Course design principles and implementation

¶ … Children within the context of any sport need guidance and coaching to not only improve skills, but also make the most out of their time while playing the sport. Within the field of youth soccer, effective coaching methods are essential for the improvement of team skills and status, as well as the opening up of new methodologies for a child to learn new information. Children learn while practicing, this is sure. Yet, they use different methods of learning than seen within the context of a classroom. Coaching allows instructors to incorporate new styles of teaching techniques within each child's mind frame which may potentially lead to a heightened understanding of the learning process later in life. The soccer field provides a way of active training, where children observe, reflect, and then act. This is where more experimental learning styles can be tested by coaches and parents to see how well their child reacts to different methodologies of learning and gaining new experiences. The best part of the game is that the child is allowed to prove his or her skills gained through effective coaching on the soccer field, effectively providing needed experience to either solidify proven skills or abandon techniques which prove ineffective in a real life application.

Therefore, it is essential to thoroughly train individuals looking to get into coaching youth soccer regarding the different styles of experimental learning, and how those styles should be used in synergy to provide the best learning experience for all children, regardless of whatever particular style their psyche prefers over the other styles of learning. It is also a necessity for individuals looking to get into youth soccer to understand the negative behaviors which will naturally arise out of the children involved. Once this understanding is reached, that individual coach will be better prepared for how to turn those negative behaviors around to only further solidify the embedded lesson. Finally, active youth soccer training provides real life exercises which can be utilized within the context of practice and training. The more strategically manipulated exercises the coach has, the larger arsenal he or she has to battle both discrepancies in learning styles and negative reactions to those exercises. Therefore it is absolutely imperative that training precedes real life coaching, in order to strengthen the effects and applications of particular coaching methodologies.

Depending on the desired age of the children each individual will be coaching, the terminal objectives of this course will be based on the skill set and learning abilities of that desired age of children. The terminal objectives for all students of this particularly designed course will represent being able to incorporate a variety of different learning methodologies into one coherent lesson plan which will be able to morph into the minds of all the children on the team. Utilizing synergy, each individual coach should be able to reach out to all the children on his or her team, without leaving any child out based on that child's individual learning preference. The children do not chose what style their mind will naturally adapt to, and in many cases one style may be blended with others and so forth. Therefore, any coach should be able to address the learning styles of as many children as possible without singling out any one particular child which would embarrass him or her and potentially permanently remove that child from the situation.

All enabling objectives must therefore be geared towards a multi-faceted approach to learning and coaching methodologies. These objectives are the mastery of dealing with different learning styles in a real world context which automatically includes a variety of obstacles, distractions, and negative behaviors. Therefore, a diverse and in depth knowledge base of the different learning styles is essential for the successful application of a multi-faceted learning experience. This also includes great patience, which covers all age ranges. Patience not only to get the lesson into the skill set of the different types of children, but also the patience to deal with various distractions and negative reactions to exercises given to the team as a whole. Soccer is an activity not normally viewed as a learning activity by most children, and any successful coach must understand this mindset and play into in order to get the most effective results within the skill set of the individual players along with the entire team.

The best way to introduce students of coaching youth soccer would be a sit in session with a practice period of a young children's soccer team. The younger the children, the less defined the learning styles as well as the greater the distractions and negative reactions to lessons involved in practice. This will introduce the future coaches into the harsh real world of getting children to learn skills out side of the nurtured structure of the classroom. Individuals involved in the program should prepare their own versions of the appropriate level of children being observed. These lessons should be given to the actual coach before hand and implemented within view of the individuals who crafted them. Then, strict observations of the children's reactions and successes within the context of each individual's lesson should be observed and thoroughly recorded. The following lecture period should include each individual's reflections on the success and failures of the lesson plans, which should be constantly drafted and changed throughout the remainder of the course. This allows a very active style of learning while also preparing relatively successful exercises for when the individuals actually entire into a coaching environment. Another necessary component for teaching future coaches is showing the increasing dependency on technology within the learning environment. After the first initial sit in a practice, future involvements should be recorded as to not jeopardize the natural responses of the children to each individual's lesson plan. Recording allows detailed and in depth analysis of the lesson plans, as well as outside availability of these responses which would further develop detailed reflection and lesson plan changes.

Other alternative methods for instruction should include in depth lecturing of the various types of learning styles of young children and how to interact with multiple styles at once. This would include several sessions of lectures followed by a similar exercise where the individual would prepare a lesson plan which would cater to as many different learning styles as possible which would be tested out in a similar fashion as the opening exercise. With young children, one can never have a large enough arsenals of practice exercises and activities, so the more the individual plans ahead of time, the faster success will rear its head in terms of skill development and overall team success. This would provide the concrete experience necessary for learning styles such as those implemented by divergers, assimilators, and accommodators. The end of the course should provide a written response reflecting on the value of each individual's proposed exercises as well as how the changes of those exercises affected the eventual outcome of the learned skill sets of the children in question. In order to appeal to individuals used to a convergant style of learning, the end of the course should also provide a written examination based on the proven successes and failures of implemented coaching methodologies.

Children learn in very different ways. Extensive research in the field of education has shown the world that every child has a unique way of in taking and storing new information. These various methods are then classified through deciphering the major components of how the minds of children work in order to produce styles which will prove most effective in a variety of different facets, such as in class learning, private one on one tutoring, and other forms of learning such as learning soccer techniques and strategies. Coaching is essentially a very active form of learning, but learning none the less. Therefore, an effective coaching strategy will use elements of different learning styles to most effectively reach out to all the children on the team. If every child does not work well with one rigid style, it is most effective to blend elements of different learning styles. Four different learning styles within the genre of experimental learning techniques can provide the best results if used together and properly towards the children who will benefit most by the use of that learning style. Therefore, accommodators, divergers, assimilators, and convergers should all work together in synergy in order to reach their common goal -- winning.

Therefore, the active training course designed must incorporate all of the previously mentioned learning styles as to most effectively reach into the memory and strategies of the children involved in the lesson.

Research has proven that many methods of learning incorporate developing unique, abstract, and very individualistic reflections and observations which derive out of the most concrete of experiences. Therefore, the lesson planned must incorporate a methodology which allows the children to reflect on their experience of the lesson in order to establish their own ideas of how to rise to the challenge of the exercise.

The next most important component of developing a successful coaching method includes addressing overcoming children's natural and plaguing negative reactions and behaviors towards developed exercises and coaching methods. Each individual should be thoroughly introduced to each type of standardized negative reaction which that individual may face in a real life application of the skills learned in this designed course. The first and worst negative behavior would be that of a child monopolizing the practice and/or game and one-upping fellow team mates in order to suit his or her own selfish needs to be better than the rest of the team. This should be the ultimate negative behavior each future coach should focus on based on the negative impact it has on the rest of the team. When an individual child exhibits this type of negative behavior, the coach should immediately address it in front of the other players as to make it known that this type of behavior is not acceptable. Addressing it would most successfully be implemented through isolating the child by pitting them against an older and more skilled player with the full knowledge of that child's failure to reach that skill level. This would humble the child, while also averting similar behaviors within the other children. This would also stem the advancement of other children withdrawing from the game based on bullying or feeling inadequate based on the monopolizing and one upping actions of other players on the team. Another way to address such an issue would be to create a scrimmage environment where the child in question is actually penalized for scoring and rewarded for assisting his or her fellow team mates within the simulation of a real game. This will force the child to associate winning with not only personal achievement but also the team's achievement as a whole.

Another plaguing behavior exhibited by many school-age athletes is that of complaining. This is the probably the most common negative behavior any coach will encounter throughout the length of their involvement with the sport. However hard it may be to conquer the natural response of complaining, it is absolutely necessary to overcome such behaviors. Individuals involved in youth soccer coaching need to understand the importance of bribery within the lives of young children. Once a common goal is established, the entire team can be bribed in harmony to reach tat goal. The reward for a lack of complaining and devotion towards practice exercises should depend on the needs and ages of the children in question. Different age groups will want different things, whether those things are material, a fun trip out to a haunted house or carnival, or other types of positive reinforcement which would motivate the kids to work harder and complain less. All future coaches must understand that complaining is a natural occurrence when dealing with young children, and so must not be reprimanded too harshly. Instead, the best action is preventative action by offering bribes and incentives to the kids based on performance both during practice as well as during league game times. Intellectualizing the situations experienced can cause complaining. Therefore special attention must always be placed on the in-the-moment type of thinking as necessary for dealing with split second decision in a game situation. Too much in depth thought will only further complicate an already complicated situation. Therefore, coaches should always force split second decisions upon their players. Depending on the age group, high intensity exercises implemented at very high paces should always be incorporated into any practice sessions in order to solidify the idea that true player rely on skill and instinct rather than intellectual decisions which cause a lag in decision making.