Coaching / Coach Developer activities
L-E-A-R-N-S
The participation of the NCDA academy heightened my awareness between the multi-faceted roles of a Coach Developer which spans from curriculum design, programme delivery, policy administration and programme support. During my course of work, I realised that there are distinct differences between the requirements and competencies of each role and yet most coach developers in Singapore take on at least two of these roles without training or assessment. Most assumed that their coaching experience / technical knowledge of the sport or on-the-job training indicates knowledge and competence.
Over the past 1.5 months, I had followed up with Netball Singapore, Singapore Cycling Federation, Singapore Canoe Federation and Singapore Weightlifting Federation in the curriculum design for the integration of the theory and technical components of the Singapore-Coach Excellence Programme. I realised that few (ex-players, existing coaches or administrators) are trained in curriculum design and some were more concerned about the duration of the course. There is also little interaction and learning across sports.
From this, I think it is important that we clarify these roles, identify the criteria and competency and shortlist programmes to meet the development needs of each role. I am in the position to foster greater interaction and learning for coach developers and coaches across various sports. I would propose a quarterly/ bi-monthly session that they could share their learnings or joint meetings for some sports. This can be achieved in the next train-the-trainers session for the Values & Principles in Sport workshop on 20 September 2016 for existing academic educators and coach developers from the various national sports associations. I also aim to apply LEARNS within the session.
Reflective Practice
I am in charge of funding support for the Singapore Canoe Federation’s mentorship programme which commenced since May 2016. Besides programme administration, I had decided to take on an active role in supporting the learning of the two mentees during the one-year programme after reading their past monthly reflective reports which were more descriptive. Using the content within the reflection topic in the NSSU-ICCE Coach Developer Facilitation Skills Handbook, I offered the mentees other frameworks for consideration to structure their reflections and emphasized the need to develop action plans. I find the Five-point Level of Reflection Scale that Kristen, Maju and Pele introduced during their group micro-coaching session to be really useful in getting the mentees to self-critique their reflection reports which were general narration of the events. I set my involvement in the learning of the mentees as my growth challenge so that I can directly help them and also be committed to reflect regularly.
GRIP
I applied the GRIP process in the review of the coaches who conducted the 2 Team Up programmes and 1 Game For Life toolkit workshop. As I have colleagues who are the main facilitators for the session, I became an additional resource person to supplement their views of the coaches’ delivery and session design. I kept steering them towards the positive observations and away from the gaps. I realised that I would need to conduct a proper briefing for the main facilitators as they were unclear of my role and I would need to polish my questioning further by practising more.
Team Up: Goalball
Post Team Up Facilitation
Team Up: Captain’s Ball
Game for Life Toolkit Workshop
Lynnette Chng drives the employment and assurance policies for sport coaches in Singapore and is a member of the 3rd NCDA Cohort. She works for Sport Singapore, a statutory board of the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth, whose core purpose is to inspire the Singapore spirit and transform Singapore through sport.
