Reflection and reflective practice in high-performance sport coaching: a heuristic device

Figures & data

Table 1. Participant details: coaches.

Participant details: Coaches
Carl	A former high-performance athlete, who captained both his club and national team. Carl has three years’ coaching experience, coaching professional club sport for two years and a national men’s team for one year. He holds a master’s degree in a subject which may have some transferability to coaching. Carl described reflection as ‘the practice of looking at my interactions with the players and coaches and identifying areas in which I can improve’.
Stuart	A former high-performance athlete who experienced some success at national and international levels. Stuart holds the highest sport-specific coaching qualification available and has ten years’ coaching experience. Stuart has worked with national youth athletes and is currently the head coach of a national team. Stuart spoke about reflection as ‘the opportunity to, having done something, go away and think about how you respond to the situation, how you dealt with the situation, how others around you dealt with it … reviewing performance and how you felt’.
George	Has coached high-performance athletes for nine years, most notably he has supported athletes to achieve success on the world stage at multiple championships. On completing a PhD in physiology, George held a sport science position in a high-performance context, ahead of moving towards his current management role that includes ‘coaching on training programmes and at competitions’. George’s reflective practice had changed over time as he described that ‘now I would say reflective practice is sitting in the car and having a little think, I am not as good at it as I probably should be, I tend to work on gut feel of stuff … reflective practice is quite informal’.
Richard	Has 25 years’ coaching experience, he has coached junior and national level athletes and has experienced success on the world stage. Richard holds a diploma in high-performance coaching. He described himself as ‘high-energy’, commenting that ‘for me, reflection is really about trying to get to that point in the day where I can let all that stuff [coaching situations/experiences] ruminate, which is probably best when I get home’.
Fran	Fran has represented her country as a high-performance athlete. She has held a series of managerial roles in sport coaching contexts for 15 years and holds the highest qualification available for her sport. In her current role, Fran manages ‘the staff, athletes, coaches and support staff services … I manage their competition programmes, and hopefully add value to what they deliver’. Fran connected reflection to questioning her practice, ‘when I think of reflection, I think I always question myself, have I done everything I should have done?’.
Mike	A former high-performance athlete, Mike has achieved the highest level of success while competing on the world stage. Mike is a graduate of a related coach education programme delivered by the NSO. He coaches a national team and his athletes have achieved gold medal success at multiple championships. Mike talked about reflection, stating that ‘ultimately I think it’s the thought processes, you’re giving yourself time to think about how you have done something or how something has made you feel … and why you or something was successful’.
Wayne	Has 18 years’ coaching experience. Wayne works with the young adult national teams and is responsible for developing that generation in time for the next world-stage event. Wayne described reflection as ‘time to review and think about what you have done and how you might use lessons learned to improve for next time’.
Ben	Has 33 years’ coaching experience, he is a senior member of the coaching team and works with athletes expected to achieve the ultimate accolade on the world-stage. In the past, Ben’s athletes have achieved repeated success at this level. Ben associated reflection with ‘learning from mistakes … I see reflective practice as you don’t make the same mistake twice’.
Daniel	Has been employed as a full-time coach for three years. Daniel is now a head coach, and before this had worked with junior teams for ten years. His athletes have achieved success on the world-stage. Daniel connected reflection to performance stating that ‘reflection is always against something, usually it is how could you have done that better and usually how could that have been done better in relation to producing performance’.
Harry	A former high-performance athlete who represented his club and country, and now holds a head coach position of a national team. His qualifications include a master’s degree and MBA in sport-related topics. Harry has eight years’ coaching experience. His coaching successes include achieving promotion at club level and improving the national team’s world ranking. Harry spoke about the nature of his role, and that reflection is often missing ‘you do the “aim-plan-do-review” and I guess the review bit is all part of that reflection and the nature of these roles for so many of us is that you end up going “aim-plan-do-aim-plan-do” so it’s just trying to find the time’. Harry said that, therefore, ‘reflection takes place generally as a quick, ad hoc, one-off after sessions with the other coaches’.
Louise	A former high-performance athlete, who achieved success on the world stage. Louise is a graduate of a related coach education programme delivered by the NSO. She holds a head coach position and her athletes have achieved repeated success on the world stage. ‘Reflection for me is personal improvement. The purpose of it is to evaluate the situation, grow from the situation, look at your actions in terms of getting better’.

Table 2. Data collection phases and organisation.

Phase one	Phase two	Phase three
Observations of coach education workshops spread across each phase (n = 8)
Semi-structured interviews with coaches (n = 11)	Follow up semi-structured interviews with coaches (n = 10)	Interviews with one-to-one coach developers (n = 5); to share the grounded theory
Semi-structured interviews with on-programme coach developers (n = 4)	Follow-up semi-structured interviews with on-programme coach developers (n = 3) (note: one coach developer had left the programme)	Follow-up interviews with one-to-one coach developers (n = 5); to substantiate the grounded theory
Observation of a coach developer forum
Semi-structured interviews with one-to-one coach developers (n = 8)	Follow-up interviews with one-to-one coach developers (n = 8)	Observation of a coach developer forum

Figure 1. A reflection heuristic.

Figure 2. Data example positioned on the heuristic.

Figure 3. Data example positioned on the heuristic.

Figure 4. Data example positioned on the heuristic.

Figure 5. Coaches’ reflective practice positioned on the heuristic.

Figure 6. Coach developers’ reflective practice support positioned on the heuristic.