Enskilment into the coaching landscape: towards a situated approach to coach education in Australian football

Abstract

This paper explores how an enskilment approach could be harnessed to guide coach education in Australian football (soccer). To do so, we first overview current coach education practices in Australian football, looking specifically into the foundation of Football Australia’s coach education model, rooted in a transmissive metaphor. Then, drawing on key ideas from Tim Ingold, we move towards a different approach to coach education, grounded in the relationality of enskilment. This leads us to reconceptualise the very notion of ‘education’–moving from the transmission of secondary information, towards an approach in which people are led out into the world by experienced companions, encouraged to primarily experience things for themselves. Such a shift foregrounds the third section of our paper, where we explore a more situated approach to coach education, leaning into key concepts from Jean Lave and Étienne Wenger. In doing so, we propose an apprentice model to coach education that consists of three interwoven dimensions: exposure to real-world contexts; legitimate peripheral participation within communities of practice and mentorship. We bring life to each dimension through the presentation of examples in the context of football. In summary, to prepare Australian football coaches for the realities of coaching, coach education needs to consider a move from the transmission of secondary information, towards exposure to first-hand experiences of actual coaching.