The Teesra

Category: pedagogy

_how_ we coach: theory, practice & philosophy

  • Learner rehearsal — making sense of direct instruction

    A new addition to the coaching toolkit, perhaps — not quite instruction or demonstration, but not “guided discovery”, either — learner rehearsal.

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  • Reflections on and with Mosston’s Spectrum of Teaching Styles

    In recent posts I have reflected on the toolkit available to coaches, and on the ways that different tools can be applied.

    We talk of “random” or “game” practices, of Practice vs. Play, of Constraints-Led vs. Games Sense activities, but very often the description applied to each coaching style or intervention is poorly defined, especially in terms of who does what.

    So perhaps we need some tools to help with reflection.

    One such is Mosston’s Spectrum of Teaching Styles.

    Mosston’s Spectrum is a classification of teaching styles with decision making as a central defining characteristic — when the decisions are taken (pre-delivery, delivery, post) and by whom (teacher or learner).

    I was interested to find out more from the recently published tome The Spectrum of Teaching Styles in Physical Education, edited by Brendan SueSee, Mitch Hewitt & Shane Pill.

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  • Practice vs. Play; Freedom vs. Discipline

    …it should be the aim of an ideally constructed education that the discipline be the voluntary issue of free choice, and that the freedom should gain an enrichment of possibility as the issue of discipline.

    Alfred North Whitehead, The Rhythmic Claims of Freedom and Discipline, 1922

    Substitute “education” in this quotation with “coaching programme”.

    A coaching philosophy to aspire to?

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