Expert Pedagogue: A Myth?

My apologies for the delay between my blogs, other university subjects have been taking up a lot of my time of late.

Recently, as part of the assessment for this unit, I (along with 3 of my classmates) made a coaching video looking at the 4 key skills in the sport of AFL. These were kicking, hand passing, bouncing and marking. I was the one responsible for the coaching of kicking, specifically the drop punt.

For me, I find I'm able to do the skill pretty well. In my mind I can go through the steps in a way that makes sense to me and then do it. When it came to coaching the skill, I found I really had to think hard about how I went about it. Our athlete didn't have an AFL background so the skill needed to be learnt by him and coached by us, from scratch. To combat this we used coaching methods mentioned in our research such as the SPIR method:
S: Show - name the skill, demonstrate three times and provide three coaching points.
P: Practice - Have players practice the skill immediately.
I: Instruct - Give feedback on their performance based on what they have been taught.

R: Reward - Encourage and reward effort and achievement.

Although this method was very helpful, I still couldn't help but feel a little bit lost and looking back I think the biggest thing I found, which in hindsight makes complete sense, is that there are glaring differences between coaching and telling an athlete through a skill.

Overall I think as a group we did well to have a bit of fun but still make a useful coaching tool. Also, those interested in seeing a short clip and reading a bit more about our coaching video should head over to Aidan's blog, it's well worth a read.

As I mentioned, we used several resources in the development of out coaching video, some of the ones we came across were quite dated. Looking at the difference in not only the technique of a skill but also the coaching method, it's easy to say just coach it, but the process is tricky.
It made me think about the term expert pedagogue; is it even possible? Or is it just an oxymoron?

John Wooden was an amazing coach, without question. But was he an expert pedagogue?

I think now more than ever, coaches will always be playing catch up with innovation and technology, they will always be students to their profession. The prime example of this came from the discussion within the tutorial sessions in week 13. iPhones, live video feed and the endless information capture/sharing platforms are continually opening new pathways for coaches to diversify their methods and because of this I think the term 'expert pedagogue' contradicts itself. There can certainly be excellent pedagogues (John Wooden for example), but I think its impossible for one to become an expert pedagogue purely because the coaching world never stands still for long enough for an individual to completely master it before it changes again.