Good to meet a fellow non-linear pedagogist! Do you use any CLA or eco-d concepts in your coaching? I've coached skiing and more recently golf, and I'm following CLA and eco-d guidelines.
Hmm....I don't know...lol
It wasn't something I came across as an explicit topic during my time as a teacher, but I think it's fair to say I'm utilizing a number of CLA concepts in my coaching these days. I'm going to openly admit, I have no idea what eco-d is, at this point.
But I guess it's easy enough to put to the test if I give a couple of examples of what I'm assuming are non-linear concepts.
Traditional basketball coaching has a mix of individual skill training (often pretty repetitive), strategic chalk-and-talk type stuff, set play design and practice, and then gameplay. It varies, coach to coach, but it's a common enough mix you probably know what I'm talking about. I imagine it's similar for a sport like soccer, but the controlled environment of a basketball court, and the relatively small number of players per team can make it even more so.
So...this season I got to step up and take a more serious coaching role than I've had previously. As part of that, I completed an accreditation course to a higher level than I had before. I also listened to a bunch of podcasts, and subscribed to some pretty good materials online. I know basketball, and I know teaching, and I've coached basketball for years, but I had a bit to learn about coaching at a higher level, so I invested time.
A couple of key concepts really spoke to me.
1) I didn't want my team to play in a rigid fashion, either offensively or defensively. I wanted to develop their ability to read the play, and react within team guidelines, but I didn't want to run a lot of set plays, and I didn't want to play any sort of junk defences. One reason for that is that it would make us much harder to scout as the season went on, since even I would have less tight control of the team. If I don't know the exact play about to be run, not much chance our opposition coach could know. Of course, making it a free for all wouldn't work either. That took a lot of effort, designing where we wanted to get to offensively and defensively. Watched a lot of tape, spent a few weeks with the team before finalising, etc. The other key benefit of this approach is that the kids are developing transferable basketball skills, so if their next coach plays a different system to mine, they will adapt easily. Whereas getting kids from rigid, overcoached systems is an exercise in de-programming...lol
2) If I expected the kids to make good reads on the fly, then I needed to structure my practice in a way to encourage good reads on the fly. Repetitive skills drills weren't going to cut it (they have a place, just not so much in my team training sessions) and we needed to break apart the drills in very explicit ways.
So...it was kind of as simple as that. The offence (err...4-1 motion with the big mostly weak side, apart from flash posts. DHO's from slot to wing rather than screening for the most part - just in case you're a basketball nerd) allows the girls to make constant reads and movements within a small set of rules.
Every time you pass, make a cut to the opposite corner. We shorten that to 'Pass left, cut right. Pass right, cut left.'
When doing a DHO, valid actions are to hand off and pop, hand off and roll, fake the hand off.
When attacking the hoop, drive hard and take your shot. But if the defence leaves our big (lurking weakside) to stop the ball, make sure you dump it down.
Meh, so on. There are a bunch of rules. Write them all out, and they appear a little daunting, I guess (although probably obvious enough to a decent baller). But we've obviously taught those over time, using a concept of 'progressions'.
With the offence, the first progression was simply knowing where the spots on the floor were, who needed to be in which spot (which is very loose in my team...the 5 plays weak side, the other 4 players just arrange themselves in slots and wings. Again, not giving the other team a consistent look) and where to cut to after making a pass. Once we had those things in place, we started running the offence in games. It wasn't great, of course, but we were immediately moving on to our next progression in training, and getting better at it as we went.
In any case, taking this back to training, and there were a couple of important things. One, I needed to be very explicit about certain things, including language, and points of emphasis. I needed to be pretty relaxed on everything else. Target the next progression, which was basically a bundle of skills, language, and understandings...not so much a, then b, then c. More like 'Once we finish Progression 1, we have enough to use this in our games, and we'll develop it through the season'.
So the drills were targeted to be game-like, but controlled. Simple example, but I'd have player A attack the hoop, player B lurking on the weak side (where they would be in the game) and have a coach playing defence. Initially, we'd go slow, and the coach would move to defend one player or the other. The ballhandler had to make the read, and either take the shot themselves, or dump the pass down after the defence committed. As we went along, we developed that drill. We would change the angles, add more players, etc.
Another example was that we wanted to make our defence tougher and more physical (we play full court man, which is hard work...lol). So we played a game where instead of shooting, the offensive team just had to dribble the ball into the key to score. The defence had to hold tennis balls in each hand (so they couldn't easily slap or grab) but were allowed to bump and block with their bodies, as long as they moved their feet, and slid in front of their opponents.
Basically a combination of adjusting the environment to some degree (or the parameters) as well as the task design itself. And constantly starting with less complex decisions at slower pace, explicitly calling out the decision points, then ramping up the pace and complexity.
Apart from getting the chance to work with some brilliant coaches this year, I was also listening to a podcast called 'Sweat the Technique' which was pretty interesting. Concepts like explicit language (eg. don't tell a kid to hustle when they're beaten off the dribble...explain exactly what you're expecting them to do, show them, practice it, etc), which Doug Lemov is big on. And some stuff around progressive coaching, which was interesting, although it dealt with hard to control environments (surf coaching) with Ru Hill. And some pretty interesting basic sports psych from Dan Abrahams. Anyway, definitely an interesting set of podcasts. (it's on the Branch Network).
And if I bored the pants off you with all that...err...sorry. Basketball, and basketball coaching are my passions.
As for discimination: For me, this has come mostly in the domain of teaching STEM-ish topics for adults. Despite being able to provide strong evidence of success, most publishers and corporations will not consider non-linear teaching approaches. I've run into this countless times over many years.
Yeah, okay. Adult teaching is....different. I studied it a bit at university, and have done plenty of adult training through my job, but as a former primary teacher it was always a little hard to see people with a cert-IV (err...basically a training diploma) as having the sort of background to get too deep into why they did things the way they did. They taught more via a structured approach because that's how they were taught to. Hmm...I'm wording that badly. Certainly some teachers lack inventiveness and reasons for their approach. But trainers seems to commonly fall into that bucket.
If I didn't say people need to quit with the bs assumptions.
