THE SCIENCE OF COACHING: TRUST, FEEDBACK, AND PURPOSE

BY TUCKER PRUDDEN

OOn any given weekend you can find teams dotting playing fields across America—from the small-town baseball diamond to the high school lacrosse field to the high-stakes action of an NFL stadium. All teams experience highs and lows, but one thing can really make a difference in a player’s growth: coaching.

Here at Kimball Union, we use KUA Design to inform our coaching practice. It’s an approach to learning that’s built upon positive relationships and uses brain science to design intentional challenges so students can grow and learn. It’s a model that has and will refine my coaching practice with the lacrosse team just as it does my role as a learning specialist in the Gosselin Center for Teaching and Learning.

So, what is good coaching? And can good coaches, like good teachers, be more intentional in designing these opportunities? Many already employ so many healthy educational strategies, but can they be named more clearly, cited specifically at critical moments, or verbalized when describing a drill. After all, we want our students to not just know what to do, but also why it will help them.

Generating Trust

Whether it is the high-five celebrating the shared success of a goal scored or an arm around a disappointed teammate after a loss, the relationship between members is critical to the growth of a team. A good coach will intentionally build relationships by the care they show student-athletes beyond the boundaries of the playing field. It’s those moments that build trust and, as a result, create an optimal learning environment.

We start by putting incredible effort into connecting with students. After all, good relationships require effort to build and effort to maintain, particularly when that connection can be challenged through emotionally charged moments. In the dorm, I congratulate a student on a grade; I publicly applaud acts of community citizenship on the field; and I ask my daughter to say hello to students on the Quad. These connections make it easier to ask them to remove a hat in the dining hall or take on a difficult matchup on the field. Instructional design coach Zaretta Hammond calls these practices “trust generators.” Let me tell you: They work.

Offering Feedback

Brain science tells us that good feedback is critical to growth. Sport is inherently a place where feedback is plentiful! It’s my role to use feedback in a timely, specific, and supportive way to make them stick. My goal is twofold, to show students there is a way for them to improve and that they can improve.

Research tells us this approach increases feelings of control and self-efficacy, which are the foundation of learning motivation. Social psychologist Carol Dweck says that “constantly practicing and modeling a growth mindset is paramount to this model and the encouragement of progress over product allows for reflection and improvement.” Revisiting skills and drills in practice serves as a more obvious example of interleaving, and we introduce schemes through multiple modalities such as a whiteboard, film, walk-through, and then live practice. My conversations promote resilience. At the end of a drill, I know I have achieved these goals when I blow the whistle and hear players say: “One more rep, Coach!”

Putting Theory Into Practice

My planning often starts by identifying skillbased growth opportunities—where to improve and what strengths to leverage. I then scaffold the use of those skills throughout a practice and during the course of a season. I encourage a student-athlete to use skills they are less proficient in when the stakes are low and offer additional suggestions to consider when they reach developmental thresholds.

Sport’s purpose, in our holistic educational model, is a place where students can experience lessons on the field that promote lessons for life. If we believe the experiences in sports serve to validate social-emotional, cognitive, and physical growth, then KUA Design is the ideal model for this work. K