There was a time when pedagogy was not considered to be important for sports coaches or, at least, was considered to be of less importance than, say, the various sports sciences of biomechanics, physiology and psychology and the technical aspects of the sport in question. Indeed, some National Governing Body awards and degree programmes in sports coaching omit pedagogy altogether or give it a very minor role. A number of reasons for this have been suggested. First, the desire on the part of coach educators to be seen to make a clean break from school physical education teacher preparation, where pedagogy seemed to have such a central role. Second, the dominance of a bio-scientific discourse focused on performance. Finally, the relatively underdeveloped study of pedagogy in sports coaching contexts in comparison to the sports sciences to the extent that when pedagogy was recognised as important to coaching, writers were forced to borrow heavily from the physical education and teaching research literature (e.g. Jones, 2006 and Cassidy et al., 2009).

With a bio-scientific performance discourse came a misguided view that the coaching of sports participants was primarily a task of enhancing performance, which involved such activities as ‘training’ and ‘conditioning’, ‘drills’ and ‘practices’. It was rare in the language of sports coaching in the late 1970s when the author was studying for Club and Senior Coach awards in athletics to hear the word ‘learning’ used in relation to those who were to be coached. As we now understand, of course, learning is a fundamental aspect of enhancing sports performance, not just for beginners or junior players, but also for senior high-performance sportswomen and -men, and not just in technical sports such as gymnastics and athletics, but in all sports.

Readers need to be convinced on this basic point before we go any further because unless we have agreement that learning is fundamental to all sports performance there is nothing further to say about pedagogy and sports coaching. For those who do need to be convinced, we can draw on the ground-breaking work of French anthropologist Marcel Mauss who first set out his thesis of the ‘techniques of the body’ in the mid-1930s, though this work only became accessible in English in the early 1970s (Mauss 1973). Mauss’ purpose was to provide a theoretical framework for thinking about the body at the intersections of the anthropological, psychological and biological, in an area of miscellany where, he argued, new discoveries can be made. He believed his framework for conceptualising the techniques of the body was indeed a new discovery.

Mauss pointed out through examples of swimming, digging, marching, walking, and running that these techniques of the body differed across nations, across gender and across time. He used the many varieties of the ways in which these techniques are practised to make two points. The first is that these are not merely biological and biomechanical phenomena. They have a clear psycho-social dimension that he captured in the concept of the habitus (popularised much later by Pierre Bourdieu). He explained:

Mauss’ use of the word habitus suggests these techniques are performed more or less skilfully, but habitually and routinely, apparently unconsciously. Their performance is individualised to the extent that they express something of a person’s identity as it is shaped by their own unique biography of experience, nationality, social class, occupation, religion, gender, and age or generation. Furthermore, these techniques provide information about individuals both when the body is in action or repose since, as Mauss pointed out, there are different ways of relaxing and sleeping as well as moving.

While the habitual character of many of the techniques Mauss mentions such as walking, running, sleeping and so on are performed adroitly and routinely and so may appear to require no conscious effort, he makes an important second point that all of these techniques are an outcome of education.

Some of the techniques Mauss discusses, like walking, appear to be acquired in the course of everyday life, while others like marching and swimming typically require formal instruction. But Mauss cites an example of Maori mothers in New Zealand who drilled their daughters to walk in a particular way, with a ‘loose-jointed swinging of the hips’ termed onioni and which is much admired, to make the point that all techniques of the body are learned. Closer to home, he points out that wearing shoes transforms the position of the feet when walking, something we notice immediately when we attempt to walk without them.

Mauss argued that in order to qualify as a technique of the body, an action must be both effective, that is, it must accomplish some purpose with facility, and traditional. On this latter point, he writes ‘there is no technique and no transmission in the absence of tradition. This is above all what distinguishes man from the animals: the transmission of his techniques and very probably their oral transmission’ (Mauss 1973 p 75). Mauss’ point is that techniques of the body are meaningful actions that have a purpose and are part of a shared culture, even though there is some differentiation among social groups, nations and so on.

To illustrate these points, Mauss goes on in his paper to provide a classification of techniques of the body according to sexual division, age, efficiency, and means of transmission. He adds to this classification a biographical list of techniques that are specific to different stages of life, such as birth, infancy, adolescence and adulthood, and then elaborates his argument through a discussion of specific techniques of the body including sleep, rest, running, dancing, climbing, washing and care of the body, and sexual reproduction. Mauss’ contribution allows us to appreciate the extent to which all techniques of the body are transmitted and learned, not only those which require explicit instruction. This in turn allows us to see that techniques of the body are socially constructed and reconstructed over time, that they are meaningful and value-laden, and that they are purposeful.

There are no movements in sport that do not meet Mauss’ criteria for techniques of the body. All must be effective in terms of achieving some specific purpose with facility, and they must be traditional in the sense that they are part of a codified, socially approved set of practices that have developed over time within particular communities of practice. This means that all techniques of the body that construct and constitute sports performance are learned, either informally or formally, but learned nonetheless. We can see this clearly in the habitus of highly trained and socialised performers, in sport in the examples of gymnasts, rugby forwards, and basketball players, and in the arts in the examples of ballet dancers and opera singers; in each of these cases, the techniques of the body have been learned to a level that they seep through the individual’s everyday actions as well as constituting their performances in their particular disciplines.

Since learning is central to enhancing sports performance at all levels in all sports, pedagogy is of the utmost relevance to sports coaching. Having established this point, we might now ask what it is we mean, exactly, by pedagogy, what is pedagogy’s relationship to learning, and what a socio-pedagogy of sports coaching might look like? I address these questions in the next two sections, completing the first part of the chapter. In the second part, I argue that to move towards a socio-pedagogy of sport, coaches need to understand the nature of pedagogy, the pedagogical relations between different sports settings, and their moral responsibilities for cultural preservation and change in and through sport as a social practice.

While pedagogy has been defined in a number of ways, the sense in which I am using the word here refers to the interdependence and irreducibility of subject matter, learning, instruction and context (Kirk, 1988 and Cassidy et al., 2009). Different words are sometimes substituted for each of these terms, such as teaching or coaching for instruction, knowledge and curriculum for subject matter, task for the conflation of subject matter and instruction, and environment for context. In the French tradition of didactique, a similar concept of the relationships among learning, instruction and knowledge features strongly while, as Amade-Escot (2007) notes, a keen object of interest in didactique research is to investigate the extent to which the processes of knowledge transmission and reception in contexts such as for example club sport, high-performance sport and school physical education have shared or different characteristics.

These components of pedagogy are interdependent insofar as change in one component will have an effect on each of the others. For example, if I am mainly concerned that beginner javelin throwers learn safety rules ahead of throwing techniques, I am likely to coach them in a style that is directive. In terms of context, this directive style may take a different form and indeed may be easier to implement in a school physical education lesson in comparison to a sports club. If, on the other hand, I am keen that basketball players learn to identify cues for particular actions such as when and how to shoot, pass or dribble, I would select subject matter that involved modified game play using the principles of representation (the modified game is authentic) and exaggeration (the game form encourages the learning I am looking for) (Bunker & Thorpe 1982) and a coaching style centred on the question–answer techniques of the Socratic Method (Butler 1997). In terms of context, the age and experience of the players will determine the level of challenge I build into the modified games in terms of numbers of players, the intensity of guarding (from soft to highly intensive), size of playing area, types of target and so on (Rovegno 2006).

This clutch of components of pedagogy is irreducible in the sense that it needs to be treated collectively as a unit of analysis. This is because, as Rovegno (2006) has noted of the similar notion of the individual/task/environment triad that features in situated learning theories, it is the relations among these components that individuals learn rather than the components by themselves. A simple example to illustrate these notions of irreducibility and relationality is Rovegno’s notion of ‘throwing a catchable pass’ in basketball; the thrower needs to know something about the capabilities of the catcher as well as her own capabilities, judge the speed and angle of the cut made by the catcher, where teammates and opponents are positioned, other options considered and dismissed, and so on; more of this later in the second half of the chapter.

The notion of socio-pedagogy returns us to Mauss and his thesis of the techniques of the body. Pedagogy is not merely the educational sub-discipline of sports coaching that sits alongside the other sub-disciplines such as biomechanics, physiology and psychology. Mauss’ thesis shows very clearly that all techniques of the body are embedded in the social in the sense that they are traditional. In order to understand what Mauss means when he says that there ‘can be no technique and no transmission in the absence of tradition’, we might consider Alisdair MacIntyre’s broader concept of a social ‘practice’ and the notion of intrinsic and extrinsic goods developed in his book, After Virtue. MacIntyre wrote

MacIntyre’s examples of social practices consistent with this definition include music, architecture and farming, and games such as chess and football. Providing an insight into Mauss’ notion of the traditional character of techniques of the body, MacIntyre argues that standards are inherent in practices.

Applying MacIntyre’s concept of a social practice to his Sport Education model, Daryl Siedentop argued that, in order to become a member of a sport practice, young people learn to accept the authority of the standards of excellence and to subject oneself to rules and traditions ‘as one attempts to achieve the goods that are defined by participation in that sport and the respect and admiration of those with whom you are engaged in that sport practice’ (Siedentop 2002 p 15). The coherence of this position depends on members of a community of practice having a concept of excellence, having models of excellence, and having incentives to strive for excellence. This is why Siedentop goes to some lengths to argue that heroes and heroines are necessary in sport because they stretch the limits of excellence. Without these concepts, models, and incentives, there are no authoritative standards to which one can subject oneself, and there are no ‘goods’ intrinsic to the practice itself.

MacIntyre argues that all practices generate both intrinsic and extrinsic goods. Intrinsic goods are unique to the practice itself, are defined by standards of excellence, and cannot be gained in any other way than through wholehearted participation in the practice. For example, it is not possible to acquire the goods of being a tennis player, the repertoire of skills and tactics, understanding of etiquette, respect for the rules and traditions of tennis, and respect for opponents, without immersing oneself in the practice of tennis. On the other hand, someone who is an excellent tennis player can gain extrinsic goods such as money and prestige. However, these goods are not unique to tennis in the way that the skills, strategies and knowledge of traditions of the sport are.

MacIntyre accepts that it is possible that some performers may be motivated solely by goods external to a practice. But he claims the sustainability of such a person’s motivation to engage in the practice may be limited. He also argues that even though such persons may exist, their achievement of external rewards from engagement in a practice is entirely dependent on the willingness of others to be motivated by internal rewards. He says that:

MacIntyre’s concept of a social practice and his useful example of baseball provides us with some content with which to expand Mauss’ notion of tradition in relation to techniques of the body. All social practices including sports develop standards of excellence and generate goods both intrinsic and extrinsic to the practice. In order to become more expert in a practice, individuals must submit themselves to the discipline created by the intrinsic goods of the practice, all of which requires the exercise of the virtues of courage, justice and honesty in the face of risks and challenges. It is these goods that sustain a practice, even though extrinsic goods may also be generated. It is possible too that a practice may be corrupted if extrinsic goods overwhelm a practice to the extent that the intrinsic goods are forgotten or lost, which was a favourite claim in defence of amateurism in the face of professionalism in sport. In such a case, however, a practice could not survive, just as a sport could not survive, as Siedentop understands, without the heroes and heroines who continually set higher standards to be emulated.

A socio-pedagogy, then, recognises the deep values surrounding embodiment that find expression in social practices such as sport. Pedagogy is not merely about the transmission of tactics and techniques of games and sports, though it is centrally concerned with this process. Nor is it merely about preserving and passing on to new generations valued aspects of the physical culture of society, though it is very much about this also. A socio-pedagogy of coaching also recognises that learning the techniques of the body requires the engagement in a practice of the whole person, not merely the athlete or player. Therefore, the repetition of particular techniques of the body constructs a habitus expressing an individual’s identity as well as competence and social worth.

To embrace a socio-pedagogy of sports coaching, coaches will be required to understand at least four aspects of this concept: the relations among subject matter, learning, coaching and context; the relations among learner/s, task and environment; the relations among pedagogical settings; and, coaches’ moral responsibility towards cultural reproduction and transformation.