Observation, evaluation and coaching: the local orderliness of ‘seeing’ performance (original) (raw)
Related papers
This paper intends to examine the coaching philosophy of an elite level Rugby League coach through ethnographic principles with the intention of demonstrating an intimate understanding of such a personal and significant element of a coach‟s character. Data was collected during an extended period of field research in and around the professional rugby league setting during which progressive observations were made leading to focused interviews. The interviews referred back to these observations to sharpen the focus of the interview experience for the researcher and the respondent. The first author also draws upon his experience as a professional chef where there were many characters vying for attention in a pressured situation. Reference to this previous experience in life acknowledges that qualitative researchers enter new situations with an already formed stock of knowledge which may inform what they see. In this case the former life of working in a professional kitchen is positively embraced to compare and contrast the nature of being a professional chef with the nature of being a professional sports coach. The paper concludes that interpreting data from the senses may be one key to understanding concepts of excellence and quality between these two worlds – and therein, that one may inform the other.
Complicity, performance, and the ‘doing’ of sports coaching: An ethnomethodological study of work
The Sociological Review, 2019
Recent attempts to ‘decode’ the everyday actions of coaches have furthered the case for sports coaching as a detailed site of ‘work’. Adhering to Harold Garfinkel’s ethnomethodological project, the aim of this article is to deconstruct contextual actors’ interactions, paying specific attention to the conditions under which such behaviours occur. The article thus explores the dominant taken-for-granted social rules evident at Bayside Rovers Football F.C. (pseudonym), a semi-professional football club. A 10-month ethnomethodologically informed ethnography was used to observe, participate in and describe the Club’s everyday practices. The findings comprise two principal ‘codes’ through which the work of the Club was manifest: ‘to play well’ and ‘fitting-in’. In turn, Garfinkel’s writings are used as a ‘respecification’ of some fundamental aspects of coaches’ ‘unnoticed’ work and the social rules that guide them. The broader value of this article not only lies in its detailed presentati...
Coordination in sports teams -ethnographic insights into practices of video analysis in football
The article deals with the performance of collaborative activities by sports teams. It sheds light on the knowledge stocks and skills that underlie team coordination and illustrates how these knowledge stocks and skills are imparted in training. A particular focus is on training procedures involving video recordings, which teams use to analyse and reflect on their performance, to identify coordination problems as well as possibilities to solve them, and to generate new knowledge for the future reorganisation of play. To address the research interests, the article draws on concepts derived primarily from sociological practice theories. By stressing the collective and corporeal dimensions as well as the constitutive role of (technological) artefacts in social processes, these theories are very well suited to analysing video-mediated coordination processes in sports teams. The article builds on data gathered through ethnographic research in the field of high-performance football, a sport in which performance analysis by means of videos has become established as a central component of training over the last two decades and has led to major modifications in the practices of play.
Coaches as Phenomenologists: Para-Ethnographic Work in Sport
How migHt (and sHould) a performance study of sport differ from other sorts of performance studies? Can and should we transpose methods sharpened on subjects like theater, carnival, ritual, and music onto athletic activities? Will performance studies of sport look like other sorts of performance studies or might sports teach us something distinctive about performance, something not available in our encounters with other sorts of performance genres? From my perspective as an anthropologist interested in sports, I feel that performance studies of sports should not look like performance studies of other genres, just as they should not always resemble each other. Of course, some types of sports research in performance studies will more closely resemble other genres-we might fruitfully engage as 'performances' things like audience-performer relationships (e.g.,
The coaching process in professional youth football: An ethnography of practice
2001
My name resides on the cover, but the production of this piece of work would not have been possible without help from numerous sources. In particular, the coaches and players at Albion, and all the other coaches who let me observe their work and ask irmumerable questions. A special debt of gratitude is owed to my supervisor Dr. Kathy Armour whose clarity of thought and guidance has ensured a smooth road to the completion of the project. My family, Vic and Bradley, who have given love and support throughout, and without whom this endeavour would have been all the more trying. I need to also thank Dr Robyn Jones, who first mooted the idea of undertaking a PhD, and who has contributed to the completion of the project. Finally, Dr Dave Cook, whose detached analysis and insight has been often and greatly appreciated.
Coaches As Phenomenologists: Para-Ethnographic Work in Sports.
If performance studies is to explore sports from the perspective of athletes, coaches form a potential pool of allies as they are engaged in their own ‘para-ethnographic’ studies of athletes’ performance. This paper examines developmental coaching, that is, the teaching of skills, as a form of applied phenomenology, drawing on examples from the author’s fieldwork on capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian dance and martial art. In particular, the paper explores an instructor’s intervention when the author was trying to learn to plantar bananeira (‘to plant a banana tree’), the capoeira version of a handstand. The intervention had several stages, all revealing an acute perception of how the learning experience was structured: the coach pantomimed incorrect practice to increase the author’s self awareness, diagnosed what part of the skill I might be able to learn next, and created a tailored exercise to shift the author’s perceptions. Studying this sort of coach-athlete interaction helps us to better understand performance traditions, but it also poses a series of challenges in terms of shifting our scale, recognising that we will not produce certain forms of theoretical narrative, and taking phenomenological analysis seriously.
This paper deals with video-based match and performance analysis in high-performance youth football. It draws on empirical material gathered during ethnographic research conducted with two teams organized within the framework of the youth academy of a German First Division football club. The material is analysed from a perspective inspired by sociological practice theories as well as the theoretical concept of subjectivation. The paper investigates the differ-ent contexts and practices of training in which videos occur and sheds light on their implications for the organization of play as well as for the development of players and coaches. Using long-term participatory observations and narrative-ly designed qualitative interviews, it is revealed that videos serve different and heterogeneous purposes within different practices. Thus, this paper details not only the intended and obvious effects of video analysis, such as the optimization of play and training, but also its unintended and widely ignored side effects. Key words: youth football, video analysis, sociological practice theories, subjectivation, ethnography, figuration
The Coaching Process in Football – A qualitative perspective
This study aims to understand what the coaches observe in the game, and how they evaluate and make their intervention based on this observation. The participants were 8 experienced First Portuguese League coaches. Semi-structured interviews were carried out and the data were analysed through the technique of content analysis. The software QSR NVivo 9 was used in coding the transcripts of the interviews. According to these coaches to effectively observe and analyze the game it is crucial to have a detailed knowledge of the game and of the individual characteristics of players. They consider that the most important aspects to observe in the game are: i) the 4 moments of the game; ii) set pieces; iv) individual characteristics of players; v) random aspects of the game. Coaches have the perception that over the years their observation has become more effective and they value different aspects in the game. They consider that the factors responsible for the evolution of their observations...
My presentation plunges into the performative world of characters in non-league football, where my PhD research is situated. Adopting the role of Team Manager as Storyteller, I will give an account of THE VIPERS, who are a sub-set of players within the football team I was immersed in, during an extensive period of fieldwork. Two infographic artworks guide me through the tale; ‘The Last Soccer’ explaining the context of my research, followed by ‘Dressing Room Transitions’ where we discover the masks behind which otherwise mild-mannered individuals find new freedoms to act out their alter-egos whenever they step onto a football pitch. Donning the mask in the dressing room, players get their ‘game face’ on, which for THE VIPERS is licence to elevate physical tackles into physical attack, wherever the ball may be. Infographic 2 is also a pictorial autoethnography of my roles in life, as a researcher and as a professional within the football world. The episode when THE VIPERS revealed themselves came 6 months after my honeymoon period of entering the field, when I was totally lost in the field. Exiting the field was challenging, but now achieved, allows me to tell this tale.