Personal Performance Portfolio - Contemporary issues - What has been the role of your teacher and/ or coach in your development as a performer?

AS and A Level Physical Education (Sport & Coaching)

Natalie McCormick

Miss Purdom

Personal Performance Portfolio

Contemporary issues

What has been the role of your teacher and/ or coach in your development as a performer?

Teachers and coaches play a vital part into the development and performance of an individual. Physical education takes place in schools, colleges and at university. In schools a variety of activities can take place – physical education is included within the curriculum and involves learning through practical activities. Modern physical education has developed from two differing systems – the games of the public schools and the drill of the elementary schools.

Teachers and coaches are there to teach skills. To optimise skill learning teachers and coaches must create the best possible practice conditions. Using Schmidt’s schema theory, which is that we store a generalised series of movement patterns that are modified to adapt to the current environment and situation. We know that variety in training is very important not just to build up schema in the long-term memory but also to increase motivation.

When a teacher or coach presents a new skill to a student or seeks to develop the skills of an experienced performer he or she needs to decide the best possible way to transmit the knowledge necessary for effective performance. There are four main types of guidance:

Visual
Verbal
Manual
Mechanical

The type or combinations of types chosen depends on the personality, motivation and ability of the performer, the situation in which learning or development of skills is taking place and the nature of the skill being taught or developed.

Visual guidance is used in early stages of teaching a skill. Demonstrations are the most common form. Important cues must be highlighted through this guidance.

Verbal guidance is not very effective if used on its own, except with very able performers, but with visual guidance it can be very effective, especially to help ...

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Visual
Verbal
Manual
Mechanical

Visual guidance is used in early stages of teaching a skill. Demonstrations are the most common form. Important cues must be highlighted through this guidance.

Verbal guidance is not very effective if used on its own, except with very able performers, but with visual guidance it can be very effective, especially to help identify important cues.

Manual and mechanical guidance is important in the early stages of learning. It can help a performer cope with fear and can help with safety. This type of guidance helps to give kinesthetic awareness but should not be overused.

Teachers and coaches have predominantly a great effect towards the performer. Some people have compared the role of coach to the role of the classroom teacher and argued that coaches should deal with interscholastic athletes in the same open-ended way that many teachers deal with students. Although there are crucial differences between the two. Whilst there are still some similarities.

Teachers tend to deal with students in a less dogmatic way than coaches deal with their performers. Coaches deal with their performers in a harsher way to achieve the goals desired. Teachers can make exceptions to the rule, which means the teacher can adapt the game or skill being asked to be more specific to individuals.

Outside classrooms can play a vital part in optimising the development of a performer. Coaches are far more inquisitive into this aspect than the teacher is. A teacher is only responsible for the training of a student during school where as a coach is there to optimise the performance of their performer, this can sometimes or most of the time includes training outside of the specified time allocated to that performer. A coach can influence how a performer eats to benefit their desired goal.

The goal of a coach is usually for the performer to win. This is not the goal of a teacher their goal is to get the best from you and to your potential in a less dogmatic way.

The difference between school lessons and external clubs can be quite a hard transaction for some performers to make, the teacher can make this transaction easier by influencing the performer. A teacher can influence a performer in many different ways

The teachers personality and abilities
The type of activity to be taught
The level of motivation of the teacher as well as the performer

Each point can enable a performer to want to achieve rather than always being told to.

Physical education taught at a young age can promote positive life style attitudes, the performers wanting to take part in strenuous activities, To gain the benefits that it offers.

Teachers deal with all abilities ranging from poor to exceptional potential. There fore a teacher has to be more generalised than a coach, as they tend to specialise in one sport/activity.

In my sport HOCKEY the teacher is there to reach the best from me to enable me to perform to the highest standard I can but without taking the role on as a coach. Although when I was younger the teaching for hockey was far more generalised due to the amount of performers not actually there because they enjoy it but more because they have to be there as part of school life, where as now a days the hockey in which I perform in is with performers who want to learn new and improve their skills needed for hockey.

During a hockey practice, my coach contributes to me as a performer by motivating me with positive and negative ways, also by teaching new skills, example

During a practice new skills are often taught , when being taught the reverse stick at first it is a complex skill. The information, which needs to be processed, includes the position and the speed of the opponent, the tackler’s position, the position of the ball, and an awareness of other players. This skill was first taught using a slow demonstration, followed by practice at walk. The pace of both players was then increased and then put into a small game situation and then finally the full game. My coach had to find a way of teaching me this skill and the best way through manual and mechanical ways.

During school the approach to hockey by the teacher is slightly different than what our relationship and attitudes are towards here when she takes on the role of being our school hockey coach and not a level physical education teacher.

This means that during school times the role of our teacher is to get the best from us but not to win but just to improve our technique for our benefit. Whilst outside of school The role of the teacher changes into becoming a coach so the outcome of what we are there for is different, we are there to be pushed to our highest potential to win.

Although our teacher and coach is the same person, they way in which the roles of this person is shown through the different objectives, aims and outcomes from the training of the performers.