Welcome to this month's coaching section. This issue will focus on "Coaching Effectiveness" in terms of research and practical applications. Recently, coaching effectiveness has already become an important concern and research topic to improve athletes and coaches' performances in many ways. Therefore, I would like to provide you different articles on certain coaching effectiveness themes.

Article one discusses the modeling in coaching effectiveness. Article two presents how to collect "data" using the tools of coaching effectiveness research with paper/pencil and computerized assessment.

However, coaching effectiveness is such a complex research area and not limited to these basic topics. I highly encourage you to search different approaches and themes using recent research articles and world wide web. I wish you a successful and effective year in your teaching and coaching efforts.

Ferman Konukman
Coaching & Sports Section Editor

Modeling in Coaching Effectiveness

Dr. Ferman Konukman, Central Washington University, Department of Heath, Human Performance & Nutrition, Ellensburg, WA, konukmaf@cwu.edu

Clear communication skills during instruction, explanations, demonstration/modeling and feedback are essential elements of effective teaching. When teaching or coaching sport skills, many teachers or coaches tend to give too much information to learners.

Teachers and coaches should avoid overloading learners with many lengthy explanations. Instead, demonstration of a sport skill should focus on its critical elements and give a clear image of the correct movement. Thus, the information can then be understood and remembered by the learners (Konukman & Petrakis, 2001).

If the demonstrations or modeling are too complex, the learners may become confused and have difficulty remembering details. Therefore, instructors must also provide right cues at the right times, which creates a catchy image and direct the learner's attention to the correct movement or skill (Graham, 2001).

According to Douge (2001), coaches who use basic principles of modeling as the essential focus of their instruction can achieve important gains in a limited time, and he defines the key components of modeling in coaching as:

	Using models that the learners see as successful.
	Using other team members who demonstrate correct performance as models, without making individual judgment, but basing attention on the specific quality of the movement.
	Finding models who have good behaviors, sportspersonship, as well as good game play and skills.

At this point, Martens (1997) states four important steps to make an effective modeling or demonstration:

	Get learners' attention: Tell them what to look for. For example: "Please look at my elbow during the tennis serve."
	Demonstrate and explain: Keep your demonstration simple, brief, and focus on what is being demonstrated. For example: "Give high five during the tennis serve."
	Relate to previously skill: After the skill is demonstrated, you should relate it to previously learned skills. For example, "Smash is very similar to a tennis serve, but there is no elbow drop."
	Check for understanding: Ask questions to check for understanding. Keep your questions/answers short and relevant. For example, "Why do you rotate your body in stroke phase?"

References

Douge, B. (2002). Coaching Methods. In F. S. Pyke (Ed.), Better Coaching: Advanced Coach’s Manual (pp. 15-25). Urbana-Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics

Graham, G. (2001). Teaching children physical education: Becoming a master teacher (2nd ed.). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

Konukman, F., & Petrakis, E. (2001). Verbal and visual teaching cues for tennis. Journal of Physical Education Recreation and Dance, 72, 38-43.

Martens, R. (1997). Successful Coaching (2nd ed.). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

How to Collect Data in Coaching Effectiveness

Data collection via scales, questionnaires, and computer programs are such a common research tool in the majority of coaching effectiveness research and projects. Using the categorization of Horn (2002), I would like to provide information about several data collection instruments. In addition, I will recommend to you a software program for practical applications.

Horn (2002) states that the research in coaching effectiveness has been dominated to two areas: coaches' leadership style and the types of feedback. Moreover, these two dimensions were categorized in to five instruments that are commonly used to assess coaches' behavior:

Leadership Scale for Sports (LLS)
This is the most often used coaching scale, and was developed by Chelladurai and Saleh (1978, 1980) and Chelladurai (1993) to measure leadership behaviors of coaches. This instrument contains 40 items using a 5-point scale, and asks questions with the words such as "I prefer my coach……" or "My coach…."

Decision-Style Questionnaires
This type of instruments measures more specific aspects of the coach's leadership behavior, and decision-style questionnaires were used by several researchers (Chelladurai & Quek,1991). These questionnaires ask the number of situations or cases with problems such as substituting, injured players, and team or individual decisions.

Perceptions of Coaches' Interpersonal Style
Perceptions of coaches interpersonal style measures the kind of motivational climate or environment that coaches create during practice and games (Pelletier & Vallerand, 1985). This is based on behaviors of coaches, such as control versus autonomy styles in coaching.

Perceived Motivational Climate in Sport Questionnaire-2 (PMCSQ-2)
PMCSQ-2 questionnaire was developed by Duda. This instrument measures the type of climate that coaches creates during the game and practice (Duda & Whitehead, 1998). This questionnaire asks coaches to indicate their team climate.

Coaching Behavior Assessment System (CBAS)
CBAS instrument originally was developed by Smith, Smoll, and Hunt (1977). This instrument provides observational assessment of 12 types of coaching behavior by using a 7-point scale from "almost never to almost always."

Finally, I would like to mention about a software called BEST (Behavioral Evaluation Strategy and Taxonomy) developed by Tom Sharpe and John Koperwas. You can purchase, or have a free demonstration from http://www.skware.com/

This software is ideal for coaching, teams, or individual performance for field-based observations in many ways. Using this software you can create your own category system to meet your specific sports and store multiple observations systems. Moreover, you can record narrative field notes from sport events with behavioral and quantitative data. However, there is plenty of observation software in the market, and you can purchase one of them according to your needs and budgets.

references

I would like to provide several sports coaching and coaching effectiveness web sites for you. These web sites have plenty of information about coaching effectiveness, performance, youth sports, and job searches for coaches.

Coaching Youth Sports (CYS) - a web site edited by Dr. Richard Stratton in Health Promotion Program at Virginia Tech, is such a helpful site to help understand several issues in coaching youth sports.

netactics.co.uk is a detailed web site that provides information about job search in coaching sports.

If you do a search using the "coaching sports" words in the www.google.com or www.yahoo.com web sites, you can find many coaching links. I would like to suggest the following links.

	Sports Coaching Directory
	Coachwise
	Sportplan
	Sports-Coaching
	TheCoachingCorner
	Library of Sport, Coaching, and Physical Education
	Peak Performance