Ecological Learning : Coaching for Performance Preparation and Player Development

Coaching players at all skill levels (from advanced performance levels to complete beginners) requires a deep understanding of the learner and the learning process at all stages. Our understanding of these important processes in coaching comes from psychological theories of perceptual-motor learning for skill acquisition, which are numerous. This chapter considers implications for coach development of key principles and concepts of Ecological Dynamics, a contemporary theory of perceptual-motor learning. Ecological Dynamics proposes that athlete and team are complex systems formed of many interacting components. Performance emerges from interacting personal, task and environmental constraints which shape the coordination of the components through learning and development. Information from these interacting constraints is used to regulate player actions. These ideas are imperative for understanding how to design practice tasks for youth players, applied to the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) system, as well as senior footballers at more advanced stages of expertise. Here, we discuss why coaches working in the EPPP system could benefit from understanding the key principles of an ecological approach to learning, enabling them to design opportunities for action during practice games and activities which simulate the challenges of competition.