Last month I attended a fascinating event, “Playing by the Rules: Using the CLA to your Advantage”, hosted by Alex Lascu and Alex Sarama.
Lots of open conversation around how to make CLA work — very practical, not too much theory.
One of the questions that came up on the evening was the availability (or absence) of evidence to support the wider application of the CLA.
I do believe that it is there.
It’s just that no-one has bothered to report the evidence.†
Show me the evidence
When presented with the empirical evidence for “traditional” teaching practices (itself perhaps not always as convincing as it might be presented), the CLA coach can be at a disadvantage.
But I see the evidence all around, in life, in sports.
Every child who has learnt to walk, then to run.
Or to ride a bike. Not by pedalling on a static machine.
Or learnt to swim — not many would have sat on the pool side, miming keeping their heads above water.
A floor to stand on, with a helping hand or furniture for support.
Stabilisers on the first bike. Water wings, then a swimming float, in the pool.
You really have to be in the environment to work out how to inhabit it. Much as I disliked swimming lessons, the only way to get that first “width stripe” was to get in the water!
All unique examples of an individual learning by doing, not by being told. Yes, with guidance, but most often physical, rather than instructional.
Don Bradman, probably the most dominant batter from any era, learnt to control a moving ball by striking a golf ball with a stump, not by being told how to execute text-book strokes. And started scoring runs just as soon as he started playing in organised games.
An outstanding player. A true great of the game. Undoubtedly an n=1. But so was almost every player in the Golden Age, and since.
Yes, these “outliers” are all unique, n=1 studies. But their ubiquity suggests there is a multitude of “n=1”s.
Examples from outside the world of sports?
Juvenile members of hunter-gatherer cultures surely threw stones and sticks before their first hunt. Maybe even had to “display competence”, by hitting a target set by an elder.
But they learnt to stalk prey by playing hide & seek, before being allowed to accompany elders on hunts.
And learnt by observation and copying. Not by a lecture in front of a cliff face (no I don’t believe that cave paintings were training manuals!)
Why this example? Because I believe that playing sports, almost any movement skill, in fact, is closer to primal behaviours than “production line” learning in the industrial age.
I’ll exclude ballroom dancing, gymnastics and figure skating, where performance is judged against cultural standards, not efficacy.
Yes, there is beauty in a perfectly executed, text book cover drive. And many of the aesthetically idealised techniques will also be the most effective. But you only get four runs for hitting the ball to the boundary, only one goal for hitting the back of the net — there are no bonus points on offer for style!
What’s wrong with a “folk pedagogy”?
Now, I know this could be seen as folk pedagogy, and dismissed alongside other “folk” beliefs.
“It works because I believe it works, and I can see the evidence, even if you can’t.”
But if it’s worked for years, surely there is something in it?
And when compared to industrial-style education?
Caveat — you don’t have to be an insider to apply insider’s knowledge
“Folk knowledge” is often the preserve of those already within the “folk” group. “You need to be ‘one of us’ to understand what we do”.
And we are back to the old saws of “you have to have played the game to coach it” and “great players make great coaches” — some do, undoubtedly, but not IMO because of their playing abilities.
Favouring the application of prior knowledge cannot become an excuse for closing the doors to new coaches from outside the game.
But knowledge of what works, rather than unproven academic theories, just might be a better starting point.
Players have always learnt by playing.
Evidence for “educational” methods in coaching?
I have yet to hear of an athlete linking their sporting success in later life to the hours they spent as a child dribbling around cones to the soundtrack of their coach “helpfully” dissecting their mistakes.
Yes, there are tales of hours spent refining a particular skill, about a move or technique developed to beat a specific opponent or to eliminate a weakness before an opponent might learn to exploit it.
But awareness of the need to develop the skill almost always comes from the player’s own imagination and playing experience. I can’t imagine a coach going to young Johan and suggesting he should practice a Cruyff turn.
Whataboutery 1
Distinguished academics promoted the Direct Instruction model (note the upper case D & I — this isn’t just telling, it is a Pedagogical Methodology…).
It starts with instruction from the coach, and repetition, even if it then moves to rehearsal.
DI was developed for use in schools in Chicago.
Not coaching sports.
For which there seems to be very little supporting evidence. A paper that suggests that DI might benefit relatively experienced athletes, but not for others on the study.
And questions for future research.
(I don’t want to give the impression that I believe that “rehearsal” is not strong, when what is being rehearsed is engagement with the game, with the affordances offered by the game, if you will, not a predetermined movement response, the “I” from the Instruction from the all-knowing coach.)
Whataboutery 2
I recall the almost gleeful response from some academics to the (reported) debunking of Carol Dweck’s Growth Mindset.
But what these impeccably presented meta-analyses showed was that several US High Schools failed to improve academic results with their implementations of the growth mindset.
Will I be telling the players I coach that talent is innate, that they either have it, or they don’t, because some US High Schools could not get their grades up?
What do you think?
† Not strictly true.
There is a wonderful book on the subject. Steve Cannane’s First Tests — Great Australian Cricketers and the Backyards That Made Them — very highly recommended.
And practically every sporting autobiography or biography will reference the subject’s early exposure to a sporting (playing) environment. Not always the sport in which the subject later appeared. Often multi-sport.
Rarely to dribbling around cones.
The Teesra 
What do you think? Leave a reply.