Gallimore, R., Gilbert, W. and Nater, S. (2014). ‘Reflective Practice and Ongoing Learning: A Coach’s 10 - Year Journey’, Reflective Practice: International and Multidisciplinary Perspectives, 15(2), pp268-288.

- Reflection mediates between experience and learning (Dewey, 1933). Ponder, review and question experiences so as to adapt and change future behaviour.
- John Wooden put a heavy focus on reflective practice. Coach Bias deliberately sought to change and improve coaching by analysing videos 7 years apart. It showed increased efficiency of coaching behaviour (less talk). Also, more effective teaching as pre-instruction decreased, concurrent instruction increased and post-instruction decreased = more organised and more immediate skill feedback.
- Ermeling (2012) 4 key features of reflective practice in teaching contexts:
1. Identify and define important and recursive instructional problems specific to local context
2. Prepare and implement detailed instructional plans
3. Utilize evidence to drive reflection, analysis and next steps
4. Persistently work towards detectable improvement.
- Teach rather than react.
- Coach Bias' improvements:
1. Fixed length practice, start by explaining objective.
2. Write a plan and stick to it. Plan better and implement changes next day.
3. Transition between drills - no wasted time
4. Transition between drills - equipment ready to go
5. Drills 8min max.
- Coach Bias' changes to his instructional talk:
1. Decrease number of coaching statements, less interruption.
2. Keep corrections to 10 seconds max
3. Be specific in teaching behaviour.
- Implement conditioning into elements of game
- Practice as we play applies to instructional language too - same type of message and tone.
- Measure self by quality of teaching, not results.

Gallimore and Tharp, (2004). 'What a coach can teach a teacher, 1975-2004: Reflections and Reanalysis of John Wooden's teaching practices', The Sport Psychologist, 18, 119-137.

- Wooden's teaching points "short, punctuated, numerous"
- Practice was highly organised, constant activity and high intensity.
- Planning essential to be efficient and concise.
- Praise better when specific and information, and most effect if focus on effort and mastery (Stipek, 1993).
- 4 laws of learning: Exploration, Demonstration, Imitation, Repetition.
- Master fundamentals to allow creativity.

Hodge, K., Henry, G. & Smith, W. (2014). 'A case study of excellence in elite sport: Motivational climate in a world champion team', The Sport Psychologist, 28(1), 60-74.

- In sport, Coach typically regarded as most influential significant other in athlete experience (Bartholomew, Ntoumis and Thogersen-Ntoumanis, 2010; Pensgaard and Roberts, 2002).
- Contextual environment (climate created by coach) influential on athlete motivation and behaviour (Gagne, Ryan and Bargmann 2003).
- Key findings for motivational climate in elite teams:
1. Elite Olympians: importance of coach as creator of MC, and support of Mastery climate (Pensgaard and Roberts, 2002)
2. Elite soccer: Prefer positive feedback and democratice coach behaviour (Hoigaard et al, 2006)
3. High perception of master climate and low performance climate associated with increased perception of task cohesion and collective efficacy (Heuze et al, 2006)
4. Strong master climate associated with greater performance improvement and satisfaction (Balaguer et al, 2002)
5. To decreease player perception of distress, focus on mastery climate for elite athletes (Pensgaard and Roberts, 2002).
- Study with NZ All Blacks generated 8 main themes:
1. CRITICAL TURNING POINT
- Drinking issue, so meeting Captain/VC/Coaches to create leadership group. This increased accountability, more ownership and dual management. Coaches' desire to foster autonomy.
- After 2007 RWC, sought feedback from previous NZ coaches. Looked at reasons for failure in past campaigns and planned strategically to try and combat past errors.
2. FLEXIBLE AND EVOLVING
- Evolving coaching style
- Smith changed approach depending on situation and goal - sometimes tough and directive, others empowering and encouraging. Depends on needs of players, group awareness, time in week/season etc.
3. DUAL-MANAGEMENT STYLE
- Dual-management by players and coches. Players feedback on training intensity and game plan.
- Reminiscent of Autonomy-Supportive Coaching (Lyons, Rynne and Mallett, 2012), Emotionally Intelligent Coaching (Chan and Mallett, 2011) and Transformational Leadership (Callow, Smith, Hardy, Arthur and Hardy, 2009).
4. BETTER PEOPLE MAKE BETTER ALL BLACKS
- "What you do shouts so loudly that I can't hear what you're saying"
- Link to on and off the field decision-making so all influenced selection.
5. RESPONSIBILITY
- Empowering he players, ownership and accountability.
- To problem solve on the pitch, do it off the pitch = Analyse self/opposition, present to squad
6. LEADERSHIP
- reflects Transformational Leadership
- Leadership Group / On Field LEadership / Season Planning
7. EXPECTATION OF EXCELLENCE
8. TEAM COHESION : COACHES AND PLAYERS
- Horizontal coaching structure: give other coaches ownership too
- Alignment and clarity
- "Keep it fresh", coaches swap roles and mix up training etc
- Enjoyment and fun
- Love.
AUTONOMY SUPPORTIVE MOTIVATIONAL CLIMATE (Mageau and Vallerand, 2003)
- athlete presented with choice and rationale for tasks, feelings acknowledged, opportunities to show initiative and independent work.
- Empowering, noncontrolling competence feedback (increase strengths, not just decrease weaknesses)
TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP (Bass and Riggio, 2006)
- Build relationship with players based on personal, emotional and inspirational exchanges with goal to develop player to their fullest
- Arthur et al (2012) transformational leadership model in elite sport:
1. Inspirational VIsion
2. Support to achieve it
3. Provide Challenge to achieve it
Also: Individual consideration; inspirational motivation; intellectual stimulation; foster acceptance of group goals; high performance expectations; appropriate role modelling
- Emotional Intellgence and Character Building.

Perception-Action Podcast, Episode 18a with Mark Upton
- Interesting area of research is coaches and pressure - mood profiling, sleep, physiology. How coach manages self is increasingly important. The "less is more" of high performance goes against prevailing sporting culture of "more is more". An example might be Olympics, prep starts months out. "Choking" may start then, really early rather than in the event itself.
- Strategies for better managing self = sleep, exercise, hobbies
- Constraints approach and dynamical systems. Players need to self organise under constraints. Manipulate the task, emotional state, physical intensity, environment, social etc.
- Complexity Theory. Complex vs Complicated. Complicated requires blueprint to get it right, Complex involves social interaction and uncertainty (eg. Raising children). It is hard to forecast ahead so stay in the moment and focus on how to manage the complexity. Coaching = grey and uncertain.
- Obliquity = aim for something but discover something else en route. Goals best achieved indirectly.
- Skill Acquisition. Important thing is engagement. Big question is what will engage them, not just the practice design.
- Phil Jackson. Players need to disconnect from coach so they are perceptually attuned to teammates and game. Players have to figure it out alone.
- When addressing a problem, define it and tidy it up. Observe well, have good conversations with many people.
- Put self in the player's position - what are the perceptual demands and common situations they face?

Relearn 3 - Perspective, on Drowning in the Shallows
- Gain insight into athlete's perspective rather than enforcing our own.
- Seeing their perspective, we have better chance of developing buy-in and commitment in a way not reliant on compliance, manipulation and persuasion.

How Thomas Tuchel turned around Borussia Dortmund, on FourFourTwo.
- "The team is the star, not the coach"

Glasgow's Gregor Townsend the leading light.... on the Guardian.
- "good coaches always look at ways to evolve and learn".

Overcoming fear in sport: Creating a mastery environment, on BelievePerform
- Research: highly ego oriented towards sport can have negative consequences with performance anxiety and fear of failure. Task oriented takes greater enjoyment and play for personal satisfaction, learning and developmental purposes.
- Goal orientation influenced by the environment players are subjected to.
- Mastery environment = winning is a bi-product rather than the sole aim.

Game Sense Coaches, by Dan Cottrell on Coach-plus
- Good game sense coaching:
1. Have a structure
2. Clearly define rules
3. Allow time for game to develop
4. Adapt rules to include players
5. Play right length
6. Allow chance to reflect
7. Prevent consequences of sloppy play
8. Return to the game in the future.

Don't Decide Like Martians, on psychologyblog.com
- The most common team decision strategy (voting) is probably the worst
- Team decisions have competing agendas and interpretations
- 3 options for decision making: Leader decides; team broker action to reflect the desires of members; vote.
- Vote puts huge social pressure to conform, therefore if using voting then confidentiality is key

The Coach's Coach, on hmmrmedia
- Becoming a better coach is more than methods
- Find a mentor, observe then build a bridge between theory and practice
- Art of coaching not just about training methods but communication and understanding athletes
- Nothing replaces experience
- In the end you have to try to do it yourself. The trouble is in knowing how you are doing.
- Everyone needs a coach

Secret Ingredients of Great Coaching, on Changing the Game Project
- Coaching is a RELATIONSHIP business
PERFORMANCE = (POTENTIAL + BEHAVIOUR) - INTERFERENCE
- Too many coaches ignore 'interference'
- Trust is the secret ingredient of great coaching.
- Steven R Covey: characteristics of high trust teams include:
Common purpose and values; Respect; Commitment; Resiliency; Love which decreases fear; Few discipline issues; Intrinsically motivated players; celebrate each other's success
- Coaches must intentionally build trust in team
- Coaches need to be worthy of trust, coach the person not the sport
- Trust works by Blanchard, Olmstead and Lawrence:
ABILITY / BELIEVABILITY / CONNECTEDNESS / DEPENDABILITY

What a Fighter Pilot Can Teach About Teamwork and Focus, on inc.com
- Feel the fear, do it anyway
1. 80% is good enough. 80% of the information is enough, follow up and follow through
2. Prioritize. Three priorities is enough
3. Deal with fear. Question is not whether you will fail but how you will respond to it.
4. Trust
5. Focus. Simple statement of purpose, adaptability easier if everyone is oriented to one singular purpose.

Why Organisations Don't Learn, on internettime.com
- Real Learning features:
* Destigmatize making mistakes
* Embrace growth mindset
* Avoid attribution bias
* Don't work to exhaustion
* Take frequent breaks
* Take time to think
* Encourage reflection
* Leverage your strengths
* Know the person

Knowing How You Decide is as Important as the Decision, on nymag.com
- Traditional research = keeping options open ultimately makes you less happy with your choice. It is better to choose and move on with it.
- New Research = reversible decisions can still make you happy. Depends on what type of decision maker you are.
There are two types:
1. MAXIMIZERS - concerned with making BEST decision having considered every option
2. SATISFICERS - know what they want, find an option that meets that criteria then pick and move on
- Satisficers tend to be happier with choices
- New research (R Shiner) indicates Satisficers happier with permanent decision, Maximizers happier knowing they can change their mind. This suggests, at least for little things, Maximizers better off recognizing tendencies around decision making and adjust accordingly
- Key to better decision making may be understanding how you make decisions

Reflective Practice, on SCUK
- Reflective Practice basically = thinking/reflecting on what you do
- Difference between casual and purposeful thinking - making considered and cognitive effort to consider and recall what happened, the part you played and your view against it as coach with expected outcome
- Reflective Practice is a conduit for experiential learning. A PURPOSEFUL and COMPLEX process that facilitates the examination of experience by questioning whole self within context of practice
- Reflective Practice transforms experience into learning
- Must develop critical thinking and open mindedness

Establishing Athlete Behaviour Standards, on ASEP.com
- Athlete behaviour should be evaluated against flexible team standards, not rules
- John Wooden = equal treatment is not equitable treatment
- Rules punish negative behaviour whereas Standards promote positive behaviour
- Urban Meyer has a three-tier system:
BLUE LEVEL = entry level for all. Lowest status and fewest earned privileges. eg No unexcused absence from class
RED LEVEL = show record of good academic performance and adherence to team standards. Earnt more freedom and trust.
GOLD LEVEL = shown they desire to be treated like 'grown men'
His coaches meet weekly to review and move athletes up or down the levels.

54 Mistakes of a Start-Up CEO, cbinsights.com
- Always work on culture
- Work with employees to draw up a 'Culture Code'
- 1v1 feedback is crucial
- 360 degree feedback: open forum to question 'leader' as well as others
- focus on a good onboarding process for new people

Edward de Bono '6 Thinking Hats'
White = information, data, facts
Yellow = the positive view
Black = caution, difficulties and dangers
Red = feelings, intuition and emotion
Green = creativity and new ideas
Blue = process control, summaries and conclusions

Coaching Cues That Actually Work, stack.com
3 aspects of coaching:
i) Instruction and Feedback = two ways, cue body and movement process or reference action outside the body. The latter is far superior
ii) Practice Design = effectiveness of random practice. Try to include 'purposeful struggle' so that players learn to overcome the struggle
iii) Intrinsic Motivation = Tap into self-determination theory. 3 components Autonomy (give them choice), Self-Efficacy (more powerful if athlete comes up with own coaching cue) and Social Interaction

5 Lessons I've Learned as a Performance Analyst, on thevideoanalyst
1. Network
2. Don't waste time with doubters
3. Push hard and know when to stop talking
4. Don't forget the basics
5. Value your work

Rich Shuttleworth Saracens CPD
- give players time outs that they can call
- Feedback crucial to player improvement, ensure it is positive
- Don't be an artificial stimulus (eg huddle to highlight what they are not doing)
- Focus on principles (eg go forward and support) rather than patterns
- Use of analogies helps learning - eg support runners 'keep the heart alive'
- Focus on core skills like awareness, decision making and scanning
- Don't worry about execution, focus on the decision making

Reflection as a coach development tool, on coachgrowth
- Reflection helps turn experience into knowledge
- Reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action
- Helps to improve WHAT and HOW
- Reflection consolidates understanding of problem and helps you to invent better solutions
- Critical Incidents: cause coach to understand event by examining underlying trends and motives
- APPRECIATION - ACTION - REAPPRECIATION
or
IDENTIFICATION - SIMILARITIES? - FRAME AND REFRAME - CONSEQUENCES OF SOLUTIONS - CONSEQUENCES DESIRED
or
DESCRIBE - INFORMING - CONFRONTING - RECONSTRUCTING

Understanding the Experience, by Peter Jackson on ijebcm
- Reflection works because it helps to:
i) Balance learning by experience and generate new learning
ii) Objective stance
iii) Perspective of overall goals in relation to actions
iv) Develop capability to react more quickly and effectively to future challenges

Reflective Practice, by Cropley et al (2012) on SCUK
- Coaches operate in complex social and ambiguous environments
- Role is beyond prep for athletes to managerial, admin etc all underpinned by ability to develop and manage interpersonal relationships
- Many approaches to learning are valued to help coaches develop theoretical and practical knowledge required to be sensitive to, and better cope with, the peculiarities, intricacies and ambiguities of coaching
- We don't habitually learn from experience but instead experience has to be examined, analyzed and considered to shift knowledge
- NGBs should create opportunities for coaches to reflect with others

Reflecting on Reflection by Knowles et al (2006) on tandfonline.com
- too often reflection has a negative focus. Reflect on positive and negative experiences that also consider competitive process and their role within it

Reflective Practice by Irwin et al (2005) on tandfonline.com
​- most important resource to coach development is a mentor

Recently I tweeted the following..

Reflection is a tool that I am always keen to maintain so as to avoid falling into the trap of 'standing still' with my coaching and creating the best learning environment for my players. However, the more I thought about it I realised that it had been some years since I had looked into reflection properly so as to consider the literature that is already out there. Whilst nowhere near exhaustive, the following represents my notes from that research. I find it highly useful to reflect on a micro level (after each session) as well as macro (the whole season).

Context
The coaching process continues to evolve. It is far more than just preparing athletes for competition and by the very nature of their profession, coaches operate in a complex social and ambiguous environment (Bowes & Jones, 2006; Fletcher and Scott, 2010). 

"Many approaches to learning are valued to help coaches develop theoretical and practical knowledge required to be sensitive to, and better cope with, the peculiarities, intricacies and ambiguities of coaching" (Jones & Wallace, 2005)

What is reflection?
Reflection is the process of examining past practice and experience so as to improve learning. It is a form of problem-solving (Hatton & Smith, 1995) involving the thought and exploration of a concept or event (Gray, 2007).

Reflection-in-action sees coaches reflect on the issue as it presents itself, utilising experience and problem-solving to create and try out solutions. Rather, reflection-on-action occurs after the event with a view to future improvement. (Furlong & Maynard, 1995; Hatton & Smith, 1995; Mitchel, 2013).

Why reflect?
Reflection helps to turn experience into knowledge (Gilbert & Trudel, 2001)

It links professional knowledge and practice (Anderson, Knowles and Gilbourne, 2004)

Reflective practices helps a coach to consolidate understanding of the problem and to invent better or more general solutions (Furlong & Maynard, 1995).

Jackson (2004) explains that reflection works because it:
Balance learning by experience and generate new learning
Objective stance when viewing your experience
Perspective of overall goals in relation to actions
Develop Capability to react more quickly and effectively to future challenges.

We don't habitually learn from experience, but instead experience has to be examined, organised and considered so as to shift knowledge (Cropley, Miles & Peel, 2012)

How?
Barnett (1995) and Kidman & Hanrahan (1997) presented the following five step process:
1. Identification of problem
2. Determination of similarities to other situations
3. Frame and reframe the problem
4. Anticipate possible consequences or implications  of the various solutions
5. Determine if the anticipate consequences are desired

Francis (1995) also presented a structure for reflective journal writing:
1. Describe - what did I do?
2. Informing - what does this mean?
3. Confronting - how did I come to be this way?
4. Reconstructing - how could I do this differently?

Coaches should be encourages to reflect on both positive and negative experiences that also consider the competitive process and their role within it (Knowles et al, 2006)

The most important resource for coach development is mentoring (Irwin et al, 2004)

NGB's should create opportunities for coaches to reflect with others (Cropley et al, 2012)

Further reading
Others can explain this considerably better than I, the basis of my reading on the topic were the following articles:

https://www.sportscoachuk.org/sites/default/files/Reflective-Practice-Report_0.pdf

https://coachgrowth.wordpress.com/2013/07/27/reflection-as-a-coach-development-tool/

http://ijebcm.brookes.ac.uk/documents/vol02issue1-paper-04.pdf 

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14623940600688423#abstract


http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/1462394042000270718