As my participants are at a young age (7-9 year old), their age and stage of development at this point will still be very egocentric, this is shown by the cognitive development model by Piaget, who states that young children from 5-7 are every egocentric and aren’t aware of what others think, in practicals this is shown a lot through competition based activities. The Youth Physical Development Model (Lloyd & Oliver 2012) suggests that at the age which my participants are at, they are at their sampling age of trying out different sports and are led off empowerment and peer relationships, from the model it bases off the level of performance in which they should be reaching by a particular age and as they develop in age what their period of adaptations will look like. Linking into this the Developmental Model of Sports Participation (Cote 2002) gives off pathways which can lead players to probable outcomes, the sampling years are not affected by this due to development and maturation of a participants.
Working in a school with young athletes, as a coach it enforces you to want your players to achieve. In doing so the 5C’s aims to provide clear insights and practical ideas around integrating the principles and techniques of sport psychology in coaching. Harwood 5C’s (2008) of trying to increase a participants confidence, commitment, communication, concentration and control, are the main elements throughout the sessions as coaches we aim to achieve. In doing this we have to instigate each C throughout the sessions in which we coach and introduce them to these skills within the practices. This then has an impact on the participants socially and psychologically.
The needs in which they need to progress in sessions are quite demanding, for example the age at which they are at (7-9 year old), when it comes to competitions, they are very egocentric (Piaget, J & Vygotsky, L) , meaning that they only bothered about themselves and are not interested in working with other participants. Due to these kind of behaviours it shows quite clearly who are the struggler’s and strivers of the group and from this gives me ideas as a coach in what I need to enforce more in my practical sessions to enable that development is being portrayed and that the session is relevant for levels of ability. When it comes to basic motor skills like passing, in sessions it can be easily shown through the accuracy of the pass as well as the technique. However according to Gallahue and Ozmun (2012) the age and stage at which my year 4’s are at all participants must be at a transitional stage which is moving onto specialised movement skills and developed on from basic Fundamental Movement Skills. Showing that some basic skills are still lacking from my class.
At the beginning of placement we set goals to which we would hope our participants would be able to achieve by the end of so many weeks. The needs analysis focused on key technical and tactical and biopsycosocial behaviours that would be relevant to achieve at their age and stage of development. The table below indicates the level of understanding on specific technical and tactical skills, which we covered within the first semester at the school where we coached basic ruby skills to the participants, their understanding was colour coded into green, yellow and red. This allowed me to see the level of performance in which they were exerting in session and how I can change my coaching behaviours and session plans so that it changes their understanding and progresses them to develop these specific skills into a higher state of performance in future sessions, preferably using SMART Targets. As shown on the graph the participants are categorised by numbers so that it doesn’t single out any specific individual from the rest of the class, listed above are the main tactics and techniques which we mainly focused on in the first semester and were the main meso and micro goals of each session.
References:
- Harwoods, C (2008) 5C’s
- Côté & Hay, (2002); Côté & Fraser-Thomas, (2007) Developmental Model of Sports Participation
- Lloyd, R & Oliver, J (2012) Youth Physical Development Model
- Piaget, J (1936) Cognitive Development Theory
- Vygotsky, L (1978) Development of Cognition’s
- Gallahue, D.L., Ozmun, J.C. and Goodway, J. (2012) Understanding Motor Development
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