When modern learning theory meets system inertia
Walking away from something you’ve invested years in is never easy.
For a long time, I believed I could help change tennis coach education from the inside. I delivered qualifications. I ran CPD. I supported coaches. I tried to bridge research and practice in a system that publicly claimed it wanted the same thing.
Eventually, I had to accept a harder truth.
The problem wasn’t individual coaches.
It wasn’t tutors.
It wasn’t even bad intentions.
It was the system itself.
And that is why I stepped away.
This article explains why, drawing directly on my recent reflective case study on coach education reform titled, Mismatch in the System.
The Promise of Modernisation That Never Fully Arrived
On paper, tennis coach education in England looks progressive.
There are references to:
- player-centred learning
- decision-making
- modern skill acquisition
- non-linear development
- ecological ideas
Initiatives like LTA Youth appeared to signal a genuine shift toward contemporary learning science.
But beneath the surface, very little changed.
The qualifications that followed remained anchored in:
- linear skill progression
- technical demonstration
- closed drills
- behaviour control
- information-processing assumptions
This created a contradiction.
Coaches were told one story in CPD and assessed against a completely different one in qualifications.
The paper describes this as surface adoption without pedagogical integration
The language evolved.
The structure didn’t.
When Assessment Rewards the Opposite of What We Claim to Value
Coach education systems teach coaches what matters through assessment.
In LTA qualifications, coaches were still assessed on:
- feeding accuracy
- technical correctness
- demonstration of “ideal” technique
- closed-to-open progressions
What they were not assessed on:
- practice design quality
- representativeness of learning environments
- use of constraints
- adaptability to player behaviour
- learning emerging through interaction
This matters.
Assessment drives behaviour.
When coaches are rewarded for control, they learn to control.
When they are rewarded for demonstration, they demonstrate.
When exploration is not assessed, it disappears.
My upcoming paper shows how LTA Youth principles were never structurally protected inside the qualification system.
That made reform impossible to sustain.
Mixing Theories That Do Not Belong Together
One of the deepest problems was epistemological confusion.
Coach education materials blended:
- behaviourism
- information processing
- ecological dynamics
- constraints-led ideas
Often on the same slide.
These theories are not complementary.
Behaviourism seeks to reduce variability.
Ecological dynamics depends on it.
Information processing treats skill as stored and retrieved.
Ecological dynamics treats skill as emergent and adaptive.
You cannot mix oil and water.
Yet coach education attempted to do exactly that.
The result was a “Frankenstein pedagogy” where coaches were left with tools but no coherent understanding of learning.
The Tutor’s Dilemma
As a tutor, I was repeatedly told:
“Keep the theory under the hood.”
That statement alone reveals the problem.
If coaches are not trusted to understand learning, then education becomes compliance. Not development.
External quality assurance focused on:
- structure
- clarity
- adherence to materials
Not once was I assessed on:
- epistemological coherence
- alignment with modern learning theory
- quality of learning environments
The system rewarded delivery fidelity, not pedagogical integrity.
That made meaningful change impossible from within.
Why Staying Would Have Meant Complicity
Eventually, a line had to be drawn.
I could either:
- continue delivering qualifications that contradicted what we know about learning
- or step away and build something aligned with evidence, coherence, and honesty
Staying would have meant endorsing a system that:
- speaks modern language
- assesses traditional behaviour
- and quietly absorbs innovation until it disappears
LTA Youth didn’t fail because it was flawed.
It failed because the system was never redesigned to support it.
What This Means for the Future of Coach Education
This isn’t an attack on individuals.
It’s a warning to systems.
If coach education is to evolve, it must:
- define what learning actually is
- align theory, assessment, tutor development, and deployment
- stop treating innovation as content instead of culture
- protect reform structurally, not symbolically
Until then, well-intentioned frameworks will continue to vanish.
Not because they don’t work.
But because inertia always wins when systems stay the same.
That’s why I stepped away.
And it’s why I’m building something else instead.
If you want coach education that is coherent, evidence-informed, and honest about how humans learn, that work has to happen outside legacy structures.
That’s where my focus is now.
