For years, coach education has largely operated on a simple assumption: if coaches learn new information, their behaviour will change. Attend a workshop, complete a qualification, learn a new methodology, and better coaching practice should follow. Yet coaching research increasingly suggests the relationship is nowhere near that straightforward. My recent systematic review explored exactly this issue by examining how coaches’ beliefs about learning, knowledge, and athlete development shape the practices they actually deliver on court and in training environments.
The findings revealed something uncomfortable but important for the coaching profession. Coaches often describe themselves as player-centred, exploratory, or modern in their thinking, yet observational evidence frequently shows coaching behaviour remains highly directive, technique-focused, and coach-controlled. In other words, there is often a significant gap between what coaches say they value and what they actually do in practice.
This matters because coaching behaviour is not simply shaped by new information or formal education. Instead, it appears deeply connected to coaches’ epistemological beliefs, their assumptions about how learning happens in the first place. If a coach believes skill is acquired through repetition, correction, and technical refinement, then practice naturally becomes organised around drills, demonstrations, and explicit instruction. Conversely, if learning is viewed as emergent and shaped through interaction with the environment, practice design tends to prioritise exploration, representative learning situations, and athlete autonomy.
Across the reviewed studies, coaches who described learning as linear and coach-directed frequently designed structured sessions dominated by repetition and technical instruction. Tennis coaches, for example, commonly emphasised repetitive technical refinement and isolated training activities within their practice environments (Anderson et al., 2021). Swimming coaches similarly relied heavily on part-task drills and movement decomposition approaches (Brackley et al., 2020).
At the same time, studies examining more contemporary pedagogical approaches described very different learning environments. Coaches working from ecological or exploratory perspectives tended to emphasise athlete autonomy, representative practice, and decision-making opportunities. However, the review found that these philosophies were not always consistently operationalised in practice. Under pressure, many coaches reverted back to traditional directive behaviours despite espousing more player-centred beliefs.
One of the strongest findings from the review came from studies combining interviews with direct observations of coaching behaviour. These studies exposed a recurring mismatch between coaching philosophy and enacted practice. Coaches often articulated progressive ideas about learning, autonomy, and decision-making, yet observations revealed continued reliance on instruction-heavy behaviours and tightly controlled practice structures.
Importantly, this inconsistency was not necessarily a sign of dishonesty or incompetence. Instead, coaching behaviour appeared heavily shaped by occupational culture, prior experience, and inherited traditions. Coaches frequently relied on socially mediated learning, personal playing histories, and accepted norms within their environments when making decisions about practice design.
One of the most revealing quotations within the review described coaches as being “more like magpies than filing cabinets” (Stoszkowski & Collins, 2016). Rather than building coherent theoretical frameworks, many coaches appeared to collect fragmented drills, methods, and ideas from various sources without critically evaluating how those methods aligned with learning theory. This may explain why many coaching environments become a blend of contradictory pedagogical approaches, what some researchers might describe as a “Frankenstein pedagogy.”
The review also highlighted the role of organisational culture and coaching hierarchies in reinforcing traditional practice. Several studies found that accepted norms within academies and performance environments shaped coaching behaviour more powerfully than formal coach education. Senior coaches, institutional expectations, and competitive pressures often reinforced directive instructional styles even when contemporary pedagogical approaches were officially promoted.
This creates a major challenge for coach development systems. If coaching behaviour is socially embedded and culturally reinforced, then simply exposing coaches to new theories or methodologies may not produce meaningful behavioural change. Coaches may learn new terminology without fundamentally changing how they conceptualise learning or design practice. As the review concluded, the issue is not merely changing what coaches know, but changing the environments and belief systems that sustain particular behaviours.
The implications for coaching are significant. Modern coach development cannot simply focus on providing more drills, activities, or technical information. Coaches require opportunities to critically examine their assumptions about learning itself. This includes structured reflection, observational feedback, video self-review, mentoring, and engagement with deeper theoretical concepts related to skill acquisition and pedagogy. Without this conceptual understanding, coaches may remain dependent on copying methods rather than adapting practice environments to the actual demands of learning and performance.
The findings also challenge the common assumption that coaching philosophy alone is a reliable indicator of coaching quality. Declared philosophy may tell us what coaches aspire to value, but it does not necessarily predict what happens inside real practice environments under pressure. The more important question is whether those beliefs survive the realities of practice itself.
For tennis coaching specifically, this becomes highly relevant as the sport increasingly debates topics such as representative learning design, ecological dynamics, constraints-led coaching, and player-centred pedagogy. If coaches continue to rely on inherited routines and socially reinforced traditions without critically evaluating the assumptions underpinning them, meaningful pedagogical change will remain difficult regardless of how much contemporary research becomes available.
The future of coach development may therefore depend less on delivering more information and more on helping coaches fundamentally reconsider how learning actually occurs.
Based on Whelan, S. (2026). How epistemological beliefs of coaches shape coaching practice and decision making (Unpublished MRes systematic review, University of Winchester).
References
Anderson, E., Stone, J. A., Dunn, M., & Heller, B. (2021). Coach approaches to practice design in performance tennis. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 16(6), 1281–1292. https://doi.org/10.1177/17479541211027294
Brackley, V., Barris, S., Tor, E., & Farrow, D. (2020). Coaches’ perspective towards skill acquisition in swimming: What practice approaches are typically applied in training? Journal of Sports Sciences, 38(22), 2532–2542. https://doi.org/10.1080/02640414.2020.1792703
Stoszkowski, J., & Collins, D. (2016). Sources, topics and use of knowledge by coaches. Journal of Sports Sciences,34(9), 794–802. https://doi.org/10.1080/02640414.2015.1072279
