The Effects of Previous Athletic Experience on Error Detection and Identification Abilities in Novice and Experienced Coaches

Abstract

<p> Qualitative research exploring the development of coaching skills and knowledge suggests that this development begins with early athletic involvement. Unfortunately, the quantitative research exploring the association between athletic involvement and coaching abilities has not been able to identify a clear and causal relationship. This thesis investigates the relationship between previous athletic experience and current perceptual-cognitive coaching skills in novice and experienced gymnastics coaches using a quantitative experimental paradigm. Novice and experienced provincial and national level gymnastics coaches with and without experience competing at the provincial or national level participated in this study. In Experiment 1, twenty-three coaches completed a Knowledgebase Task and an Error Identification task. The data demonstrated that experienced coaches performed better on the knowledgebase task (F(1,19)=7.113, p. =0.016) and the Error Identification task than the novice coaches (F(1,18)=14.916, p. =0.001). While there were no performance differences on either task for experienced coaches with either significant or minimal athletic histories, novice coaches without previous athletic experience outperformed the novice coaches with previous athletic experience when asked to identify the initial error in a flawed gymnastics sequence (F(1,18)=5.338,p. =0.03). This counterintuitive result was further explored in Experiment 2. It was hypothesized that the nature of the knowledge on which the novice coaches rely differed based on their athletic histories. Specifically, novice coaches without athletic experience would rely to a greater degree on explicit knowledge whereas novice coaches with previous athletic experience would rely upon implicit knowledge acquired while an athlete. The results of Experiment 2 did not support this hypothesis. While this thesis was able to develop further insight into the relationship between previous athletic experience and current perceptual-cognitive coaching abilities, no clear and causal conclusions were drawn. Additional research is required to fully understand this complex and multi-dimensional relationship.</p>