Focus: what the teacher or coach controls that has most effect on student/player learning

 Physical Education teachers and sport coaches have in common the development of a curriculum (program of learning) and the method (pedagogy) to teach the content of the curriculum. This might be called 'educative purpose'.

According to Schmoker (2011), research directs all involved in education to three elements that need to be in focus for educative purpose: 'What to teach?', 'How to teach it?' and 'Authentic literacy'.

What to teach

Physical education programs package the content, pacing, spacing and progression of learning into a design called a curriculum. Sport programs similar package the content, pacing, spacing and progression of player development (learning) into a curriculum. Many community clubs now provide coaches with the curriculum to teach their 'age-group', effectively creating a coherently progressive curriculum framework as we find in use in schools. According to Marzano (2003), a viable curriculum is the most significant factor that is within the control of the institution (school, sporting club) that affects learning. 

In creating a curriculum, in physical education and sport coaching environments time is limited but also somewhat known. For example, in middle school in Australia it is common for students to have 2x1 hour physical education classes/week for a 40 week school year. PE teachers therefore get 80 hours minus interruptions to effect learning in PE in a year. In a summer/winter sport calendar, the middle school student playing (e.g., football: AFL) probably has 2x1hour training sessions/week for a 24 week season (including pre-season and finals), and so 48 hours of 'practice' and around 14-18 games to progress player development (learning). Both coach and teacher as sport educators need to be clear on what is essential and therefore highest priority and can be achieved in the time available to produce a long term result (learning), as time is limited, and learning takes time. What to teach is one's content knowledge.

How to teach

In schools and increasingly in junior and youth sport setting, teachers and coaches are provided a curriculum for the age group/year level. Where this occurs, 'How to teach?' is the most important factor within control of the teacher or coach in how much as well as what is learnt (Colvin & Johnson, 2007). Therefore, improving pedagogical knowledge is a central element in improving 'student' learning gains (Odden & Wallace, 2003). (for ideas on elements to consider when planning the pedagogy of a lesson or if a coach a practice session, see here and here on teaching styles, and about elements that optimise learning to consider when planning here. How to teach is one's pedagogical knowledge..

It is suggested that there is a 'formula' that when implemented consistently improves learning. That is, the educator ensures students have learnt a 'segment' before moving to the next segment (Schmoker, 2011). It is a principal adopted in video game design as 'levelling up'. I have previously blogged here about what t means for games teaching pedagogy to think like a game developer 

Authentic literacy

This means purposeful reading, writing and talking. For example, note taking forces attention and helps focus. Studies on learning have shown that actively listening to then summarise helps develop understanding and remembering the information later. Thus, whether making notes from listening or reading improves learning as making notes requires cognitive effort which enhances the encoding of information and understanding (Bligh, 2000; Chang & Ju, 2014; Kiewra, 2002; Rahmani & Sadeghi, 2011). Craig Harrison summarises why a notebook is an athlete's best friend here.

Master teachers and coaches have pedagogical-content knowledge depth

Shulman (1986, 1987) suggested depth of pedagogical content knowledge, that is, the combination of pedagogical and content knowledge combining to 'guide' the understanding of the teaching and learning processes of specific matter with specific learners, distinguishes the 'master teacher'. Depth of pedagogical content knowledge is a predictor of the quality of teaching and student learning (see e.g. Baumert et al., 2010; Iserbyt et al., 2020).