Sport Coaching: Learning, Talent & Performance - Learning as Social Practice

Learning as Social Practice

Associate Professor Steven Rynne, The University of Queensland

Recap: Learning as Meaning Making

• Constructivism: Focuses on how learners construct meaning.
  • Encourages multiple perspectives.
  • Learning is not easily measured.
  • Learners ask questions, develop answers, interact with, and interpret the environment (construction).
  • Coaches guide learning and shape the environment.

Readiness to Learn

• How ready are you to learn today?

Learning as Social Practice

• Learning is a social enterprise.
• Participation in everyday practice.

Learning as Social Practice – KRAM

• Developed the theoretical foundations for mentoring in the workplace.
• Reconceptualized mentoring to create a developmental network approach.

Learning as Social Practice – MENTORING

• Historical Context:
  • "Homer's Odyssey": Mentor placed in charge of Telemachus (1,000 BC).
  • "Les aventures de telemaque": Appearance of the modern-day term (1699).
  • Daniel Levinson: Impact of mentoring on the development of man (1978).
  • Kathy Kram: Foundation of mentor theory (1983/1985).

What is Mentoring?

• A developmental relationship between two people:
  • A person who is perceived to have more experience/knowledge.
  • A person who is perceived to have less experience/knowledge.
• Transmission of knowledge, social capital, and psychological support.
• Relevant to work, career, or professional development.

Mentoring Structure

• Informal Mentoring:
  • Occurs when the mentor and mentee realize they have common interests, admiration, and commitment, allowing a more personal relationship to develop.
• Formal Mentoring:
  • A contractual mentoring relationship that is facilitated by a third party responsible for matching the mentor and the mentee, and typically lasts between six months and one year.

Learning as Social Practice – MENTORING PROBLEMS

• Informal Mentoring:
  • It’s a privilege (not always accessible).
  • Termination of relationship can be messy.
  • Often assumed to be all-encompassing.
  • Navigating micro-political agendas and trade secrets can be problematic.
• Formal Mentoring:
  • Finances to cover costs of mentoring.
  • Finding qualified people to be mentors.
  • Lack of time/availability to meet/commitment.
  • Difficulties matching personalities and needs.

Learning as Social Practice – MENTORING DYADS

• Vertical Mentoring:
  • Traditional conceptualization of mentoring.
  • Two individuals of unequal power.
  • Experienced individual mentors less experienced individual.
  • Reverse mentoring?

Learning as Social Practice – MENTORING DYADS

• Lateral Mentoring (peer mentoring):
  • Two or more individuals of similar age, rank, and/or experience involved in reciprocal mentoring.
  • Provide one another with career and psychosocial functions.

Learning as Social Practice – MENTORING TRIADS

• Organizational involvement:
  • Formal involvement of the organizations within a dyadic mentoring relationship.
  • Potential to benefit all parties.

Learning as Social Practice – MENTORING TRIADS

• Facilitated peer mentoring:
  • Combination of vertical mentoring and lateral mentoring.
  • Allows for the advantages of mutual construction of knowledge while maintaining the benefits of traditional mentoring (e.g., experience and expertise).

Learning as Social Practice – MENTORING POLYADS

• Collaborative Peer Group Mentoring:
  • Mentor facilitates group mentoring.
  • Similar to facilitated peer mentoring but incorporates a larger group.

Learning as Social Practice – MENTORING POLYADS

• Multiple mentor:
  • Emergence of more than one mentor who provides different amounts and varying types of support.

Learning as Social Practice – NETWORKS

• Developmental Networks:
  • Holistic alternative to other mentoring approaches.
  • Assumes that developmental relationships:
    • Can exist concurrently.
    • Can exist within and outside of the work environment.
    • Can exist in any structure.
  • Developmental Agents: “the set of people a person names as taking an active interest in an action to advance the person’s career by providing developmental assistance” (Higgins & Kram, 2001, p. 268).

Learning as Social Practice – NETWORKS

• Combined set of developmental agents represents a person’s developmental network.

Learning as Social Practice – NETWORKS

• Social Network Theory:
  • Network Size
  • Network Diversity
  • Strength of Tie
  • Reachability
  • Multiplexity

Learning as Social Practice - LAVE & WENGER

• Situatedness of learning
• Q1. What is situated learning?

Learning as Social Practice – LAVE & WENGER

• Learning can be incidental.
• Communities of Practice (CoPs) are foundational.
• CoPs are everywhere – core and marginal involvement.
• Participation in everyday practice.

Learning as Social Practice – LAVE & WENGER

• CoP:
  • Domain (mutual engagement)
  • Community (joint enterprise)
  • Practice (shared repertoire)

Learning as Social Practice – LAVE & WENGER

• CoPs are about more than technical knowledge.
• Members are involved over time.
• CoPs develop around things that matter to people.
• CoPs are linked to social capital.

Learning as Social Practice – LAVE & WENGER

• Learning is in social relationships.
• Qs are about social engagements.

Learning as Social Practice – LAVE & WENGER

• Legitimate Peripheral Participation:
  • You start at the edges doing small, simple, low-risk tasks.
  • May end up at full participation (central).
  • Newcomer to old timer.

Learning as Social Practice – LAVE & WENGER

• How might this view of learning help practice?

Learning as Social Practice – LAVE & WENGER

• CoP limitations:
  • Relatively under-theorized.
  • Individual is marginalized.
  • Power, conflict, value, morality marginalized.
  • Inappropriate for high-performance sport?

Learning as Social Practice – The WENGER-TRAYNERs

• Some changes – CoP
  • Numerous coaching studies in past decade
  • CoPs under-theorized
  • CoP theorizing constricts appreciation of complexities

Learning as Social Practice – The WENGER-TRAYNERs

• Some changes – CoP
  • Landscape of Practice introduced
    • A complex system of Communities of Practice and the boundaries between them

Learning as Social Practice

• Dynamic Social Network?
  • Coaches learn through significant others
  • Relationships develop over time
  • They are dynamic

Learning as Social Practice – STEPHEN BILLETT

• Built on situational accounts
• Workplaces are not just about ‘production’ – they are potentially rich learning environments
• Workplaces are NOT benign
• We’ve used it in hp sport
• Relational interdependence

Learning as Social Practice – STEPHEN BILLETT

• ‘Relational Interdependence’
  • Highlights the interplay between individuals and their environments
  • We’ve applied the theorizing in HP & community sport

Learning as Social Practice – STEPHEN BILLETT

• ‘Relational Interdependence’
  • Role of the Individual
    • Learning is effortful
    • Agency is about personal history, ways of knowing, motivation…
    • If someone doesn’t want to learn, they won’t

Learning as Social Practice – STEPHEN BILLETT

• ‘Relational Interdependence’
  • Role of the environment
    • Access is not equal
    • Direct and indirect support
    • Differential access = differential learning

Understanding Learning

• Key Questions:
  • What does learning mean?
  • Where is learning located?
  • Position of the learner?
  • Position of others?
  • Role of the context?
  • How do we know if learning is taking place?
  • How do you know if you’ve learned something?
  • How can you facilitate learning?

Understanding Learning