What It Really Means To ‘Think Outside The Box’: Why Foucault Matters For Coach Development

Abstract

In this paper I discuss the relevance (and power) of teaching coaches how to question the ‘truth’ of their everyday coaching practices by beginning to ‘think with Foucault.’ My insights derive from my experiences teaching a graduate course called, “Coaching ‘Knowledges’: The Social Dimensions of Performance Sport”, that I designed in 2018 as part of the University of Alberta’s Masters of Coaching degree. More specifically, through my reflections on my past coaching, my present teaching, and the process of writing this paper, I consider how the act of problematizing, as informed by such Foucauldian concepts as docility, discipline, and power-knowledge, can serve to transform coach development and with that, of course, coaching and all that that entails.