The Teesra

The (blogging) year in review — the year of pedagogy

A very strange year.

Lots of free time (too much free time) spent online.

Not all frivolous — I did commit to finding out more about online teaching, and was struck by the emphasis that educators (those delivering the online courses I took, at least) placed on how people learn. Which highlighted for me just how important it is for teaching (and coaching) to adapt to support learning, both online and face-to-face.

Obvious, perhaps. But how often do we consider the learner’s experience of learning when planning and delivering a session? Yes, it has to be Fun and Engaging, Challenging, perhaps. Purposeful. Active. Safe.

But do we ever stop to think about what we are really doing when we coach? Or how athlete’s actually learn?

In 2020, I published 12 posts categorised under “pedagogy” (a category I have stretched to cover any post which discusses how we coach: theory, practice & philosophy).

Attrition in junior membership numbers — can we encourage “drop-ins”?

Really interesting from Professor Catherine Woods of University of Limerick in her presentation “Youth Sport Dropout: Prevention is Better than Cure” at the iCoachKids (virtual) Conference on 2nd December 2020.

Professor Woods’ main focus was on ways of keeping junior players engaged with sport as they get a little older (see below for a link to the presentation).

But something else she said really chimed with me — some sports seem to get a second intake of “drop-ins”, with junior participants transferring in from another sport.

Dropout does not have to mean STOP. Sport specific dropout does not have to lead to sport general dropout.
Professor Catherine Woods, University of Limerick

But this begs the question — what can cricket do to facilitate “drop-in”?

WBBL thoughts (2) — is the 23m fielding ring too small?

I watched quite a bit of this year’s WBBL, and a question kept coming up.

The off-side field is packed, but the ball keeps getting hit through to the cover boundary. Why aren’t the fielders stopping the ball?

Are the batters really striking the ball so well, or are the fielders too close to the bat to react, and often too close to each other to move laterally.

I am told, by Raf Nicholson (who knows about this sort of thing), that the fielding circle is currently the same ratio of circle to minimum boundary size for the men and the women (55%).

So 23m it is.

But is this too close?