or social standing”. So basically we treat every participant equally no matter, what their ability or no matter how well we knew them; we didn’t want to prejudice against anyone and be more bias towards the peers we considered friends.

References:

Franco Ferrero, British Canoe Union (2006) Coaching Handbook British Canoe Union: A Manual of Coaching Techniques P97

Metzler (2005) The Coaching Process: A Practical Guide to Becoming an Effective Sports Coach p170

Stoddart (1986) http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst?docId=5000177026

;acrosse Session plan

Lacrosse Passing and Distribution:

The group consisted of:

Ashley Marsden (Me), Jonathan Pennington and Jared Brooks.

A joint action by a group of people, in which each person subordinates his or her individual interests and opinions to the unity and efficiency of the group.

This is the plan we used for our groups assessed session:

We started off with the main a fun team based game:

We would start off with all the participants having a lacrosse stick, before splitting them into four teams, who will be situated behind a coned zone in the four corners, when instructed all four teams will run into the middle and collect their teams colour of bean-bag the first team back wins. This competitive activity will have them motivated for the session straight away, whilst in this fun context they will learn about manipulating the stick, scooping the bean-bag and holding the stick. The objective is to collect all the teams corresponding coloured bean bags before the other teams.

Once the participants master the above drill, we then plan to place a more competitive spin on the activity by, allowing the teams to collect any bean bag regardless of colour the winning team will have the most bean bags, this will progress the athletes as they have to work and think much quicker.

The next drill we hope to implement is a communication and co-ordination related game that requires, Scooping the ball up and placing the ball into a team mate’s lacrosse stick, then you can learn the fundamental movements required to pass the ball and again how to manipulate the lacrosse stick.

Once they grasped this we will then progress the activity again, we would have the participants perform simple passes on the floor rolling the ball to another team mate, in order to again learn to manipulate the stick, and learn about weighting and power required, as well as the skill of scooping up the ball.

In order to progress this further I would then emulate the last drill, of passing to a partner but in order to progress the drill I would add movement into the drill.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

As shown by the simple diagram above the drill consists, of four participants in the middle indicated by the four way arrow, and four people on the outside (the four blue dots) all they have to do in a clock wise motion is pass the ball to each of the four players in the middle whilst moving in a clockwise motion. This will progress the drill as they now have to consider movement, special awareness of the other participants and weighting and power of the ball.

A further progression, would be to have a small passing match, where the participants would have to make a selected number of passes to their team mates before shooting such as five passes, to encourage, team work, movement and distribution.

Contingency plan:

An alternative drill could be to have the participants split into two equal teams and in their selected zone complete five passes (or more), before moving onto the next zone the aim of the game is to catch the other team by playing the passes as quickly yet accurately and move to the next zone in a clockwise motion as shown below; To catch the other team the following is required; team work, accurate and concise passes.

---

This is shown in the basic diagram below.

http://www.ndt-ed.org/TeachingResources/ClassroomTips/Teamwork.htm

Mock Group Session:

       My group today performed a mock session prior to our main session which is linked to our critical discussion. The session consisted of and incorporated similar elements to our actual planned session to see if the concepts we devised worked effectively. The session was a balling based activity that had several progressive elements such as targets and competitive elements in order to motivate the participants; yet the main learning points were for us as coaches we needed to understand the dynamics we shared as coaches and the individual characteristics we provided. Whilst also determining who was going to take the leading role and who was the most competent at dealing with problems/ progressions and weaker participants.

     The coaching experience allowed us to also see which styles of coaching and delivery the participants preferred and reacted best too, which we tended to find as problem solving and reciprocal as they are older students I guess they like the freedom and creativeness these coaching methods allow. Whilst we also wanted to analyse if the transactions between drills and activities where streamline and see if the progressions where adequate.

     We also gained a greater understanding of when to intervene and how to intervene, due to the age of the participants we found that questioning the participants was most beneficial in order to tease the answers out of them and allow self-learning.

      We also decided that basic demonstrations worked most effectively as it provided the participants with an insight into how to perform the activity, without spoon feeding them, thus allowing guided discovery.

      We tried to use Van Manen’s reflective theories (as shown below) before, during and after the event in order to learn the most from the session, as it focuses on prior, during and after a session in order to obtain the most information as possible.

                                               Van Manen’s Types of Reflection:

According to Van Manen (1991), reflective practitioners are professionals, who reflect in action and are guided by the theoretical principles of their discipline.

•             Anticipatory reflection:  Anticipatory reflection allows a teacher to plan, decide a course of action, and anticipate future consequences of the actions.

•             Active or interactive reflection: Active or interactive reflection allows a teacher to make immediate decisions during class as events unfold.

•             Recollective reflection: Recollective reflection allows a teacher to make sense of past experiences and give new, deeper insight into the meaning of those experiences.

Van Manen, M. (1991). Reflectivity and the pedagogical moment: The normativity of pedagogical thinking and acting. Journal of Curriculum Studies; pgs., 23, 507-536.