Positive Pedagogy for Sport Coaching ― Athlete-centred Coaching for Individual Sports

The concept of positive pedagogy has transformed the way we understand learning and coaching in sport. Presenting examples of positive pedagogy in action, this book is the first to apply its basic principles to individual sports such as swimming, athletics, gymnastics and karate.

Using the Game Based Approach (an athlete-centred, inquiry-based method that involves game-like activities), this book demonstrates how positive pedagogy can be successfully employed across a range of sports and levels of performance, while also providing insight into coaches’ experiences of this approach. Divided into three sections that focus on the development, characteristics and applications of positive pedagogy, it fills a gap in coaching literature by extending the latest developments of GBA to activities beyond team sports. It pioneers a way of coaching that is both efficient in improving performance and effective in promoting positive experiences of learning across all ages and abilities.

Positive Pedagogy for Sport Coaching: Athlete-centred coaching for individual sports is invaluable reading for all sports coaching students as well as any practising coach or PE teacher looking for inspiration.

Richard Light is Professor of Sport Pedagogy in the College of Education, Health and Human Development at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. A prominent figure in research on, and the development of, athlete-centred coaching, his work situates learning and coaching within social and cultural contexts to emphasize the subjective, affective and whole-person nature of experience and learning in sport. His work which draws on contemporary learning theory, social theory and his experiences of coaching and teaching across a range of cultural settings has developed into a distinctive approach to sport coaching pedagogy