Coach Developer Profile

Michelle De Highden
The power of networking and systems thinking

Michelle is the HP Coach Development lead at the Australian Institue of Sport.

With more than 35 years of experience, Michelle has coached at both development and World Championship level. She completed a Master of Sport Coaching in 2021 and the ICCE/NSSU Coach Developer Academy in Japan in 2020, drawing on both to incorporate global best practice into the design of national and international coach development programs.

Michelle leads the AIS Women in High Performance Coaching (WiHPC) project, which addresses the underrepresentation of women in high-performance coaching and works to improve their experiences in the system. This work has received international recognition. In 2023, she was a keynote speaker at the Global Coach Conference in Singapore, and in 2025 she presented major sessions and workshops at the Athens Conference.

The AIS also collaborated with Sport Ireland to support INSEP by delivering a Women in Performance program over four months. Funded by Erasmus, this included a Women in Performance Conference at INSEP in France and a five-day workshop at the AIS European Training Centre in Italy.

Michelle is an experienced high-performance coach and coach development facilitator, passionate about optimising coach development at the high-performance level, particularly for underrepresented groups.

Michelle’s work is characterised by close attention to detail while maintaining a clear view of the bigger picture. Much of her work at the AIS and with international partners has focused on improving systems that attract, develop and celebrate women in coaching. This has involved bringing together NSOs, coach development managers, coach developers and coaches.

One of Michelle’s key strengths is building and strengthening networks that help others grow and succeed.

How did you get into the coach developer role?

I think I’ve always developed coaches. I started coaching as a 16-year-old, and when I turned, 17, we moved to the middle of Queensland, where I ran a club. I led the club with my mum, and then I dragged my brother in. From that time on I have always supported the development of others, whether it was through mentoring, or whether it’s through coaching courses.

The longest time I spent at a program was my time at MLC Gymnastics Club in Victoria, where I was the manager, the director, the head coach, the leader. A key role in all of that was mentoring and supporting the development of our workforce. I have had an equally long role on committees having volunteered my time to committees for both the Queensland and Victorian associations.

It wasn’t until Christine Nash interviewed (1) me that I recalled that one of my very first independent studies for my university degree was to look at coach education. So, the interest was there from the word go.

There were a couple of pivot points in the latter part of my coaching career that elevated my role in coach development. One pivot point was attending the International Council of Coaching Excellence (ICCE) Coach Developer Academy in Japan. Another was stepping into the high-performance coach development manager role at Gymnastics Australia. So, I think there was a graduated investment to coach development becoming my primary focus. This has culminated in my current position as a senior lead in coach development at the AIS.

 

National Coach Developer Academy (Tokyo)

Joining Cohort 6 of the ICCE / National Coach Developer Academy (NCDA) in Tokyo I think that was real pivot point in my career in the sense that I found a place, I found my people, if you like. I found a place where there were people doing similar things in a completely different context but were invested in the work that I really enjoy, and to which I felt I could provide a lot of value to. It came at just the right time in my career.

I had the pleasure of presenting a keynote at the ICCE 14th Global Coach Conference (GCC) in Singapore and presenting again at the 15th GCC in Athens in 2025. I can link these experiences as a presenter back to my participation in Cohort 6 of the NCDA in Tokyo.

Masters degree in HP coaching

Going back to study at the University of Queensland to do my Masters was another important step in my development.

That provided me an opportunity to reflect deeply on what I’d learned through experience. Doing my Masters in High Performance Coaching enabled me to put a framework around the concepts I’d learnt on the job through 35 years of coaching.

When you spend your life being a coach, it is easy to undersell or underrepresent what we’ve learned on the job, because it’s hard to quantify. The study challenged me to think differently. It definitely was quite instrumental in my development.

Evolution of a coach developer philosophy

Early on I think I did a lot of things without understanding why I did them. My philosophy as it relates to coach development has evolved.

I think the number one pillar of my philosophy is to build relationships. I know I thrive on building relationships and connections and conversations with others. I’d much rather collaborate with someone than do it by myself.

As relationships build, a network of friends and colleagues follows. Building the network needs to be intentional and requires an investment of time.

Supporting learners how to learn is critical. So, I think there’s two parts to that:

  • Fostering their curiosity and lifelong learning
  • And supporting them by building a scaffold that can be removed as the coach moves towards their goal.

These are important as they highlight a problem in some coach development that I see. That is too little emphasis is placed on building self-reliance. This applies to programs as it does to individuals, whether they are coaches or athletes. If coaches and athletes can seek out their own learning and make their own decisions, they’re going to be far better off for it.

The fourth and final thing to consider when helping others is the importance of your own lived experience. Reflecting and looking through this lens of lived experience enables you to access many relevant experiences and stories.

Experiences that have shaped your role as a coach developer

I have been a high-performance coach, but I started at grassroots. One thing that always sits with me whether it’s designing a new program, or whether it’s looking at something to support others, is what would the 16-year-old Michelle in the middle of Queensland, running a club by herself need? Whilst I coached at the highest level my ability to reflect back to where I started always grounds me.

I think that’s really important. I was never a national team athlete myself. But I started coaching very early. I was very deliberate in doing the degree that I did and combining teaching with it. I could very easily have just done the undergrad degree and focused on human movement, but human movement education was done intentionally to make me a better coach, because that’s what I wanted to do.

The last thing which has really evolved over the last four years is the work I have done in designing programs and frameworks. This has helped me take a systems approach to my work. Whether it is a program or a coach I am always eager to see how they interplay with the ecosystem in which they work and how this interplay can be optimised.

What do you enjoy most about the role?

When I was coaching and running a club there was too much going on for me to really enjoy it. One thing though that gave me a lot of satisfaction was to use my creative thinking to come up with innovative solutions.

In my current work I get a lot of satisfaction from exploring how an initiative will play out at the system level and thinking about how we might influence others to support this way of thinking. The other side of that is being challenged personally to think differently. I don’t have all the answers.

How has your one-to-one relationship with others changed?

In my current role, one-on-one interactions look really different to what they did five years ago. Going back ten years I felt a responsibility to have all the answers. My current role is less focussed on one-to-one relationships.

Running workshops with others I am part of a wider conversation with others, aimed at encouraging the investment of women coaches in their own growth. Six months down the track I am able to follow up on the progress of individuals.

An important part of my role involves working with coach developers, coach development leaders and facilitators. I am able to see in action the impact of workshops we have run for these people and provide additional support or scaffolding as requested. This approach is very much reliant on the individuals stepping in and taking greater responsibility for their own development.

What does coach support look like in HP sport?

The key is helping those who are in the closest circle of influence with the coach. For example, pathway managers.

An important initiative in the last four years has been helping coaches with individual coach development plans with the assistance of resources we have developed. That has involved up skilling and building the capability of people to assist coaches with their plans but to do that in a collaborative way because the coach has to own their own plan.

This bespoke approach to supporting coaches is respectful of what they have already learned. It’s not about re-teaching them what they already know but rather challenging them so they own the solution.

Not every coach is in a HP Institute or National Program. Many are in clubs. This is where we circle back to the systems approach and the need to support the organisations who employ the coaches.

Differences in developing HP coaches and community coaches

The context is very different when comparing performance coaches and community coaches. The approach to working with the two groups is different. Coaches in a HP setting work longer hours and are likely to have more support . There are commonalities too. The importance of building connections and networks is just as important to both groups. The common theme for both groups is they are still developing coaches. As I said previously, helping coaches to become independent problem solvers is relevant to all coaches.

One thing that stood out in one piece of research we did, is that coach development facilitators and leaders are just as lonely as high-performance coaches. Hence the importance of a network. To foster ways in which they can connect we built a platform so individuals can share their resources with other coach developers who are encouraged to follow up with their peers for more information. We have been successful in promoting dialogues across different sports and getting people to step out of their own bubbles.

Please expand on your international work

One very interesting piece of work evolved out of happenstance. This involved the AIS European Training Centre and an Erasmus grant. It was a joint project connecting the AIS with INSEP and Sport Ireland.
We utilised the insights from Women in HP Coaching Leaky Pipeline Action Plan and utilised the four strategic levers to build a week-long program to support INSEP with their gender equity programs.

The project evolved into a three-way partnership, an international conference and the hosting of 25 people at the AIS European Training Centre in Varese in Italy.

This was an excellent opportunity for me to connect with leading researchers and people driving change in the same space I am working in. Events like this keep prompting my own thinking.

The Women in HP Coaching Program (WiHPC) initiative has targeted system change with representation and experience of women coaching within the HP system in Australia. We have more than doubled the number of women in head coach leadership roles in Australia. While several significant factors have contributed to this result, an important factor has been shifting several things at a system level. It is hard to measure impact at an individual level, but the overall result is definitely in the right direction.

The system is layered. There are gaps between the board chair, the CEO and the coach in the field. That potentially means a big gap between the decision makers and HP coaches. How do we bridge that gap? An approach we have taken is to help leaders, managers and decision makers understand what the lived experience looks like. Leadership underpins the four strategic levers and the ability to nudge the system.

For more information
Do you have a mentor?

I would consider you as one of my mentors Gene. It’s interesting. We support others in their growth but we don’t necessarily seek that support for ourselves. In the last 12 to 18 months, I consider I’m at a point where I think peer support from others is really important to me. Someone who will challenge me and my thinking – particularly in the work I do.

I have a lot of people I connect with. Bob Crudginton is one. He was a National Team Coach for Softball and has been a HP manager for several sports as well as an ICCE/NCDA accredited coach developer.

My need for a mentor has evolved. In the last few years, I have reached out to peers because often a mentor we see as someone who is the keeper of knowledge. So, I deliberately developed a network. People like Helene Wilson at HP Sport New Zealand.

There are several others, so I think what I’ve developed is a network of peers. And I think I’ve been able to utilise them to support the work I’ve done and myself personally. But I probably still do need to have someone, who is a trusted friend to really challenge and, help question the pieces that maybe I’m not questioning myself on.

TOP 6 COACH DEV TIPS
  1. Intentionally build your own network. Own it, and build it, and invest in it.
  2. It’s a journey, and not every conversation, session, program may have an immediate outcome, but what you might do is sow and plant some seeds for the future. So, recognise that if you’re an outcome focused person, you might want to walk away with something, but actually it’s okay not to.
  3. Aim to be a lifelong learner. And if you go about that the right way, be curious and learn to ask the right questions. That takes experience but also understand who does the question belong to. Am I asking a question because I want to know something, or am I asking the question because that’s going to help others think more deeply?
  4. Model what you say. So, if you’re advocating that others become lifelong learners, then you need to do what you are suggesting others do.
  5. Be clear that not every problem is yours to solve. Particularly the personal problems of others.
  6. And the last one is ‘think systems’. No one operates alone. Everyone is part of a system, whether it’s a club or a team or a sport. So, what is the ripple in and out? How do the parts interact and affect each other?
Reference

Nash, Christine. (2023). Developing Sport Coaches. Routledge.

Coach Developer Profile

Liam McCarthy, PhD.
Rethinking Coach Development: Inquiry and the Power of Assessment

Coach development is often described as programs, qualifications and competencies. Liam McCarthy sees it differently. For him, it is about inquiry, experience, reflection — and rethinking how we use assessment.
In this wide-ranging conversation, Liam reflects on how he entered the field, what he has learned working with national sporting organisations around the world, and why assessment may be the most underused lever in coach learning.

Liam is a Reader in Sport Coaching in the Carnegie School of Sport at Leeds Beckett University. He has observed that assessment which is in the forefront of coaches’ minds when they undertake a course has been little studied by researchers and underappreciated for its potential contribution to learning. His mission has been to change all that.

The International Council for Coaching Excellence (ICCE) engaged Liam to provide fresh thinking about how coach developers might best use assessment. He has also edited the go-to book on assessment in coach education and development.

Excellent examples of the integration of inquiry approaches to learning, project-based learning and assessment embedded into the learning experiences, can be seen in work Liam has done with the Premier League, and Swim England. These programmes are at the cutting edge of coach learning and development.

In his spare time, Liam runs marathons (for fun!) and enjoys family life watching his young daughter grow.

An Accidental Entry into Coach Development

“I didn’t set out to become a coach developer,” Liam admits.

He graduated around the time London was awarded the 2012 Olympic Games. In the decade leading up to the Games, significant investment flowed into minority sports in the UK, including handball and volleyball. With host-nation participation guaranteed, these sports needed infrastructure — particularly coaching infrastructure.

Handball advertised for a “Head of Coaching.” The title sounded grander than the salary, but Liam applied. He had a sports science and management degree, experience coaching soccer, and a broad understanding of sport. That was enough.
The role was ambitious: build courses, create pathways, and support a workforce of coaches ranging from school leaders and teachers to community volunteers and performance coaches. Many had little formal support in a sport that was under-resourced and relatively unknown in the UK.

“I stepped into the role and figured it out,” he says. “That was my entry into coach development — a world I didn’t even know existed.” He spent five years in the role.

The bridge from research to practice

While working in handball, Liam began a part-time Master’s degree to help him navigate the challenges he was encountering. That led to self-funded doctoral research and, eventually, a university career.

Academic roles in the UK typically involve three elements:

  • Teaching
  • Research
  • Knowledge exchange (working with industry partners)

It was this third element that resonated most strongly.

“Because I’d worked in an NGB, I felt drawn to helping people like my former self solve real problems,” he explains. Liam is a strong advocate for using research findings to benefit practice.

Over time, knowledge exchange became his primary focus. He now collaborates with a range of organisations including the English FA, the Premier League, US Soccer, UEFA, FIFA, Swim England, World Athletics, the European Handball Federation, Netball and US Tennis.

Despite differences in sport and geography, he sees recurring patterns. “It’s amazing how common the problems are.”

Building Connections the Simple Way

There was no master networking plan. He didn’t set out to be very strategic or to build a network. It was almost accidental.

“I just put myself in rooms with practitioners,” he says. “I asked questions. I listened. I tried to understand their challenges.”

One recurring theme across organisations was assessment. Everyone knew assessment was necessary. Few were confident it was being done well.

That shared concern eventually led to collaborative projects, including a book bringing together perspectives from across sports and countries. “That felt like a really important moment,” he says.

What Makes the Work Meaningful?

For Liam, the highlight is simple: the people.

Sport does not always offer strong financial rewards or ideal working conditions. Many coaches and coach developers stay in the sector because they care deeply about the impact they can have. There is a mismatch between how coaches are remunerated and the huge contribution they make.

“Every Olympian started as a young person in a local club,” he says. “If we want better outcomes at the top, we need better experiences at the beginning.”

That commitment to improving experiences for children and athletes continues to motivate his work.

A Coach Development Philosophy

Liam resists fixed labels, but several principles guide his continually evolving thinking.

First, coaching is complex. It is shaped by context, relationships, culture and politics. It is rarely routine. Because of this, simply delivering solutions (to unknown or at best, poorly formed problems) is insufficient. We have to start by understanding the coaches’ world, who they are and what their job entails. And then if we are lucky enough, we can seek to influence things they do with questions and ideas.

“If coaching is unpredictable and contextual, we can’t start by handing out answers.”

Instead, he believes coach development should focus on three interconnected elements:

  1. Experience – Coaches learn by doing.
  2. Sense-making – They reflect on those experiences, individually and with others.
  3. Insight – New understanding emerges through that process.

Too often, insight is treated as something delivered externally — by course leaders, gurus, academics or policy documents. Yet coaches generate valuable practical knowledge daily.

“We don’t value coaches’ practical knowledge nearly enough.”

Coach development, in his view, should begin by understanding coaches’ realities before introducing new ideas. “What we can’t do is just give them lots of solutions, because we don’t know what the questions are yet,” he emphasises.

Coaching as Inquiry

Liam has long been interested in inquiry-based learning — the idea that education begins with questions rather than answers.

Recently, through work with colleagues in aquatics, he has revisited some of the foundational texts in this area.

“I think coaching is informed guesswork,” he says. “If we start there, it disarms everyone. We’re all experimenting. We’re trying things and adjusting.”

This mindset shifts the emphasis from being right to being curious. Coaching becomes a process of ongoing and gradually more informed experimentation.

The best coaches, he argues, are committed learners. They ask good questions. They are comfortable not knowing.

Assessment: The Untapped Lever

Assessment has been central to Liam’s thinking for nearly two decades. His work with Handball was the genesis of his thinking about assessment.

Early in his career, he developed rich learning experiences for coaches — communities of practice, field-based learning, reflective activities. Yet assessment remained largely unchanged: a final, high-pressure practical test at the end of a course.

“It felt disconnected from learning,” he recalls.
Over time, he began asking a simple but provocative question:

Why spend precious course time doing something that undermines learning?

Assessment became the focus of Liam’s PhD. Through work with organisations such as the English FA and the Premier League, he began exploring alternatives — including project-based assessment, longer-term inquiry tasks, and building evidence of learning over time.

He has become increasingly convinced that assessment and learning should be inseparable. Rather than subtract from valuable learning time, assessment should enhance learning outcomes.

Rather than distinct “assessment moments,” coach development programmes can:

  • Integrate feedback continuously
  • Use real-world projects as evidence
  • Build a longitudinal picture of progress
  • Treat learning activities themselves as assessment

The aim is not to eliminate rigour but to align assessment with the purpose of learning.

“Make assessment a powerful learning experience.”

Just treat the learning activities as the assessment activities and start to build a view of the coaches’ progress over time without any designated assessment moment.

“This approach will give us the biggest opportunity in the future to improve things,” he says.

A Highlight: Project-Led Learning in the Premier League

One of Liam’s proudest achievements has been redesigning the Premier League’s coach development programs. Work he has done over the last seven years.

These programmes serve professional, full-time coaches working in high-performance football clubs. Rather than traditional coursework and testing, the new model centres on two-year, project-led inquiry.
Coaches investigate real challenges in their environments and produce tangible outcomes — policy documents, curriculum redesigns, staff development initiatives, new resources.

Over 130 coaches have completed the programme. It is typically work-based learning because the coaches are working full-time, six days a week.

“They’re changing football through the work they’re doing,” Liam says.
Importantly, these projects serve as assessment — but coaches rarely experience them as such. They are embedded in meaningful work.

At a celebration event, one coach told him:

“I’m always going to frame my practice through projects now.”

That shift — from completing requirements to leading inquiry — is, for Liam, transformative. Reinforcing the message, he says, “I don’t think you ever get there by commanding people to write essays or telling people they need to write a reflective diary.”

The programme has also received academic recognition, including an International Sport Coaching Journal award, demonstrating that rigorous scholarship and meaningful practice can coexist.

Assessment Challenges

Despite promising developments, significant barriers remain.

Cultural Expectations
Globally, assessment is often associated with measurement, judgment and box-ticking. Shifting those deeply ingrained assumptions is difficult.

Legal and Risk Concerns
In some contexts, particularly in the United States, organisations fear that without clear summative assessment moments they may be legally vulnerable.

“It’s really hard to persuade individuals and organisations to break free of traditional assessments because the practices are just so embedded. So, we’re almost ensuring and committing legally to the less safe option. It just sounds bizarre to me,” he remarks.

Liam finds this paradoxical. A one-off competence check does not guarantee safe or expert practice. In some cases, a more sustained, learning-oriented approach may better support safety and quality.

Investing in Coaches

Perhaps most challenging is the financial structure of coach education. Liam gets quite passionate thinking about just how many more crises it will take for us to start investing in coaches rather than trying to profit from coaches.

Coach education is frequently treated as a revenue stream rather than a strategic investment. Coaches — often volunteers — pay substantial fees for qualifications.
“We should be investing millions in coaches and expecting nothing back in financial terms,” Liam argues. “Coaches are so central to sport.”

Without strong coaching, athlete welfare, retention and performance all suffer.

Preparing Novice Coaches

In many countries, 80–90% of registered coaches are beginners or volunteers. They often coach for a short period, frequently linked to their children’s involvement.

These coaches need confidence and clarity early on. Some structured, direct instruction may help — just as beginner players benefit from simple, reduced-complexity practice.

But Liam cautions against staying in that mode too long. When athletes are sufficiently confident with fundamental skills, new challenges should be added. So it should be with coaches. Introduce challenge at the earliest possible opportunity.

If coaches only experience passive learning environments — sitting, listening and accepting ideas uncritically — they may replicate that approach in their own coaching.

“If we want thoughtful, reflective coaches, we need to model that in their development.”

Taking Coach Development to the Next Level

When asked what needs to change, Liam returns to three themes:

  1. Rethink assessment – Integrate it with learning rather than separating it. “Assessment is probably the biggest untapped lever we have.” Pull quote
  2. Invest properly in coaches – Recognise their central role in athlete wellbeing and sport sustainability.
  3. Adopt inquiry-led, work-based models – Help coaches surface meaningful questions before offering solutions.

None of this is easy. Cultural expectations, funding models and institutional inertia are powerful forces. But he believes the opportunity for taking coach development to the next level is significant.

Liam’s recently helped Swim England completely reimagine how coaches are developed. This is a good example of the connection between the mental models that underpin coach development and how coaches go about their work following the course or developmental program.

“In my view if you have a coach education system where at each stage you are asking coaches to uncritically accept a set of predetermined ideas, then coaches will learn that’s what we do – not question or challenge anything. This then trickles down into how coaches support athletes – they have power, ideas about what is right, and the athlete should accept that. And this will all be at the expense of the athlete’s wellbeing.”

Mentorship and Learning from Others

We asked Liam if he had a mentor?
“Probably many,” he says. “None of these ideas are mine alone.”
His thinking has emerged through collaboration, travel, observation and dialogue. If mentorship means learning from others, then it has been a constant — though rarely formal.

He also recognises that the language of mentoring can create hierarchy. In many ways, his approach is consistent: learning is shared, relational and ongoing.

Final Reflections

Liam’s work challenges several deeply embedded mindsets in coach development:

  • Deliver content first.
  • Test it at the end.
  • Expect the unproblematic adoption and implementation of ideas in practice.

Instead he advocates:

  • Starting with coaches’ questions, as they notice and frame them.
  • Recognise there is always novelty at the point of delivery (coaching).
  • Valuing practical knowledge that emerges through coaching.
  • Treating assessment as learning.
  • Investing seriously in coaches.
  • Embracing inquiry over certainty.

For coach developers, the implications are significant. If coaches shape athlete experience — and athlete experience shapes sport’s future — then the design of coach development is not a peripheral concern. It is central.
And perhaps the most powerful place to begin is with a question:

How can we make every part of coach development — especially assessment — a genuine learning experience?

Dig Deeper

Two of Liam’s published papers illuminate in more detail many of the points uncovered in this interview. His work with the Premier League can be seen here. His recent work with Swim England can be seen here.

Feedback: Telling is Not Receiving

Feedback is only as good as the receiver’s willingness to accept it and their ability to do something with it. Effective feedback involves a partnership. In this post we will focus on the receiver and what we can do to create conditions conducive to the acceptance and application of feedback by the receiver.

HANDOUT: A comprehensive handout for CDs & coaches can be found here.  It contains lots of practical tips on helping learners fine tune receiving feedback. 

FEEDBACK: A SHIFT in EMPHASIS

It is all too easy to think that feedback is the same as telling. In this view of feedback an expert provider of feedback makes observations, judgements and tells or shows the learner what to do to drive the learning forward.

The ‘telling’ view of feedback often requires the giver to follow a script or a set way of giving feedback. If only it was that easy!

The ‘feedback sandwich’ (bad-news sandwich) approach to giving feedback is an example (1) of a feedback recipe that is often ineffective diluting the impact of information useful to the learner. Also see here and here for more on the feedback sandwich.

GIVING is NOT RECEIVING

What the provider of feedback does and says is important but only if proper attention is paid to the recipient. The recipient needs to be open to receiving feedback, understand it and have the skills to act on it.

No matter how skilful the giver of feedback is, it is critical that the giver / receiver relationship is one of respect and trust. Dylan Wiliam and Siobhán Leahy in their book Embedding Formative Assessment (1), say

While the quality of feedback does make a difference to how students will respond, what is far more important is the continuing relationship you have with your students, and how they see themselves as learners. (p108, emphasis added)

Notice how the quote shifts the discussion to what the receiver thinks and does (how they see themselves as learners). Giving is not receiving (2).

We often teach people WHAT to learn but not HOW to learn.

THE PILLARS THAT SUPPORT RECEIVING FEEDBACK

Are your learners ready to do something with your carefully thought-out feedback? Here are two preparatory steps that will help to prepare your learners to effectively use your feedback:

  • Build trust and respectful relationships.
  • Provide learners with choice and a voice.

With these foundations, your learners will be better equipped to make decisions and influence outcomes (exercise their agency) related to their learning.
Genuine relationships and empowering learners are important pillars of becoming a better receiver of feedback. These ideas are summarised in the graphic.

You may be thinking this looks like the language of a learner-centred approach. You are spot on. The principles are the same for CDs working with coaches or coaches working with athletes. Yes, time is required to build trust and foster independence.

Ideas for fostering a learner-centred approach are summarised here. I developed this for Gymnastics Australia with input from Michelle De Highden.

HOW to HELP LEARNERS USE FEEDBACK

Feedback can be a powerful teaching intervention, but it doesn’t always lead to improvement and may do more harm than good (6). How the learner reacts depends on how they interpret and value the feedback. How can we look at feedback from the receiver’s point of view?

The answer lies in the giver tuning into what the receiver says (or doesn’t say) and how they respond – does the learner seem motivated or bored; eager to learn or uninterested?  

  • Look for the body language they display. It provides useful feedback to the giver of the feedback. Respond to these subtle (sometimes not too subtle!) messages.
  • If feedback is given to a group, some of the receivers may think it doesn’t apply to them. Be clear about the intended receivers. Open up a direct line of communication with eye and voice contact.
BARRIERS to RECEIVING FEEDBACK

If an athlete sees their whole identity in their sport, then feedback is likely to be received as a personal attack. The athlete with guidance from the coach needs to learn to separate what they do (sport/skill) from who they are as a person.

A second group (which sometimes overlap) who may struggle with receiving feedback are the ‘naturally talented’. This group may include athletes with a fixed mindset.

Reframe feedback as an integral part of learning which is not simply about telling but about collaborating and owning. This is a strategy to shift feedback away from the personal.

SEPARATE the SIGNAL from the NOISE

A receiver of feedback can easily be distracted by noise. The giver may display ‘annoying’ personal mannerisms. Their approach may appear overly confident, bossy or give the impression of being a know-all. The giver who is the source of unwanted noise may cause the receiver to dismiss part or all of the feedback.

The other side of the coin is the giver who is attractive in their manner – a cool communicator. This version of noise may lead the receiver to too easily accept the feedback uncritically bypassing a discussion with the giver that focusses on how the feedback is relevant to the immediate context of the receiver.

Preparing receivers to look beyond the noise will help to ensure important guidance is not lost. An accessible reference with more information on the importance of distinguishing between the message and the messenger and other points related to receiving feedback is available here.

THREE POWERFUL FEEDBACK QUESTIONS

A good way to see feedback from the receiver’s perspective is through the use of three powerful questions. John Hattie a New Zealander and cricket enthusiast now living in Australia, wrote a paper with a fellow researcher Helen Temperley (also a New Zealander) in 2007 (3).

They posed 3 questions that effective feedback must answer. These are shown in the graphic below:

More explanation about the 3 questions and a heap of other of other useful links to online references about feedback can be found here.

The 3 questions provide a platform for givers of feedback to engage the receiver in a way that makes the sharing of feedback a two-way formative activity. This involves the giver explicitly teaching the receiver how to make sense of the 3 questions.

Developing a common language takes time. It is certainly not a one-off instruction.

CHECKING for UNDERSTANDING helps to engage the receiver in their own learning allowing them to develop reflective tools to apply to all their learning as they become more autonomous learners.

When coaching skills and games, checking on what the learner sees, feels or can demonstrate are often good ways of showing understanding and may be more effective than a longer verbal response. Extend the vocabulary of feedback to include words related to timing, position, space and proprioceptive / kinaesthetic awareness.

An expanded version of the 3-questions graphic including a summary of specific strategies can be found here for downloading.

ROOT OUT the ROOT CAUSE

It is important that the athlete has the skill to do something about the coach’s feedback. This means coach and athlete have to see the root of the underlying problem.

So, in all feedback situations, the coach has to ask, “am I giving feedback on the problem I see, or the underlying cause of the problem?” If the answer is, “yes” to the former, then the feedback is unlikely to bring about any meaningful or long-lasting change.
This consideration is more important in an athlete training / practice situation than in a knowledge acquisition context such as a coaching course.

ADJUST for the STAGE of the LEARNING CYCLE

The role of the CD or coach in preparing the receiver to more effectively use feedback will depend on where the receiver (learner) is in the learning cycle (4). By adjusting the feedback to the receiver’s stage, coaches can support the learner’s progression, minimise cognitive overload and foster autonomy.

Along with ensuring a good match between feedback and the receiver’s readiness for that feedback, scaffolding (providing initial support and then gradually removing it), is a way of managing cognitive load.

A constraints approach to coaching is a useful coaching approach that manipulates the learning environment / task in a way that scaffolds learning.

The table below summarises how feedback can be adjusted for novice and expert learners.

MAKE ADJUSTMENTS for YOUR CONTEXT

Treat the above table as starting point and not a coaching prescription. As we saw above, the receiver’s disposition (attitude to learning) is a powerful influence on how feedback is received. The giver of feedback should always be open to using their professional judgement to modify advice such as that shown in the table above.

While a self-evaluation / reflective approach is more typical of expert learners, this should not stand in the way encouraging all learners (even novices) to be reflective and see themselves as key players in their own learning.

Caution - generic skills are hard to teach

It is important to keep the focus on the goal of the learning whether it’s skill related, or knowledge related. Learning HOW to learn is very important. This post highlights the importance of the receiver’s skills to make the most of feedback – an important learn-to-learn skill.

But there is a caution. It is generally more effective (5) if these generic learn-to-learn skills related to feedback are closely integrated into the whatever the goal of the learning is, and not to make a big fuss about teaching in isolation how to manage feedback.

CONCLUSION

This post has outlined a mental model of feedback that places more emphasis on the role of the receiver than might be done in more traditional approaches to providing feedback. This model of feedback emphasises the importance of the receiver being ready to receive feedback and having the skills to process it. Three references below provide the basis for this post (1-3).

For the CD or coach with experience in giving feedback the challenge is to ensure they also provide a climate where feedback will be both welcome and the receiver has been taught to use the feedback.
Fostering a growth mindset in learners is about normalising the idea that mistakes are central to learning and when a learner is in a learning pit there are strategies and help at hand to get them out. (For more about growth mindset click here.)

Supporting persistent attempts by the learner, helping learners to understand that we all learn at different rates, encouraging questions when help is needed, and letting learners know all of us have times when we are not on our ‘best game’, are all part of nurturing a positive disposition towards learning – an outlook that is more attuned to receiving feedback. Strategies for climbing out of the pit.

Learning is mercurial. It doesn’t always ‘follow the rules’ of whatever the latest ideas are about how learning works. By avoiding putting people (coaches or athletes) into tidy boxes, we grant ourselves the necessary flexibility to read the situation in front of us and respond accordingly. Even when this goes against the conventional wisdom.

We finish where we started with a quote from John Hattie and Shirley Clarke (2, p.83), reminding us of the importance of trust developed between the giver and receiver of feedback:

Students need the knowledge that the teacher cares about and likes them, that they are safe, that peers will not disparage them, that they will not lose face if they ask a question and will be treated with respect.

Are these ideas you already incorporate in your teaching / coaching? If this is new territory for you, what are one or two things you might experiment with to bolster the receiver’s involvement in the feedback process?

REFERENCES
  1. Wiliam, Dylan & Leahy, Siobhán. (2015). Embedding Formative Assessment, (p. 124). Learning Sciences International.
  2. Hattie, John & Clarke, Shirley. (2019). Visible Learning Feedback, (p.89). Routledge.
  3. Hattie, J. & Temperley, H. (2007). The Power of Feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81-112. https://doi.org/10.3102/003465430298487
  4. The term learning cycle can mean many different things. In this post it is used to differentiate between:
  • The early stage of learning something new.
  • Consolidate the learning with practise and build a more robust mental models and motor memories. The aim is to reinforce correct elements and refine technique, improve decision making and understanding.
  • Transfer or apply the learning by transferring it to novel situations and different contexts. Learners will better understand the why behind what they are doing. The aim is automatise the learning and improve adaptability in varied contexts.

5. Willingham, D.T. (2007). Critical thinking: Why is it so hard to teach? American Educatory, 31(2), 8-19.

6. Kluger, A.N., & DeNisi, A. (1996). The effect of feedback interventions on performance. Psychological Bulletin, 119(2), 254-258.

A big thanks to the reviewers who also contributed ideas: Melanie Schembri Waite, Lawrie Woodman, Andrea Woodburn and Kirsi Hämäläinen.

What is assessment anyway?

Part 1 - Reimagining assessment and course delivery

What if we expanded our view of assessment? What if assessment and learning were intermingled so that the two were indistinguishable? In this view, assessment IS learning and learning IS assessment.

Imagine coach learning and development where CD observations of coaches in action, followed by supportive conversations, were part and parcel of the learning process. From time-to-time peers would be part of the conversation too, and coaches would learn and use the skills of review and reflection.
Imagine too, that this change in approach provided an alternative to traditional assessment.

This view of coach learning and development requires a mindset change in the way we go about preparing coaches. Particularly in accreditation / certification courses. Is a different mental model of what coach development and assessment looks like required? And would it have its own set of challenges to address?

Toby Doyle from New Zealand Cricket has been leading the charge encapsulated in the latest iteration of the NZ Cricket Coaching System with a range of initiatives, some of which are discussed below.

In England, Liam McCarthy at Leeds Beckett University has done much work on rethinking assessment in coach development (1). His propositions have added weight as they are grounded in his collaborations with major sporting organisations. His work is described in a recent book of perspectives on assessment and development from around the world (2).

ASSESSMENT & LEARNING INTERMINGLED

A personalised coaching experience approach is dependent on courses paying far more attention to the HOW of coaching. That is putting COACHING PRACTICE front and centre. See an earlier article in coachdev by the pioneer coach educator Eric Worthington here.

COACHING PRACTICE

‘Coaching practice’ is just that – a coach applies their knowledge to a simulated or real-world coaching task.

Coaching involves finding the best combination of a developmentally favourable coaching environment, the task at hand and the athlete’s needs. While remembering all along that coaching is both a technical and relational challenge. The coach’s teaching skills are the magic that brings it all together.

The graphic opposite is an attempt to capture the essence of a coaches role when guiding coaching experience sessions. (This model is expanded in Part 2).

AN ALTERNATIVE MODEL: KEY FEATURES in BRIEF

A key feature is the increased time and emphasis on the HOW of coaching through coaching practice.

  • It starts with course DESIGN. Plan for a major part of the coaches’ learning taking place on-the-job. This should be guided by a trained CD. If that is difficult, ramp up the amount of time (> 50%) spent on micro-coaching activities within the F2F course. Sufficient time should be allocated to discussion and debrief / reflection.
  • CONTEXT is important, so some guided coaching in the coach’s club or organisation is of great value.
  • The DISTRIBUTION of the LEARNING OVER TIME is just as important (maybe more so) than learning in a single block of time (3).
  • Ensure there is sufficient time for coaching practice with a strong emphasis on the HOW of coaching – organising, reading the play, and adapting instruction. As confidence grows coaches sharpen their own learn-to-learn skills including reflection and self-regulation. See Kirsi Hämaläinen’s Top 4 CD Tips here (Point #1).
THE SKILLS to be LEARNED DETERMINE the ‘THEORY’ to be COVERED
  • COACHING KNOWLEDGE is important, but it needs to be in the right proportion, delivered in the most efficient means and reinforced in hands-on settings. Theory teaching in many courses does not pass this test of application to a real-coaching situation. The answer is not to allocate more time to theory.
  • ONLINE LEARNING is an efficient way to deliver the ‘theory’. It should contain a mix of surface and deep knowledge challenges, and preferably use FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT methods to deepen learning and ensure some quality control.

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT

The aim of formative assessment is to provide both the learner and CD with feedback about progress and next steps in the learning. Formative assessments are low stakes activities that are integral to the learning.

  • Other TECHNOLOGY ASSISTED LEARNING methods can complement the online learning or for some topics, replace it. Webinars that are discussion based (and not lectures) can be helpful.
  • Too much ‘theory’ is worse than not enough. Emphasise NEED to KNOW stuff over NICE to KNOW stuff. Use the simple test: Will the coach be able to see the connection between the theory and their practice AND use it?
REQUIREMENTS for the ALTERNATIVE APPROACH

Listed below are essential ingredients for a successful personalised coaching experience approach that will stand up to scrutiny:

  1. Multiple coaching experience sessions separated in time are required to facilitate real learning and for the CD to make judgements about capability.
  2. Formal club or organisation support in practice guided by a trained coach educator / mentor further enhances the quality of the experience and can be an integral part of accreditation / certification programs (Access the Australian Sports Commission Supporting Coaches in Practice course here).
  3. Well-structured partner and group work (4) that provides opportunities for peer-to-peer teaching and social learning can have a significant positive impact on learning. (5)
  4. The CD / coach educator / mentor should be trained in the skills required to guide growth-related conversations that flow out of in situ learning. (For more information, see here.)
  5. Appropriate CD / coach records of achievement should be kept. This process should be as low key as possible with the emphasis on GROWTH and not ASSESSMENT.
  6. Coaches should become increasingly proficient at being able to articulate the task at hand, its purpose, ‘what good looks like’, and be able to reflect on their own thoughts, feelings and behaviours flowing out of the coaching experience challenges.
  7. The personalised coaching experience approach demands a shift in time allocated to hands-on coaching (micro-coaching or supported practice).
  8. It is important that essential (need to know to coach) ‘theory’ is provided through well designed technology assisted learning (e.g., online learning, webinars, etc). This may mean a reduction in time given to non-experiential learning.
  9. The most powerful way to deepen knowledge is to do something with it. That is to apply it in practice. CDs have an important role in making the links to practice.
HOW WILL WE KNOW if the COACH is CAPABLE?

The personalised coaching experience approach described here has to stand up to scrutiny. Is it contributing to the development of ‘job-ready’ coaches?

By the way, much of what passes for ‘rigorous’ assessment doesn’t do all that good a job of assessing coaches’ coaching capability anyway! Something that has been described as the ‘illusion of competency’ (6).

But is this also true of the personalised coaching experience approach described here? Is it really all rainbows and unicorns for the alternative described here?

ASSESSMENT WITHOUT ASSESSMENT

This approach of closely integrating development and assessment involves minute-to-minute observations and judgements that are the basis of conversations. The conversations help to flag ‘what to do next’. Coaching capability is enhanced through this iterative approach. It is a kind of Assessment without Assessment where the focus is on learning and development.

The personalised approach allows the CD to cut some slack for different rates of learning. Provided the ‘must haves’ are covered, some variation in learning outcomes can be tolerated.

More than 50 years ago Lee Cronbach (7) defined assessment as a procedure for drawing inferences. It is easy to see how the process of observation > judgement > discussion fits this definition without the need for a summative assessment.

SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT

A summative assessment takes place at the end of a learning period. It measures what the learner has learned. This may lead to a grade or be used to affirm mastery of the learning.

BRING PEOPLE ALONG WITH YOU

It is important to bring people along whenever change is proposed (See Dawn Ho’s post on change here). Coaches may initially be sceptical of a new or different approach. Administrators with a concern for risk management may be sceptical if the approach is different from what they know. Funding agencies and other peak organisations may also need convincing.

Time should be taken to explain how the approach may be different from other learning experiences coaches may have had. Coaches may expectations of being told what to do. This calls for some explanation of the how and why of more collaborative learning approaches.

Developing learn-to-learn skills may be the most important thing we can help coaches with.

WHAT ABOUT a HYBRID APPROACH?

A hybrid approach, mixing the personalised coaching experience approach with some endpoint (summative) assessment might act as a useful transition strategy for those wanting to dip a toe.

Even if your Sport’s assessment requirements are heavily weighted toward a summative assessment approach, the ideas outlined above which are based on trained personnel observing, supporting, and offering guidance through conversations, is still available to you. What are you waiting for?

Good luck! 😊

REFERENCES
  1. McCarthy, L., Vangrunderbeek, H., & Piggott, D. (2022). Principles of Good Assessment Practice in Coach Education: An Initial Proposal. International Sports Coaching Journal, (9)2, 252-262.
  2. McCarthy, Liam. (2025). Sport Coach Education, Development, and Assessment (International Perspectives). Routledge, New York, and London. (See chapters at: p1, 62, 75).
  3. InnerDrive blog. What is the Spacing Effect? Available here.
  4. InnerDrive blog. 10 Advantages and Disadvantages of Classroom Group Work. Available here.
  5. Grant, Adam. (2023). Hidden Potential (The Science of Achieving Greater Things). Penguin Random House UK.
    In this highly readable book, Adam Grant writes about maximising group intelligence by bringing people together to solve a problem. The smartest teams are not the ones with biggest IQs, but the ones with pro-social qualities enabling them to effectively collaborate. (See pp. 179,181, 188, 198)
  6. Collins, D., Burke, V., Martindale, A & Cruickshank, A. (2014). The Illusion of Competency Versus the Desirability of Expertise: Seeking a Common Standard for Support Professions in Sport. Sports Medicine, 45(1). The article is available here.
  7. Cronbach, L.J., (1971). ‘Test Validation’ in Thorndike, R.L. (ed.) Educational Measurement. 2nd. Edn. Washington DC: American Council on Education, pp. 443-507.
Acknowledgement

Thanks to Lawrie Woodman for providing useful feedback.

Innovations in Coach Development

Toby Doyle

Community Cricket National Coach Development Manager, New Zealand Cricket

In this series we feature innovative initiatives in coach learning and development. We will see examples of the work of coach developers who have taken their sport or their own practice into new territory.

Innovation requires putting new ideas and methods into practice by looking at current practice with fresh eyes. New assumptions that underpin new mental models are at the core of innovation.

This post by Toby Doyle shows how a person-centred approach to coach development that is focussed on a strong practical component where developing coaches receive lots of support can provide a rich developmental experience for coaches.

WHAT WAS THE CATALYST FOR CHANGE?
  1. Examination of data

We studied how many coaches who engaged with our previous qualification-centred coach framework, and only 20% of coaches who begun learning were going onto fully complete qualifications (with only a small percentage then requesting their certificate).
This led us to believe that our learning system was currently catering for a small portion of community coaches within our sport.

2. Consultation and research

When re-designing our coach learning framework we involved key regional coach development leads whose experience with working with coaches in their communities helped to inform what the framework would look like, as well as the critical skills/knowledge that coaches needed to know/do at each different coaching level. Coupled with this, we took time to understand learning frameworks from other sports and industries.

THE DEVELOPMENT of a NEW COACH LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT MENTAL MODEL

From our work and research we landed on some key mental models to help us shape our learning framework:

  • Development is continuous rather than episodic.
  • Development is self driven and not dictated.
  • Mastery is the objective. Not qualifications.
  • The emphasis is on just-in-time learning, as opposed to  just-in-case learning.
  • Opportunities & resource are made available to all.
  • Coaches choose from a buffet of options rather than a set menu.
  • 70/20/10 – remember how development occurs (on-the-job learning > social interactions > formal learning)
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN PRACTICE

In the place of assessment during a course/workshop, we’ve put in coaching observations as a mandatory requirement for coaches wanting to receive a qualification. These look like:

  • Learning is centred around the coach and their context.
  • There is a deliberate emphasis on the personal development for the coach, rather than their competence against a set criteria.
  • Data is gathered (what happened) then reflective conversation around this follow.
  • The coach developer threads any learning/focus points from the workshop into conversations.
  • The focus from the conversation is on the ‘what next’ with clear ongoing objectives.
  • Conversations may also lead to a focus on the coach’s development following the observation.

Along with this, within our face-to-face practical sessions coaches are given micro-coaching opportunities and coach developers will conduct reflective conversations with coaches on how they conducted these micro-coaching sessions – GET THE COACHES COACHING!

HOW IS IT GOING 24 MONTHS DOWN THE TRACK? LESSONS LEARNED?
  • This last season we’ve seen over triple the amount of online learning module completions through our online learning portal and over double the amount of attendances to virtual learning sessions (webinars). This points to a ‘buffet’ style learning offering to coaches becoming more normalized.
  • We are still normalising the shift of focus with those who aren’t directly ‘in the work’ but may be managing or responsible for those who are coach developers regionally.
  • Fully integrating people from regional associations into the change process meant we had little resistance to the proposed changes.
  • A lot of coach developers in our network are speaking to the deeper longitudinal impact of coach observation (either formal or informal), this has meant a shift to more of a focus on this type of work and less focus on delivering workshops.
  • Our modular system is progressively expanding and progressing – a positive spin off from having a buffet style approach (you can keep adjusting or adding to what you offer in the buffet pretty easily!) – Click here for a link to our modular system

Coach Developer Profile

Kirsi Hämäläinen, PhD

Kirsi is a principal lecturer at Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences in Finland.
Her short career as a coach, has been followed by a long career as a coach developer and especially coach developers’ developer 😊.
Prior to her current role, Kirsi worked at the Finnish Olympic Committee responsible for Coach Development.
Her doctoral thesis was titled: An athlete and a coach in the world of sports: ethos, ideals, and education in athletes’ narratives. From athletes’ narratives she found five different ethos, which guide thinking and behaviour in sport.
She played volleyball and beach volley for many years. Her multisport childhood has enabled Kirsi to return to dressage, one of the equestrian disciplines. She enjoys the escape from everything that dressage provides.
What Kirsi most enjoys about dressage is the feeling that there is no bar to ongoing improvement, unlike many other physical pursuits. She describes how important the cooperation and bond with the horse is. She says, “there may be challenges but the moments when is all comes together are indescribable”.

HOW DID YOU GET INTO the COACH DEVELOPER ROLE?

Coach development has been a key part of my entire career. As is often the case, serendipity played an important role. I was a student at university and during the summer holidays the phone rang. I was asked to work at a sports institute to teach one short course. Of course, I went because I had just wasted all my money on traveling in Europe!
I stayed at the sport institute (for 15 years!) and was given responsibility for various types of coach education.

MY COACH DEVELOPER PHILOSOHY

Over the years my idea has changed from planning the content and materials into planning the learning. I think we need to give the coaches a learner-centred learning experience.

Also, I used to think it was OK if the coaches felt they had only mastered bits of the course. That it was acceptable if coaches left a course feeling uncertain, knowing that any gaps would be filled through continuous learning. I now feel that it is important for coaches to achieve mastery in sufficient areas to leave the course feeling confident that they can do the job.

It is important for coaches to achieve mastery in sufficient areas to leave the course feeling confident that they can do the job.

BEST PART ABOUT the ROLE

The student coaches and co-workers and the joy of learning together.

SUPPORT for COACHES and COACH DEVELOPERS

In my current job at the university, I mainly teach master’s students.

In our system (Applied University), you only apply for the master’s degree after a few years of work experience as a coach or coach related job. So, the students are relatively experienced and in important positions in their working life. Learning together with them is really rewarding.

I used to work in the Olympic Committee and was responsible for coach development. I led the network of coach developers, and it has been one of the top things in my working life. We achieved a lot.

I have held numerous positions of trust where I have been able to influence coaching and coaching skills. The most important is certainly being a member of the International Council for Coaching Excellence board (ICCE), and my involvement with numerous ICCE projects over the years.

It has also been great to be involved in the activities of Finnish Coaches Association.

IF I HAD MORE RESOURCES

If I won the lottery, I would establish a foundation to support sports research. Its funding in Finland is too low.

And if I could make laws, I would make coach education free. Finland is a country of free education. Most coaches are volunteers, and yet we have created a system where coach training costs money and some coaches pay to be able to do their volunteer work better.

DO YOU WORK in PARTNERSHIP with OTHER COACH DEVELOPERS?

This is the pepper and the salt in my job. We have a great team at the university, and I still work with the people from my previous job at the Olympic committee. AND the international network within ICCE has been a big part of my life for 30 years.

HIGHLIGHTS and CHALLENGES

I am especially proud of these:

  • Building the coach developer Network in Finland when I worked at the Finnish Olympic Committee.
  • Development of ICCE activities over the years
  • The work for developing coaching culture and respect for coaches – baby steps and some bigger ones.
  • The students and co-workers excelling in their jobs.
DO YOU HAVE a MENTOR?

Several people have helped me during my career. Two times I have been in a professional guidance process and that has been very useful.

I also have some mutual mentoring relationships. One of them is Gene, who has given me food for thinking for several years.

MY TOP 4 COACH DEVELOPER TIPS
  1. Focus on “how”. Choose learning methods that develop different ‘meta skills’ in the participants. That is, the ability to apply a range of deep-thinking skills. These include reflecting on their coaching and the self-regulation of their thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. Other important ‘meta skills’ include thinking skills, knowledge seeking, analysis skills, development skills and assessment skills. These might be even more important than the content in the long run.
  2. How do you want the coaches to work with the athletes? Give them experience and work with them to nurture and refine that experience.  If you want them to be athlete centred – be coach centred.
  3. Less is more. If they master something well – that is a bigger achievement than if they have a big bag full of material they never can use.
  4. Good questions are so critical and yet so difficult to find. It is way more demanding to find good questions than answers. Reflect on your coaching experience with the view to developing a toolkit of useful questions.

Coach Developer Profile

Megan Moss

Megan Moss aims to be a revolutionist.

As the owner of a gymnastics club in Canberra, Australia, that employs over 60 coaches, Megan is determined to revolutionise coaching in the sport of gymnastics to provide an environment that is participant centric and where the values of the club are at the forefront of everything the coaches do.

Starting her coaching career at the age of 12 in the sport of hockey, Megan found a passion for sharing the joy of sports participation early and has coached in hockey, dance and gymnastics for over 30 years.

Having experienced a variety of coaching methods and approaches in her own sporting career,
Megan quickly established the impact a coach can have on a participant’s motivation and long-term participation in sport. Her experiences shaped the coach she is today that is focused on inclusion, fun and engagement.

She is a master in group management and loves using analogies in coaching to enhance understanding, learning and engagement of her participants.
She leads a team of over 60 coaches in her club where she aims to impart her positive, inclusive approach to coaching and leads the training and development of the coaching team at Gungahlin Gymnastics.

HOW DID YOU GET INTO THE CD ROLE?
"It starts with a love story!

It starts with a love story! I met my husband Joel, a former Australian representative gymnast, in year 11 at school and we joked that one day we would open our own gymnastics club.

With life’s journey, that joke became a reality in early 2015 when we made the leap and decided to open Gungahlin Gymnastics.

From day one, we knew that we wanted to deliver the sport of gymnastics differently. We set our values early and aimed to deliver gymnastics, in all its forms, in a FUN and positive environment. Initially we started with just Joel and I coaching and 16 classes on our timetable.

The club took off quickly and we employed our first coach to work with us within 12 weeks of opening due to the strong demand. It has been a roller coaster since then and we now have just over 1500 gymnasts in the club and over 60 coaches.

I lead the coach development and training aspects of the business and this is an area I love, creating the next generation of coaches delivering gymnastics “the Gungahlin way”.

BEST PARTS ABOUT THE ROLE

Without a doubt seeing my coaching team engaged and enjoying their role is the best part.

Coaching kids is not an easy gig, we get kids at their best and their worst and seeing my team adapt their coaching and work so hard to engage their participants and keep it fun is so rewarding.

My coaches for the most part are young students, most of whom might not become career coaches however when departing their role with us, leave with skills that will serve them in so many ways. I get to see them grow as individuals while sharing the joy they have for the sport of gymnastics with the next generation.

SUPPORT FOR COACHES

We operate in a sport that is very structured and focused on pathways and compliance in terms of what you can coach and competitive gymnastics.

I respect that part of the sport however my support for my coaches extends well beyond a formal coaching accreditation and is focused more on our values, living those values as a coach and coaching to create an environment that is always fun and positive.

We do a lot of work with our coaching team on the soft skills of coaching, how you interact with your participants, what engaged coaching looks like in practice and how you create the right environment to enable the fun while balancing the needs of diverse groups.

Given we operate across two facilities, and I can’t be in two places at once, I have a team of Floor Managers who monitor things on the floor and report each day on how coaches are going and if they need more training or support in certain aspects of their coaching.

These insights provide me with the topics that form part of our twice yearly all staff workshops where we bring the whole team together to work on challenges and scenarios to further develop the soft skills of the team.

I also use this feedback to engage directly with individual coaches to provide more targeted support as required to help them be the best coach they can be.

IF YOU HAD MORE RESOURCES

Time is my most challenging resource – running a small business is very challenging and I wish I had more time to dedicate to coach development. If I had all the time in the world, my focus would be on more explicit coaching practices to ensure development and progression of participants and specialised training for my staff in handling participants with additional needs.

DO YOU WORK IN PARTNERSHIP WITH OTHER CDs?

I have working alongside me two full time staff who are also qualified Club Coach Educators who help me deliver training and workshops. Their expertise is in differing areas to my expertise so we complement each other well.

I also collaborate with lots of people outside of our sport to hear what others are doing, to discuss challenges and to network and hear best practice operations to learn more. The learning for me never stops!

DO YOU HAVE A MENTOR?

I don’t have a formal mentor for the coach development side of my role however I engage with some outstanding people in the field like Gene Schembri to further my learning and seek support.

I have a general life mentor in my big sister who is my biggest cheerleader and who is the one that gives me pep talks when I am experiencing imposter syndrome.

MY TOP 5 COACH DEV TIPS
  1. Tell the story, the story of the impact positive coaching can have on a participant and the coaches’ role in this.
  2. Encourage coaches to reflect on coaches or teachers they have had that brought out their best and how those coaches delivered lessons and training to do that and how they can do the same.
  3. Don’t take it too seriously – at the end of the day, we are dealing with kids sport. Sport is meant to be fun and the goal should always be engagement and retention. Don’t lose sight of the fact this is kids sport.
  4. Learn the soft skills more than the technical skills and always stay connected to the grassroots. It is very easy to coach high level athletes who know what to do, you truly earn and maintain your coaching stripes coaching in the grassroots.
  5. Never stop learning. Always seek out new information, especially from outside your sport and continue to learn and develop as a coach developer and in your own coaching.

Coach Developer Profile

Toby Doyle

Toby Doyle, Community Cricket National Coach Development Manager, has played a key role in changing the way community coaches in New Zealand are prepared for their role. This includes receiving frequent personalised guidance from coach developers in real-world settings.

In this approach mastery is favoured over covering the curriculum. Observation, guidance, and support replace critique and ticking off a skills list. The learning coach’s context and their individual needs shape the support offered.

The NZ Cricket model of learning and development has been well received by coaches, the majority of whom have little interest in accreditation or being assessed. Quality is assured by the high level of personalised support that is afforded each coach.

Toby Doyle’s current role is the Community Cricket National Coach Development Manager at New Zealand Cricket. His path has included playing, coaching, developing coaches, and even training other coach developers.

Toby is deeply passionate about enabling quality coaching in community sports. His learning journey reflects a non-linear path, driven by a commitment and reflection to continuous improvement. Beyond his professional life, Toby is a father of three young children, and his fiancée, Hannah, shares his passion for coaching and sport. With his cricket playing days behind him, Toby now finds joy in playing the odd game of golf.

Toby has been fortunate to participate in the International Cricket Council’s Master Educator Program and has served as a trainer in the latest iteration of Sport New Zealand’s Coaching For Impact program.

How did you get into the Coach Development role?

I transitioned into a Coach Development (CD) role from my previous position as a Development Manager at Canterbury Country Cricket Association (which I was in for 7 years). This role required me to deliver key coach development initiatives for New Zealand Cricket, which involved engaging with the community to facilitate learning and support for community coaches.

CD philosophy

Empower individuals to become the best versions of themselves through a holistic and strength-based approach.

Best parts about the role

As the Community Coach Development Manager with New Zealand Cricket, I have the opportunity to nurture the potential in others—both coaches and coach developers. I am constantly seeking ways to improve and refine our coach development system and processes within New Zealand cricket.

Support for coaches

My work focuses on three key domains: the NZC Coach Learning System, the NZC Coach Developer Network, and Women in Coaching within Cricket.

  • Coach Learning System: Over the past decade, the NZC Coach Learning System has evolved from a linear, assessment-driven model to a modular system focused on ‘just in time’ learning. This shift recognizes that most of our coaching population consists of volunteer parents who seek practical information rather than formal qualifications.
  • Coach Developer Network: We currently have 90 active coach developers supporting approximately 3,000 coaches. My role involves providing leadership, mentorship, and ongoing professional development for these coach developers. This includes facilitating communities of practice and guiding them through a rigorous plan-do-review process centred around their regional coach development plans.
  • Women in Coaching: With 13% of our registered coaches being female, increasing this percentage is a major focus for New Zealand Cricket. We are working to create inclusive and safe spaces for female coaches at the grassroots level. Additionally, we offer a centralized program called ‘Pathway to Performance’ to equip aspiring female coaches with the skills, tools, and knowledge needed to advance in their coaching careers.
If I had more resources

I would place a coach developer in every club and secondary school across New Zealand.

Additionally, I would develop an AI-driven coaching app to provide individualized support to coaches in real-time.

Do you work in partnership with other coach developers?

Yes, I collaborate extensively with coach development leaders from other sports both within New Zealand and internationally. Currently, we are partnering with New Zealand Hockey to deliver a trainer program aimed at developing coach developer trainers.

My role as a Master Educator with the International Cricket Council has also allowed me to build valuable networks with global coach development leaders.

Recently, I have been involved as a trainer/facilitator in the Sport New Zealand Coaching for Impact program, which is designed to develop youth and secondary school coaches. I have also assisted New Zealand Rugby in facilitating a World Rugby Educator course to develop new coach developers in a rugby context.

Highlights and challenges

The most rewarding aspect of my role is seeing others thrive and grow. I learn a great deal from observing other coaches, coach developers, and trainers in action. Being part of the recent adaptations to our learning system, aligning it with 21st-century andragogy principles, has been a significant achievement.

A continual challenge is effectively communicating the impact of coach development work to decision-makers, ensuring they recognize its importance.

“The most rewarding aspect of my role is seeing others thrive and grow.
Do you have a mentor?

Yes, I have a mentor who helps me continue to learn, reflect, and grow in my leadership role.

TOP 4 COACH DEVELOPER TIPS
  1. Discover the coach’s motivation or ‘why’ and link any learning and development back to this
  2. Be your authentic self — skilfully
  3. Focus on strengths rather than gaps
  4. Reflection is the secret sauce to learning

What does assessment look like in your sport?

This post accompanies a session on assessment at the Australian Sports Commission 2025 Coaching and Officiating Conference in Geelong that I had the pleasure in co-facilitating.

It was a team effort. A big thanks to Shaun McEachin from Squash, Sally Wiseman from Pony Club and Tom Finch from the ASC.

What follows are four questions for designers of learning and development programs to consider. Behind these questions is the assumption that assessment should be at the core of those design decisions and not an add on.

1. VOLUNTEERS

In Australia, as in a number of other countries, volunteers make up the majority of the coaching workforce. In Australia, entry level qualifications make up between 80 and 90% of the accreditations or other qualifications.

A smaller number of sports have a tradition of full-time and part-time paid coaches. This can influence the type of training offered to coaches. The risk profile of a sport can also influences the type of training required of coaches.

The ASC did some research (Community Coach Insights, 2015) that showed a cohort of volunteers (the ‘Happy Helpers’) do not believe they need general coaching principles, were not seeking accreditation and therefore were not in need of assessment.

Questions

1. What kind of assessment (if any) is appropriate for volunteers in your sport?

2. If your sport requires assessment of entry level coaches, what form should it take?

2. HOW DO WE KNOW WHAT TO ASSESS / TEACH?

When the course is crowded (with a lot to cover) everything is important, and nothing is important.

This is a classic case of never having enough time to consolidate the learning because we have to ‘cover the curriculum’.

So, what can we do?

Mastery vs Qualifications

One solution is to adopt a mastery approach as opposed to a ‘cover the curriculum approach’. In the former, covering fewer things in more depth takes precedence over covering everything superficially. A mastery approach is more concerned with giving the coach sufficient time and guidance to develop skills that last into the future.

A mastery approach is further enhanced when the learning is relevant to the coach and comes out of a practice context.

So, what content gets priority treatment?

What is covered can be prioritised in different ways. For example, what is NICE to know knowledge versus what is NEED to know knowledge? Nice to know information  may be explored informally by the coach in their own time. Do you think that is true for need to know knowledge?

A more precise approach to classification is shown below:

Access the SOLO taxonomy here.

Course safety valves – Don’t cover everything during the course!

Many introductory and intermediate courses are a compromise between comprehensiveness and pragmatism. The time coaches are willing to spend at a course and the resources to deliver a course are two factors that influence design choices.

Alternatives for reducing the amount of content to cover include:

  • Making information available through the web
  • Allowing clubs to specify their own requirements. For example, clothing requirements. If there is a safety issue regarding clothing / jewellery etc., then this could be covered in the course.
  • Continuing professional development / updating requirements
  • Pre- or co-requisite courses. For example, a requirement to complete the ASC’s Community Coaching – Essential Skills course.

Question

What are your criteria for deciding what content to cover and assess?

3. ASSESSMENT CHECKLISTS: USEFUL OR NOT?

Courses based on a competency-based training (CBT) design break up coaching into about 4-6 large chunks (units of competency). Each of these units is further sub-divided into smaller bits (elements of competency).

This approach often leads to assessment with tedious checklists that require each item on the list to be ticked off.

For example, checklists for coaching behaviours such as demonstrations, instruction, observation, or feedback might be used.

The checklist approach can easily result in not paying sufficient attention to the coaching context. Another problem, even if the observation of a coach is taken in context, is that a narrow focus may miss the ‘big picture’. For example, a ‘perfect’ demonstration might have been presented, but we could ask was a demonstration the best option at that time?

In another post we have discussed how a narrow assessment focus can give us a reliable result but one that doesn’t inform us about the ability of a coach to coach. That is, the problem of reliable but not valid assessment inferences.

Question

Do you assess holistically (looking at the whole coaching process), or do you assess isolated individual parts?

4. DIFFERENT MODELS OF LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT

What are the principles that underpin your approach to coach learning and development?

Your choice of principles provides the building blocks of your MENTAL MODEL. It guides the way you deliver coach education. The mental model that underpins a course may be unique with a non-traditional approach to coach learning.

For example, Andy Rogers from Sport NZ along with two authors from NSOs have written (see drop down #3) about an approach that replaces assessment and critique with observation, support, and guidance. The NZ model is a highly personalised coach-centred approach to learning and development.

In this alternative approach, a coach developer observes, listens, questions, and draws inferences which form the basis of a dialogue between coach and CD.

The CD chooses a response that suits the context: a suggestion, a collaborative approach to problem solving, further questions, or a simple acknowledgement of progress. The coach in this model may initiate the conversation.

This ‘partnership’ in learning is frequent and ongoing throughout the course. Lots of ‘mini assessments’ replace an end of course summative assessment.

This is ASSESSMENT WITHOUT ASSESSMENT!

Question

What are the principles that form the basis of your mental model for designing and delivering courses?

PRINCIPLES OF ASSESSMENT

Liam McCarthy et al who has been leading some international work on assessment has proposed 5 principles of assessment. Four of them are shown here. The fifth is transparency.

1. DEEP INTEGRATION

Teaching, learning and assessment should be deeply integrated. As opposed to a period of learning that is followed by assessment.

2. AUTHENTIC

Assessment activities should be ‘authentic’. That is, related to what coaches actually do. The assessment should be:

  • Practice based
  • Take place in context that is relevant to the coach

3. COLLABORATIVE

CD and coaches work together. Peers are seen as a resource for each other.

4. METACOGNITIVE

Assessment plays a role in coaches developing their skills of reflection and the ability to self-monitor their thoughts, feelings, and behaviours.

Question

To what extent are these principles embedded into your course design?

REFERENCE

McCarthy, L., Vangrunderbeek, H., & Piggot, D. (2022). Principles of good assessment practice in coach education: An initial proposal. International Sports Coaching Journal, 9(2), 252-262.

My Brain is Full – How Memory Works

Learning takes place when information in our conscious thinking is transferred to long-term memory. Organising these memories, through a network of neural connections, builds our capacity to tackle novel and unpredictable situations.

These connections can be varied and may include visual, auditory, emotional, or kinaesthetic memories.

Understanding how our memories are formed helps us to understand the differences in performance between novices and experts. It also guides the coach and coach developer in designing instructional strategies. That is, how to be a more effective teacher.

 

My brain is full!

In a favourite Gary Larson cartoon, teacher Mr Osborne at the front of his class glances over his left shoulder. A student has his hand up. The student asks: “Mr Osborne, may I be excused? My brain is full.” You can see the cartoon by here.

Apart from being pretty funny, this cartoon is a good catalyst for a discussion about how CDs and coaches can effectively get the message across. It also invites us to challenge simplistic notions that teaching is just about transmitting information with the hope that is sticks. Telling is not teaching.

(BTW, telling is not the same as explicit instruction. But that is another article).

What are you thinking right now?

Back to the cartoon. The student’s long-term memory (LTM) has plenty of unused capacity. No problem there. The problem is most likely an overloaded working memory (WM).

Working memory is whatever is held in your consciousness at any given moment. Understanding working memory is the key to learning.

Working memory

This is your memory for the present moment. It is a limited and short-lived holding space in your prefrontal cortex for the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, emotions, and language of right now - working to keep whatever you just experienced and paid attention to only long enough to use it or not.

Lisa Genova, p38.

Pay attention!

When attention is narrowly focussed thinking is unlikely to be overwhelmed by extraneous things in the environment. (See the diagram below).

When too many distractions not relevant to the immediate learning are present, cognitive overload occurs. Too much mental effort is required to make sense of things. Working memory is ‘stretched’ beyond its limits – it becomes overloaded.

To learn something, we have to notice things. Noticing requires us to do something with all the sensory information the brain receives. This requires paying attention. That is, fine tuning our thinking to actively process specific information in the environment while ignoring other sensory input.

Apart from unimportant things in the environment, there is lots going on in our heads to ignore: self-talk, reliving conversations, to-do lists, random thoughts … the monkey mind.

The brain can receive and process sensory information, like watching an athlete perform a skill BUT unless there is a deliberate and focussed attention to what is being perceived “the activated neurons will not be linked, and memory will not be formed.” (1, p27).

“PAY ATTENTION!”. The command is a futile one unless the learner is receptive to whatever attention is being drawn to.

We are attentive to things that are meaningful and interesting. Something that is surprising, humorous or resonates with us emotionally will grab our attention and open the gate to learning.

Our brain’s default setting is not to be attentive. We have to work at it. This means the CD or coach needs to create an environment favourable to learning and to choose learning experiences that are interesting and meaningful to the learner.

Mr OSBORNE’S CLASS. So, even if Mr Osborne’s teaching practice is good, his student with a ‘full brain’ may have no interest in the topic and no interest in paying attention.

We have to know stuff to learn

“New knowledge can only be understood if it is linked to what the student already knows.”

Mike Bell

The more links the better. Using multiple senses (multi-sensory) and emotions makes the memories easier to recall and  less likely to be forgotten.

When prior knowledge is retrieved, more than a single piece of information is accessed.

Information in the brain is not stored in an isolated manner, like a piece of information on a computer hard drive. It is stored along with other information and emotions from all the senses. A memory is a network of connections.

Back to Mr Osborne's class

Back to our student in Mr Osborne’s class. Numerous things could be interfering with the student’s ability to process what he is seeing and hearing from Mr Osborne.

A run-in with a peer may have led to our student dwelling on an earlier incident. The student may be dealing with something from home. Perhaps he didn’t complete his pre-class work. Essential prior knowledge may be absent. Or Mr Osborne, may be overwhelming the class with too much information and at the wrong level. Or maybe the class just needs a short brain break and the student with his hand up is expressing what others are feeling.

The student’s WM is working overtime, and nothing is making sense. Extraneous thoughts, some possibly emotionally charged, compete for WM space. We have all been there!

Coaching young participants

The example of Mr Osborne’s class is not uncommon in our everyday coaching.

We have all experienced working with young participants where one or more of them come to training frazzled. It may take us 10 or more minutes into our ‘perfect’ session plan before we realise things are not going to plan. Our strategies for getting participants to focus on what matters may be good.
But something in the lead up to training has emotionally charged one or more participants.

What we might want participants to hold in WM clashes with what is already there. ‘Reading the play’ and adapting is a key coaching skill. In our example, the change to the plan may have to be significant.

CD & Coach Take-outs

Here are some strategies adapted from Mike Bell (2):

  • Develop session routines and habits. For CDs teaching or coaches working with athletes, routines should be taught and practised to avoid wasting time and clogging up WM.
  • Convey information in smaller chunks.
  • Connect new information to prior knowledge by linking instructions and new information to things that are already part of the learner’s existing knowledge or everyday experience.

COACHES

  • Coaches should keep cues simple and short (KISS – keep it simple and short)
  • Use similes and analogies to help participants connect more complex ideas with things that are familiar in everyday life. 
  • Arrange equipment and the playing / training area in ways that reduces the amount of cognitive processing that is required (constraints-based approach). This may reduce the need for verbal instruction or eliminate it altogether.

COACH DEVELOPERS

  • Use multi-sensory strategies (also relevant to coaching)
  • Focus attention with content that is interesting, meaningful, surprising, humorous or tugs at our emotional heart strings
  • Use active learning strategies (this will call on different sensory strategies such as talking with peers and physically moving – these have the potential to reduce cognitive load)
  • Link abstract ideas to concrete analogies.

FIG. HOW MEMORY WORKS

In this final figure more detail has been added. Procedural knowledge enables us to type, tie our shoe laces or execute a skill or activity in sport. Memory is not just about ‘book learning’ – it is also at the centre of doing things physically.

References

  1. Genova, Lisa, (2021). Remember. The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting. Simon Schuster.
  2. Bell, Mike. (2021). The Fundamentals of Teaching. Routledge.