Problem Based Coaching

Age Appropriate Coaching from the FA & Problem Based Coaching


Continually seeking to become a better coach and to learn as much about the topic as I can, I embarked on the FA’s new Age Appropriate Coaching courses and have so far completed the Introductory Course (1 day) and the Modules 1 and 2 (4 days each).

I was interested to see an alternative approach to coaching - one that places the player / pupil / PERSON at the centre of the process.

This seems only right given that it is the player, not the coach, who takes the field in a game situation.

The courses initially work upon “Developing the Environment” (Module 1) and looks at how to create games and practices that allow players to use techniques, movements and decisions that are required in the game of football (soccer) but which are not necessarily ‘The Game’ itself.
The course looks at involving players in determining the size and shape of the area to be used, the rules for the various games they can play with rewards / points decided by the participants.
It looks very closely at why children, especially, play football (or any sport come to that) and, as we all know, when asked, they will say it is for fun, to be with their mates and to learn something new.
It is rarely about winning championships or cups although, rest assured, in the games the children will nearly always strive to win (strangely, without being hollered at by a het up group of spectator-parents/grandparents / associated others from the sidelines).

Coaching has been identified as ‘Looking for what you do not wish to see and listening for what you do not wish to hear’ (Vince Lombardi).

In Module 1 we were consistently encouraged to ‘Catch them doing something well/good/correct’.

In Module 2 (Developing the Practice) we look at how the practices can be developed to be football-like and how players can get the opportunities to build football game-specific memories and enhance their assessment, interpretation, tactical and predictive skills. It looks at small sided games, but not always of even sides - overloads and under-loads where players have to work as they do in a competitive game and where the ebb and flow of competition does not always bring you face to face with equal numbers.

Decision making and planning for what may happen next and what they (the players) can do to counteract what is happening is at the heart of the course.

Questioning by the coach to guide discovery by the players to think about what they are doing and why and what the problems that face them is a key to helping to develop players that will be able to understand the game better and, as a result, become better tacticians, able to deal with a multitude of changing patterns and problems as they get older.

Google this…
Discussing the topic of questioning, we were recommended to investigate (for investigate I always substitute the word “Google” !) “Bloom’s Taxonomy”.

This is a categorised structure of questioning which requires increasing application of ‘brain power’ to arrive at an answer.

So, when I ‘Googled’ I discovered a mine of information about Mr Bloom and his findings.
In 1956 Benjamin Bloom, with other educational psychologists, identified that over 95% of test questions encountered by students required them to think only at the lowest possible level - the recall of information.

Bloom then identified that there were 6 levels within the “cognitive domain” (i.e. what the brain perceives), moving from low to increasingly high and more complex abstract mental levels: Knowledge, Comprehension, Application, Analysis, Synthesis and Evaluation.

Classroom or Practice Field?
From here I discovered something called Problem Based Learning, primarily aimed at Teachers in traditional education. This seeks to apply the increasingly complex mental skills to allow (school) students to actively participate in their own learning and so become better as problem solvers in today’s (and Tomorrow’s) world.

The concept takes what is described as an “ill-structured problem” and requires the classroom teacher to become a ‘facilitator and coach’ rather than merely an instructor.

An “ill-structured problem” can be recognised as challenges with more than one possible solution. The pupils are encouraged to discover the solutions to the problems and as such, become much more aware of how they arrived at a solution and are therefore more likely to recall it in future, when the need arises.

So, from what we explored on the FA courses, the game of soccer is clearly an “ill-formed problem”. It ebbs and flows and changes constantly in a game based upon predictive skills and pro-active intent within a competitive structure (i.e. there is a “reason” to need to understand how to play the game).

“Tell Me and I Forget……….”
I read somewhere once that people forget AT LEAST 60% of what they are told.
The rest of the quote above is “…..show me and I will remember, involve me and I will understand”.

As coaches, we are often so desperate to help the players develop that we can be tempted to just give them a list of things that they need to know and remember.

But if the 60% ‘rule’ above is true, they will forget most of it anyway.

If we can engage with the principles of Problem Based Learning and set games / practices which help replicate the ‘problems’ the players face in a game and then plan our questioning at appropriate times to draw reasoning and thought, evaluation, understanding and prediction from our players, I believe that we will all help to develop more imaginative, creative and unpredictable players for the future.

If, at the grassroots level we can improve the quality of the base of the pyramid, surely it must percolate up to the higher levels of the game and eventually provide us with an international team of which we can be proud.

My view of the professional game is that whilst the ‘English’ game is (mainly) linear, predictable and two dimensional, I see continental players who are able to create and exploit space through imaginative movement supplemented by the decision making of their team mates who recognise where and when to support, when to pass to players and when to use ‘space’ as an extra player and which is almost always more attractive to watch.

As a grassroots coach, if I can influence the way players are able to play the game and to become artists rather than automatons, then I will be happy that I have ‘done my bit’ for the English game.