• Fitness & Health
• Sport & Exercise Science
• Physical Education
• Strength & Conditioning
• Sports Medicine
• Sport Management
• Dance

Professional Judgment and Decision Making (PJDM) in coaching: The “It Depends” approach

This is an excerpt from Sport Skill Acquisition by Dave J Collins & Jamie Taylor.

By Dave Collins and Jamie Taylor

In the preface, we started to build a case for research-informed practice that is built around the it depends approach. Professional judgment and decision making (PJDM) is an approach to applied practice promoting informed decision making based on contextual needs—in short, the conditional nature of knowledge and application. This is an idea that several authors, ourselves included, have recommended through various outlets, both peer-reviewed publications and on social media (even though the latter is a far from reliable source). Unfortunately, a few misunderstandings of this approach are apparent: First, PJDM unproblematically models coaching as being as simple as a series of deliberate decisions. This critique is mistaken in that rather than offering a model of coaching, PJDM instead aims to provide an approach for the coach or practitioner. In essence, rather than trying to represent the significant complexity of the coaching process, PJDM suggests a means by which coaches navigate this complexity. A second critique is that it presents an anything-goes approach. In contrast, and for clarity, PJDM requires deliberate, careful consideration: planning, deploying, then evaluating and refining the approach, along with the ability to deliberately adopt different theoretical frames to make sense of situations and mentally project outcomes. Notably, however, experience would suggest this to be the case for all informed and reflective practitioners since people started to question authority. In short, it depends is nothing new.

Importantly, the mere gainsaying of PJDM as “anything goes” is an unfair representation of the position. PJDM has the pragmatic notion of fallibility at its core, that no belief is immune to doubt. For the informed practitioner (and our aim for readers of this book), this doubt should extend to a consideration of why different theoretical framings are more or less suitable to the needs of a specific problem. Additionally, and reflecting our universal application of critical evaluation (see chapter 3), this also applies to posing the same questions about the PJDM approach that we suggest. After all, critical methods need to be applied both ways.

We explore more of this criticality in part II of the book. For the moment, note that this careful reasoning process is best made overt and expressed through the approach of PJDM. This is not always the case, however, because paralysis by analysis is a real and present danger for the overthinking practitioner (e.g., Wilding 2021), even if this tendency can be suppressed by all sorts of methods, including electrically. (Research by Luft and colleagues [2017] found that electrical current could temporarily inhibit a person’s dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in order to allow creative solutions to problems.)

As later parts and chapters will demonstrate, the basis of PJDM is to explore what approach might best fit the context. As a direct result, practitioners are encouraged to think through how they adapt knowledge and experience, along with changing theoretical frames to optimally cater to their contexts. This idea has gained impact, with applications exploring its role in adaptive expertise in high-performance sport coaching (Taylor et al. 2023) as well as in a wide variety of fields, including coaching in adventure sports (e.g., Mees et al. 2020) and business (e.g., Berry 2021). Chapter 3 discusses these ideas of criticality and conditionality. A starting point for this book is that the practical application of knowledge needs to be both conditional and adaptive. This lies at the heart of our theory-based text and applied approach.

In tandem with the idea of conditional knowledge (it depends), we also promote the careful consideration of what might follow from a particular series of decisions. This necessitates another conditional term, the need for consequential consideration. If, as we will demonstrate, coaching decision making represents a chain of choice and actions, the well-informed practitioner must also work their way down the epistemological chain (cf. Grecic, MacNamara, and Collins 2013) of decisions, seeking to understand the outcome that may accrue from a particular choice on process or processes (e.g., Crowther et al. 2022). As described in the literature, stemming from their views on how people learn (their epistemology), coaches will make a series of choices on the design and execution of coaching practice. This should not be a linear and recipe-driven process, however, because good coaching (and good coach decision making) is based on a consideration of what each choice means for the eventual experience—in other words, the consequences for the learner.

It Depends in Practice: A Well-Founded Example

Even at this early stage, it is important to state clearly, and demonstrate, that an it depends approach is not new at all. As one great example, consider Mosston and Ashworth’s (2008) spectrum theory of teaching styles, which considers what style or approach the teacher (and coach) should select given the outcomes they want for the session. Figure I.1 shows how the choice of style from the spectrum is applied to the planning, execution, and evaluation of the session or coaching episode.

Originally developed in the 1960s, the idea has received much consideration and application in physical education. It has been revisited in a wider integration by SueSee, Hewitt, and Pill (2020), applying the same principles to coaching. The idea is elegant in its simplicity. Consider two contrasting activities with very different goals and outcomes: rappelling (abseiling) and creative dance. The first requires careful planning by the teacher to ensure safety (and avoid consequent paperwork if things go awry). Student decision making is at a minimum because there are relatively few safe options involved. In short, the teacher sets up an environment in which techniques are demonstrated and students follow, preferably as faithfully as possible. The creative dance class is almost the complete opposite. The teacher designs challenges to encourage creative and novel solutions, but after initiating the work, they mostly stand back and shape the outcomes. The level of decision making in the session is high for the students and low for the teacher or coach, although the preplanning demands for the teacher are greater. The spectrum represents “a framework of options in the relationships between teacher and learner” (Mosston 1992, p. 56), requiring decision making as to what is the most appropriate approach.

We might consider the spectrum theory of teaching styles as a meso approach in that it is applied to the design of a session rather than an individual activity (micro) or series of sessions (macro). As we work through ideas in this book, it will become apparent that most, if not all, of the ideas can be applied at all levels: across planning, execution, and evaluation. Indeed, this more macro, meso, and micro application is reflected in the more recent reconceptualization of the approach for coaching by SueSee, Hewitt, and Pill (2020). In simple terms, as per example 1 later in this chapter, applications of different theoretical approaches tend to vary across the macro level but, importantly, not always.

What to Expect From This Book and How to Use It

So far in this introductory chapter, we have stressed the conditionality of both knowledge and application. Additionally, however, the vital parallel is the need to explore and be able to present the formal justification for the options taken—in other words, the why. After all, gaining buy-in from an athlete is a big part of designing training for even the most physiologically driven coaches (Stone, Stone, and Sands 2007). As we will explore later in the book, athlete understanding (and the fullest exploitation of expectancy effects) is a relatively unexplored and underexploited facet of training design, although it offers significant potential (e.g., Lindberg et al. 2023). This principle of promoting and ensuring understanding will clearly apply across every aspect of the program.

Accordingly, each chapter presents a reasoned and balanced argument for the suggestions made. Furthermore, and reflecting the principles espoused previously, the nuances expressed should be exploited to optimize the design of any practice or program in the contexts faced. An almost inevitable consequence is that each context will be associated with several possible solutions and consequential chains of decision making. Note that as a part of this dynamic chain, the practitioner’s own personal characteristics will also play a part in the PJDM process. Part II of the book will explore these ideas, while parts III and IV will present some parallel concerns and issues for deploying them.

Our point here is that aspects of the coach or support provider will clearly influence the environmental dynamic, both directly through what they can effectively offer and indirectly based on the athlete’s perceptions of them. Accordingly, effective case conceptualization, as psychologists refer to it (cf. Martindale and Collins 2013), which is simply what the practitioner plans to do and why, will fit with a careful consideration as to how all the moving parts (the many and varied factors that must be dynamically integrated) mesh together.

More Excerpts From Sport Skill Acquisition

---