Ken Edwards

Investigating the teaching styles of tenniscoaches using The Spectrum

Abstract It is unknown what teaching styles (range of pedagogies) coaches are employing during coaching sessions and whether these teaching styles are associated with recommended pedagogical principles advocated by sport and coaching scholars. It is unknown whether twenty years of coach education has shifted coaching practice as the insights into the pedagogical diversity and preference of teaching styles that underpin and inform the coaches’ decisions to employ particular teaching strategies during coaching sessions are undetermined. This paper addresses these unknowns in the field of tennis coaching in Australia by reporting the findings of a study that address the lack of information on the teaching styles employed by tennis coaches by asking the following research question: What teaching styles are junior coaches in Australia actually using during coaching sessions? This study used The Spectrum (Mosston & Ashworth, 2008) of teaching styles as a tool to assess the observed teaching styles of twelve junior coaches. Contrary to the educational convictions of Australian sport coach education materials the results from this study indicated that the coaches in this study potentially did not offer players developmental opportunities beyond a limited range (i.e., motor skill development in the physical learning domain) due to a narrow pedagogical mix in their coaching.

Self-Identified and Observed Teaching Styles: A Case Study of Senior Physical Education Teachers in Queensland Schools

Teaching styles are valued by educators for what they can achieve. In undertaking research in the area of teaching styles, we set out to explore not only specific research questions but also some beliefs about what to expect of teachers, but as shall be discussed, these are ‘beliefs’ that modulate into ‘myths’. The findings of the study challenged the assumptions of the study questions and the ‘truth’ about teaching styles actually used by teachers. In recent times, curriculum documents by governments in places such as Scotland, England and Queensland (a state in Australia) have called for a range of teaching styles or approaches to meet the variety of learner differences and allow students to make more independent decision-making in physical education (Hardy & Mawer, 1999). Prior to 2005, no research had been conducted on the teaching styles that teachers of physical education use in Queensland, among this set of international priorities. Cothran et al. (2005) completed a study titled A Cross-Cultural Investigation of the Use of Teaching Styles, which presented a questionnaire to teachers (including in Queensland) with scenarios of teaching styles based on the 11 styles identified by Mosston and Ashworth (2002). The study outlined here was designed to identify the teaching styles (based on the work of Mosston & Ashworth, 2002) that 110 teachers of Queensland Senior Physical Education believed they used and then sought to confirm the use of these teaching styles by observation of the lessons of nine volunteer participants across three of their lessons of Senior Physical Education in a unit of work.

Self-identified teaching styles of junior development and club professional tennis coaches in Australia

Coaches are fundamental to providing sporting experiences. Each year, numerous coaching practitioners from around the world offer players of all ages and abilities assistance and direction that serve to fulfil their sporting requirements and goals. According to Lyle and Cushion (2010), alongside professions such as ‘teaching and medicine, coaching is one of the most ubiquitous services across the globe’ (p. 1). As a consequence, there has been a significant expansion of coaching research (Gilbert & Trudel, 2004) that has positioned the discipline of coaching as a valid academic field of study (Lyle, 2002). In spite of this escalation of research, coaching remains a vaguely defined and under-researched field of endeavour (Lyle & Cushion, 2010). Notwithstanding lengthy investigations from numerous empirical and theoretical viewpoints (Gilbert & Trudel, 2004), much remains unknown with regard to coaching and instructional processes, whether positive or negative, across a range of settings and sports (Cushion, Armour, & Jones, 2006; Lyle, 2002; Potrac, Jones, & Cushion, 2007).