Critical Thinking: From The Classroom To The Field

This is my universal coaching philosophy, specifically keeping in mind high school aged young men. My overall strategy is to facilitate critical thinking in their lives so that they can practice and see the value of it outside of the classroom. This is an important age for sports, and is personally interesting to me because of two reasons; firstly I think that the life lessons so commonly talked about in sports can genuinely be understood in the later years of high school, and secondly from an athletic perspective, the higher athletic potential of the older athletes is most interesting to help develop. This philosophy rests heavily on an article from 1990 by Chelladurai and Saleh. They developed a 5-dimensional leadership scale that synthesized multiple leadership scales in order to create one that would be most useful for coaching athletics specifically.

I would choose to align myself with the coaching style of Social Support and the Training and Instruction leadership styles. There are 5 dimensions to the scale as follows; Training and Instruction, Democratic Behavior, Autocratic Behavior, Social Support, and Positive Feedback. I choose the combination of Social Support and Training and Instruction for a few reasons, but first I would like to say why I didn’t choose to focus on the other dimensions. I don’t agree with the Democratic Behavior dimension because there seem to be too many factors in the ways that young men of this age would make decisions. Rivalries between teammates, though healthy, could affect what the athletes see as important to the team. Although there is a strong argument for athletes of this age being capable of looking beyond themselves and being able to engage in abstract problem solving according to Paget’s development theory, I am not convinced that the temptations of leading a practice towards the activities that an individual athlete likes would be outweighed by the desire to think more broadly about what the team needs.

Conversely, I would probably fall more along the lines of autocratic control, though some input from the athletes would be needed to decide at what intensity the practice would be set at, so the decision-making process would be moderated by factors outside of my own plans. Lastly, the Positive Feedback dimension would be something I would try to stay away from, as at this point I would want to be instilling a desire for progress and hard work in the athletes on the basis of the intrinsic benefits of these things, not as a tool to receive praise. Certainly, some feedback would be needed to ensure that they recognize when the most optimal behavior is being done, but feedback can be present without relying on praise.

Now as to why I would want to be aligned with the dimensions I have chosen, I think the Social Support dimension is crucial to this age group. High school can be an incredibly tempting time, and having a positive role model that a student is able to feel a genuine connection with is huge. It is even better when this model is separate from both the academic field as an attachment to these can potentially create negative reactions from peers as we saw in Tatum’s book that examined the influence of race on the development of children. While this was clearly influenced by the unique factor of race, it is feasible that similar versions of this could happen regardless of the race if the authority figure is deemed “uncool” by peers. Lastly, the Training and Instruction dimension is necessary to focus on by the simple fact that both general attitudes towards sports (i.e. “working hard is important”), as well as the specific techniques and motor skills, need to be developed in a proper manner to give the athlete a feeling of confidence in the sport, and the coach is incredibly important in facilitating an environment where both of these goals can be achieved. Moving towards how I would make these dimensions manifest, I am deeply inspired by my high school lacrosse coach. I would want to incorporate the seriousness in which he treated us as students and growing individuals with the love for pushing myself physically and the attention to detail he aimed to instill in me.

To do this I would focus on making sure to talk about future goals (broadly defined as including career, family, and social goals) in the downtime to and from games, practices, and functions. I would consistently ask my athletes about their academics and what they found most interesting that week, and when appropriate ask questions like “Why did you enjoy that topic over other topics?” to ensure that they get used to thinking critically in a non-academic setting. Additionally, I would rely on an emphasis on consistency over trying to introduce too many new topics, so that the athlete has time to fully understand, question, and accommodate the new information in their existing schemas for how a process should take place. Blocks of focusing on fundamentals, then free team play to practice these fundamentals in a live setting, then moving towards more structured play running and full-scale situations should allow them to see the importance of each step and why the previous step matters to the overall picture of the sport.

Lastly, I would make two activities a central part of my coaching. The first is an exercise where the athlete would write down their strengths and weaknesses in a broad sense. This would include how they interact with their peers and how they engage with academics and athletics. They would complete this sheet at the beginning of the season with the intention of trying to move three things from the negative to the positive column by the end of the season when we revisit the list (i.e. turning “I don’t listen enough.” to “I listen well.”) When the student has success or failure, we can discuss why it occurred and how to move forward. This will help them be critical of the way they uphold themselves and interact with others, and it would give them a sense of autonomy and competency in the way they present themselves, which Deci and Ryan’s Self Determination Theory holds to be crucial in the development of students. Lastly, I would make it a habit to once a week ask different athletes why we are doing a certain drill. The goal here is to get the athletes to think critically about why they are engaging in a drill, and give them space to be critical thinkers in non-academic settings.