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Little is known about the development of coach developers despite their importance in supporting coach learning. In response, this study explored the theories in practice of 23 English coach developers who undertook a continuing professional development course. The data were collected through semistructured interviews, focus groups, and observations of coach developers’ practice and engagement on the course. The data were analysed using a phronetic-iterative approach, with Argyris and Schön’s ideas on theories in practice, mostly espoused theories and theories-in-use, providing the primary heuristic framework. The findings identified how, before the continuing professional development course, the coach developers articulated espoused theories, but as the course progressed, there was a move to theories-in-use. This was due to their (re)constructed understanding of learning and the working environment. The findings are discussed in light of how the continuing professional development course, and tutors’ pedagogic approaches, influenced the coach developers’ knowledge and understanding. Based on these findings, it seems there is much to gain from supporting coach developers with a deconstruction and reconstruction of theories in practice.

Background: Coach education discourse has largely suppressed learners’ involvement in learning. To address this, there have been calls for more humanistic approaches to form the basis of formal lea...

The micro-level enactment of elite sport policy has received little critical coverage in the sociology of sport subdiscipline. This paper provides original insights into how coaches working in prof...

Coaching behaviours can be described as how coaches communicate and interact or not with their participants during training or competition. Literature in education and more recently in sports coaching has highlighted the importance of reflecting on practice. A coach’s words and actions strongly influence the athletes’ performance and development, in addition to their social and emotional well-being. Coaching behaviours need to change to adapt to the interchangeable and individual situations that occur. In a team setting it can be difficult to provide coaching behaviours that suit all the athletes in one team or group. Coaching behaviours are therefore directly affected by social situations that are influenced by coaches’ personal characteristics, the athletes’ personal characteristics and any contextual factors. Technological advancements have opened up the opportunity for a coach to record his or her own coaching using equipment such as a camera, tripod and microphone.

A systematic observation method has been one of the most popularly employed methods in coaching research. Kahan's review of this method conducted between 1975 and 1997 highlighted the key trends in this research, and offered methodological guidance for researchers wishing to use this method in their research. The purpose of this review was to provide an update of the use of a systematic observation method in coaching research and assess the extent to which the calls made by Kahan have been addressed. While in some respect this field of study has progressed (i.e., the introduction of qualitative methods), researchers adopting this method have failed to attend to many of the issues Kahan raised. For this method to continue to make a positive contribution towards the coaching research literature, researchers need to more critically reflect on how and why they are employing this method. At present, some of the decisions made by researchers who have conducted work in this area are not justified with a rationale. It is our intention that this review will serve as guidance for researchers and practitioners, and editors and reviewers of journals when attempting to assess the quality of this type of work.

To position learners as more central components in the coaching process, scholars suggested that coaches should employ a questioning approach, which may lead to the development of desirable learner outcomes (i.e. increased problem solving and decision-making skills). Studies, however, indicate that coaches rarely employ questions within their practice. When questions are asked, these questions rarely move beyond lower-order or ‘fact seeking’ enquiries. While this research provides information concerning the frequency and in some cases, the type of questions coaches asks, it fails to report the more discursive nature of coaches’ questioning approaches. In order to address such limitations, the purpose of this study was to investigate coach questioning practices (CQPs). We recorded the practices of five academy youth level football coaches’ and subjected the data to conversational analysis (CA), This enabled the analysis of interaction between coach and player(s). Findings revealed that CQPs, regardless of coach or context followed similar discursive patterns. In particular, three themes presented themselves in each CQP: (1) coaches’ requirements for an immediate player response, (2) leading questions for a desired response, (3) monologist nature of coach/player interaction. This showed that the coach positioned themselves as the gatekeeper of knowledge and learners as passive recipients. This reinforces the messages from previous work that has suggested coaches’ ideologies inform their practice, and are stable structures that are difficult to change. We concur with other researchers that there is a need for further investigation in this area to better understand how dominant discourse can be challenged.

The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of video feedback on five English youth football coaches’ reflection and practice behaviours over a three-season period. First, quantitative data were collected using the Coach Analysis and Intervention System (CAIS) during season one and season three. Data from CAIS results showed that over the three seasons the coaches decreased their total instruction and total feedback and increased silence ‘on-task’. Four out of the five coaches also increased the use of total questioning behaviour. Second, interviews revealed how video feedback gave structure to reflective conversations that improved self-awareness and provided a trigger for behaviour change. The coaches highlighted how video-based reflection challenged their current understanding and enabled a range of learning sources to support and inform changed coach behaviour.

The aim of this paper was to critically review existing literature relating to, and critically analyse current conceptualisations of, ‘coaching philosophy’. The review reveals a bewildering approach to definitions, terms and frameworks that have limited explanation and reveal a lack of conceptual clarity. It is argued that rather than provide clarification and understanding the existing literature conflates coaching rhetoric and ideology with coaching philosophy and serves to reproduce existing coaching discourse rather than explain coaching practice. The paper problematises the unquestioned assumptions currently underpinning ‘coaching philosophy’; namely the overemphasis of coaches' agency and reflexivity, the downplaying of the significance of social structure on coaches' dispositions and the acceptance that coaching practice is an entirely conscious activity. The paper argues for an alternative philosophy of coaching that uses philosophic thinking to help coaches question existing ideology, and critica...

The aim of the study was to investigate the behaviours, cognitive processes and practice activities of 12 English youth professional soccer coaches across 6 different age groups. Systematic observation data were collected using a modified version of the Coach Analysis and Intervention System which provided a detailed analysis of coaching behaviours performed during practice. Interpretive interviews were then triangulated with the behavioural data to identify the cognitive processes underlying the behaviours performed. The behavioural results showed that the coaches of the younger age groups used more instruction and the coaches of the older age groups used more divergent questioning and significantly more total feedback and punitive behaviours. The coaches of the younger age groups used more training form activities than the coaches of the older age groups who used more playing form activities. However, the interviews revealed that instead of the age of athletes' directly affecting the cognitive process of coaches it was in fact the coaches underlying beliefs about coaching, their previous experiences and perceived pressures from the context that determined the behaviours performed.

The aim of this study was to investigate the social, contextual and situational factors that influence football coaches’ behaviour in competition. Twelve English youth professional coaches were observed over a five-month period using the Coach Analysis and Intervention System (CAIS). Two sets of interpretive interviews were subsequently utilized to identify the underlying processes and motivations for their behaviour. Using the work of Goffman as a lens to probe the data, it is suggested that coaching behaviour during games was largely performative, with the coaches’ behaviours dependent on social pressures and constraints. It is thus contended that the outcome was a form of ‘traditional coaching’ employed as impression management, as opposed to behaviours linked to pedagogical principles or the needs of athletes.

The aim of this study was to investigate the coaching behaviours of elite English youth soccer coaches in different practice settings and gain insight into the coaches’ cognitive processes underpinning these behaviours. The practice setting was split into two types of activities, ‘training form’ and ‘playing form’, and behavioural data were collected using a modified version of the Coaching Analysis and Intervention System (CAIS). Interpretive interview data were triangulated with the behavioural data to ensure that both the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ of the coaches’ behaviour and practice were considered. The results showed the coaches using more ‘training form’ activities than ‘playing form’, and using high levels of prescriptive instruction, regardless of practice type, in contrast to a stated desire to ‘developing the whole player’, creating ‘decision makers’ and being a ‘facilitator of knowledge creation’. The interviews revealed that the coaches had a low self-awareness about their behaviour with an epistemological gap identified between understanding and practice, with statements of intent not being matched by knowledge and action.

During late Early Ordovician times an increase in the rate of subsidence in the Ghaba Salt Basin and western South Oman Salt Basin is suggested by the thick sequence of continental clastics of the Ghudun Formation. After a phase of rift-shoulder uplift and erosion, related to a renewed pulse of extension which may have initiated diapiric growth of salt structures in the Ghaba Salt Basin, sedimentation resumed again in the Mid Ordovician. During this period, the center of deposition shifted to the Saih Hatat area in North Oman. This paper documents seismic and well data, field investigations and petrological study of potassic mafic rocks from the Huqf area which were intruded in the eastern side of the Ghaba Salt Basin. A Mid Ordovician age of 461 ± 2.4 million years has been established for these rocks by the Argon-Argon step heating method. Analogy with the petrology and setting of similar potassic mafic rocks from the Rio Grande Rift in the western United States of America suggests that they were intruded into the shoulder of an intra-continental rift. The data provide the first clear evidence of a pulse of rift-shoulder uplift in the Huqf area during the Mid Ordovician. The 3-kilometer-thick Mid to Late Ordovician clastic sediments of the Amdeh Formation in North Oman, together with the occurrence of abnormally thick sedimentary sequences and volcanics in the Tabas Graben in Iran, are consistent with a period of break-up of eastern Gondwana. Together, the Ghaba-Saih Hatat and Tabas Basins are considered to be part of a failed rift arm. These observations further improve our regional knowledge of the Early to Late Ordovician tectonic setting of Oman and will assist in unlocking the hydrocarbon potential of classical rift-related structures consisting of early-rift Early Ordovician sand-prone reservoirs sealed by syn-rift Mid to Late Ordovician marine shales.

Selected dinocyst taxa from the Brent Group equivalent (Bathonian-Aalenian) of the northern North Sea are described. The diagnosis of Dissiliodinium (Drugg 1978) is emended. Two new species: Dissiliodinium willei and Durotrigia aspera are introduced. In addition, several new taxa are informally described and illustrated.

This reference is for an abstract only. A full paper was not submitted for this conference. Abstract The Upper Swan sandstones represent a key exploration target in the Caswell Sub-basin and are the main reservoir units for the large Ichthys-Prelude gas-condensate field. The sandstones are present west of the Yampi Shelf margin from Leveque-1 in the southwest to Maret-1 in the northeast, and in the central portion of the Caswell Sub-basin extend to the northwest as far as Caswell-2. Within the Caswell Sub-basin the Upper Swan sandstones are best understood in the Ichthys-Prelude gas-condensate field where twelve wells have been drilled to date. Interpretation of nearly 600m of conventional core, wireline logs, image logs and 3D seismic surveys have contributed significantly to the understanding of the depositional environment. The Upper Swan sandstones is a lithostratigraphic term for sandstones that range in age from Latest Jurassic (Tithonian) to early Cretaceous (Berriasian) and are calibrated to the P. iehiense, K. wisemaniae and C. delicata Biozones. These sandstones are sourced from the Yampi Shelf and typically onlap and overstep Tithonian-aged mudstones. The sandstones are quartz rich, dominantly fine - medium grained with occasional very fine to coarse grained units present. Individual sandstone units range in thickness from centimetre scale up to several metres and are typically relatively featureless, homogeneous beds with occasional dewatering structures. Thin claystones typically centimetre to tens of centimetres thick, but up to 15m thick locally, are interbedded with the sandstones. Core data suggests they were deposited as a series of stacked sand-rich gravity flows comprising repeated massive suspension (S3) and thin traction flows (T1 and T2) (dense flows of Lowe, 1982) in a shallowing Outer to Middle shelf characterised by vertically shallowing ichnofossil associations of Chondrites, Phycosiphon/Chondrites to Zoophycus/Phycospihon. In the Prelude Field, the Tithonian and Berriasian-aged sandstones are mineralogically similar, with a complex diagenetic history consisting of compaction, quartz cementation, framework grain dissolution, precipitation of kaolinite/dickite, and the formation of authigenic illite. Authigenic clays appear to be of the greatest importance in the Upper Swan Sandstone in terms of reservoir quality with the data indicating the older sandstones tend to have higher total clay content and these are typically tight.