The foci of in-action professional judgement and decision-making in high-level adventure sports coaching practice

Adaptive expertise – a characteristic of expertise in outdoor instructors?

“…Under such time pressure or situational demands with incomplete information, the instructor may need to draw on experience and metacognitive and reflective skills. For outdoor instructors, according to Collins and Collins (2015a, 2015b, 2016b, decision making is a combination of both classic and naturalistic processes that vary depending on the context of the decision. In this respect the cognitive skills of decision making would logically form parts of any instructor developmental process and require decision making to be a focus of any pedagogic approach in instructor education Furthermore, individuals with AEx demonstrate a capacity to self-assess their expertise, knowledge, learning, and problem solving ability (Bell et al 2012;Crawford et al 2005).…”

“…Insert Table 1 The environment and the degree to which the instructor has or lacks control in that context are unique characteristics of adventure sports (Collins and Collins 2016b).…”

“…Outdoor instructors work in dynamic environments (Collins and Collins 2016b;Collins, Simon, and Carson, 2018) and encounter situations brought about by the synergy of complex tasks, dynamic environments, and objectives to develop the individual Collins 2016a, 2016b). Capable instructors must manage challenges and demonstrate a pedagogical and technical agility to meet each novel issue as it arises or, ideally, through anticipating and countering that issue.…”

Para-adventure: a hyper-dynamic problem for the inclusive coach

“…Collins (2005, 2007) and Abraham and Collins (2011) originally conceptualized the professional judgement and decision making (PJDM) approach as a synergy of nested decision making over short-, medium-, and long-term timescales to achieve a predefined set of intended, and individualized, outcomes. In outdoor activities, Collins and colleagues (e.g., , Collins, Collins, and Willmott 2016, 2016a conceive PJDM as a graded continuum in which the interaction of logical linear "slower" processes and "faster" naturalistic processes (Kahneman 2011) are differentially integrated, depending on the nature and context of the decision to be made (Cotterill andDiscombe 2016, Harvey, Lyle, andMuir 2015). Practically, PJDM is developed and deployed through in-action, on-action, and onaction/in-context reflections, which are underpinned by a metacognitive ability .…”

“…Put simply, these findings support the notion that coaching is nonlinear and complex, consequently, high-level coaching is cognitively taxing and the coaches know it! In practice, reflection is integrated within the coaching process, in-and on-action when in-context (Collins and Collins 2016a) and as an explicit on-action process (Schön 1983). Whereas the para-canoe coaches supplemented this on-action process by utilzing the community of practice, adventure sport coaches relied on multiple cycles of reflection against their intended outcomes.…”