Following a few recent conversations I’ve had and other articles I’ve read recently, it made me revisit the power of questioning as coaches or teachers; are we asking or being asked the right questions? I wanted to revisit my notes, share some ideas and reach out to sports coaches, group leaders or teachers alike to try and find what’s the best questions we can ask in different contextual environments.

As mentioned, been really fortunate to chat to both Dan Cottrell from Rugby Coach Weekly and Russell Earnshaw from The Magic Academy initially about my research’s findings yet both conversations tiptoed down the path of questioning as a coaching technique or teaching resource. As I’ve previously discussed, I have challenged coaches in the past to only use questions in training sessions or practice to allow the players or athletes to drive purpose and planning whilst developing understanding and connection of player’s background and decisions respectively as a coach. However, I have always wanted to dig a bit deeper and see if we as coaches, educators or administrators were asking the RIGHT questions to promote skill development, combined commitment and closeness within coach-athlete relationships.

I have read a few articles looking at the use of questions and whether these questions are promoting athlete development within sports context or if they stifle or disrupt participation and athlete progression..? Tyler Yearby from US based Emergence team recently wrote about the use of questioning under an ecological dynamics approach (https://emergentmvmt.com/the-use-of-questions-under-an-ecological-dynamics-approach/). Whilst he initially highlights the importance of the relationship between the athlete and the environment and how sports practitioners are afforded the opportunity to help guide athletes in deepening their relationship with the environment so that functional and adaptable behavior emerges, he quickly turns his attention to the power of questioning to assisting athletes better understand their environments or overcome problems faced in sporting context. He writes:

Questioning helps athletes build upon the notion of the Gibsonian “knowledge of” the environment. Woods et al. remind us that questioning from an ecological dynamics perspective does not involve the player verbalizing their reasoning and structured response (capturing the notion of knowledge about the environment. (Questions) seek to capture the athlete’s knowledge of the performance environment, which promotes the continuous reorganization of system components to achieve a task. Through the ever-changing landscape, the athlete’s perceptions guide what actions are possible under the confluence of the constraints.

I see these adopted ideas as external cues or prompts to encourage athletes to acknowledge and adapt to the environments and tasks offered, self organise and prioritise their actions based on the tasks offered, their current skillset and environment’s identified constraints or athlete’s chosen affordances. All of these actions place the athlete or player in control of their development with the coach acting as supporting actor or resource when required. These ideas are supported by another article written by Ryan White (https://ryanjfootball.wordpress.com/2020/11/12/strategising-effective-questioning-within-the-tgfu-model/). He looked at the use of questioning within TGfU model, similar context to constraint led approach addressed by Yearby. He wrote:

As this TGfU is an athlete-centred approach, it is important to consider what benefits questions may have on the players’ development. Pearson and Webb (2008) explain that feedback in the shape of questions is critical ”to facilitate students’ thinking, helping them to develop thinking skills and behaviours”. Questioning within the TGfU model – asking questions around the previously mentioned cognitive skills – challenges coaches to understand the deep intellectual structures of both playing and learning to teach a game effectively (Hopper, 2002). In essence, effective questioning enables us to link the psychological development of players with their tactical development.
As Den Duyn (1997) observes, questioning provides an environment that promotes thinking and problem-solving – developing players who grow a tactical understanding more and decision makers.

Again, this article highlights that questioning bridges the link between technical development and tactical understanding with athlete’s personality identity and motivation within sport participation. These opportunities allow us as coaches to create both competent athletes within sport and better people away from sport, encouraging thinking skills and behaviours, self organisation and problem solving skills. These ideas are supported by recent blog post by AIK Coach Educator Mark O’Sullivan(https://footblogball.wordpress.com/2020/12/04/its-time-for-better-questions-living-up-to-the-idea-of-as-many-as-possible-as-long-as-good-as-good-as-possible/). O’Sullivan has long discussed that “language plays an important role as does acknowledging that learning and development cannot be fully understood without taking into consideration the environmental, historical, and socio- cultural constraints that can influence learning and development”. I feel asking the right questions can both build understanding and close the gap for understanding athlete’s motivations, areas of importance for their development and how can the environment be structured to suit their needs. He also identifies the importance to pose and push questions towards coaches for athlete’s engagement and environment design:

Many resilient beliefs and even the attributes and skills appreciated in young players are culturally embedded in traditional pedagogical approaches, organisational settings and structural mechanisms founded upon specific socio-cultural and historical constraints (Woods et al, 2020). There is a need to investigate which specific sociocultural constraints on behaviours that we need to amplify and which ones we need to dampen (Vaughan et al., 2019)?
For a more nuanced approach and in order to place the child/youth/player at the center of this discussion from a long-term learning perspective, we need to turn the question around. When I am asked about ability grouping/selection-deselection (yes or no?), I now answer with another question; What is your understanding of the learner and the learning process? What is your understanding of human learning and development in a youth football context?

So let’s get back to the question at hand; are we asking or being asked the right questions? My current research has helped around areas including questioning as it’s allowed and encouraged me to look at the different stages of personality development and how questions should acknowledge the stages of the person being questioned, amongst other factors. I investigated areas of McAdam’s work to understand the different stages of personality development, McAdams outlines a three level model for personality constructs (Dan P McAdams et al., 2004):

1. Dispositional traits: Global, internal and comparable dispositions that account for consistencies perceived or expected in behaviour from one situation to next over time. This stage is termed as the actor stage as the person shall repeatedly observe theirs and others performances and categorise themselves in terms of skills and trait tendencies (Dan P McAdams, 2013).

2. Characteristic adaptations: Contextualised facets of human individuality that speak to motivational, social-cognitive and developmental concerns in personality, contextualised by time, place or social role. This stage is identified as agent as person makes choices and moves forward in a self determined and goal directed manner (Ryan, 1991).

3. Integrative life stories: Internalised and evolving narratives of the self that is how a person understands themselves and their position in the world in broad, existential terms. This stage identifies the person as the author of their life stories.

Emerging adulthood sees the start of formation of meaningful narrative for life, integrating episodic past and imaged episodic future (Dan P McAdams, 2013). Before these ages or stages, children or younger players for this example do not have or try to explain this sense of identity as Erikson identified that “integration of selfhood is not yet a psychological problem for them” (Dan P McAdams, 2001) and is not possessed or work upon until late adolescent or early adulthood years. Therefore, asking younger players for contextual questions of why they chose certain actions over others may be met with deaf ears or confused eyes!! For my example of age grade players whom are seen as late adolescent or early adulthood players, identified as in emerging adulthood stage of development, “people begin to reconstruct personal past, perceive the present and anticipate the future as an internalised and evolving self-story (using) narrative of the self that provides psychosocial unity and purpose” (Dan P McAdams, 2001), which starts as an internalised and evolving story of self that synchronically and diachronically develops. Pillemer (1998) identified how these emerging adulthood players create symbolic messages and anchoring events to support the psychosocial goal of creating an identity (Dan P McAdams, 2001). Therefore, by late adolescence or early adulthood, their answers to questions and subsequent actions shall have a strong colouring of their life narrative or chosen reasons for adopting certain actions or making certain decisions, which can both build understanding and close the gap for understanding athlete’s motivations, areas of importance for their development and how can the environment be structured to suit their need, important information for us as coaches.

I believe sports coaches of athletes of all ages should act as pedagogues and adopt comprehensive and holistic roles in the moral development of their athletes through their adopted and shared practices, languages and beliefs. If coaches are to develop knowledgeable athletes whom are willing and able to make decisions, capable of performing learned tasks when under pressure and not under direct instructions, I believe this shall require collaborative transfer of knowledge or greater ownership by athletes of their development, with support from the coaches as “more capable other” in an involved yet scaffolding style approach to their athlete’s development. Research by Kidman (2001) addressed ideas such as coaches developing player’s complex skills and tactical knowledge through encouraging abstract thought processes by asking high order questions, which require athletes to apply, analyse and synthesize information. This style of leadership has the coach steering as opposed to controlling decisions and actions, encouraging player discovery through evolutionary planning and organising of tasks whilst keeping sight of overall objectives and showing empathy to get the best from the athletes, something Keane identified as adopting with time and experience yet admitted is better in certain times or circumstances. Coaches acting as orchestrators whilst attempting to create a successful pedagogic setting requires coordination of activities to scan or investigate, monitor and respond with honesty to players. This may require some transparency from coaches to offer rationale for processes. It may also require negotiation of processes with players to meet individual and collective performance measures of those being coached whilst matching evolving circumstances for learning and development against attempting keeping sight of overall objectives.

After my mentioned discussions, I approached coaches (face to face and digitally) to ask them the best questions they have asked, been asked or heard being asked with a plan to compile and offer as a “cheat sheet” from my website in future. Below is a starting list of some great questions I was forwarded yet I ask any coaches interested in participating or nominating ideas or questions, please do so and shall be included in future cheat sheet mentioned. Below in no particular order yet tried to scale in general to meaningful or probing for deeper meaning:

How are you feeling today?
What can I do to help you or support you?
What would you do differently if offered a second chance?
If you were a ……., what would you be and why? Had plenty of options around this from wildlife animal, Simpsons character to takeaway meal!!
What did you learn from me?
What is it you see? What did you notice?
What would you like to explore today?
What type of coach would you like me to be for you?
What was your favourite bit of …. and why?
What stories did you tell yourself today?
If a friend or teammate was in your shoes, what advice would you give them?
What can you accomplish that doesn’t depend on others?
What mistakes did you make today that you don’t ant to make again?
Where can I ask for help to enable me to improve a skill or technique?
What did you struggle with today?
What obstacles have you faced, what did you do, and what did you learn?
Who has given you good, honest feedback today? What other resources do you have access to?

In summary, I believe coaches as a recognised more capable/knowledgeable other to the athlete should engage in contextual and collaborative learning relationships, with questions forming a strong part of this, to ensure optimal psychological functioning for maximal sporting performance. I believe coaches should assist players to identify problems as opposed to solving them, asking questions, offering ideas and assistance for how to think and act as opposed to offering solutions. Therefore, use this festive period or COVID restriction time from face to face coaching to reflect and review your coaching methodologies. Asking questions and understanding the answers and whom they’re coming from will give you a snapshot for today yet this needs to be continually addressed and worked on, understanding people, personalities and environments shall change; no one would have imagined or expected the year we have had; be willing to ask questions of yourself and other to change ideas or structures and match what your athletes or players need today whilst being reflective and flexible to change to what they need tomorrow or when we see them again in 2021.

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Are we asking or being asked the right questions?