Apprenticeship: a method to develop competencies in a top level team

Introduction

According to Lave & Wenger (1991), learning is seen as a social process, rooted in different contexts and communities. A sport team represents a specific context, stimulating learning processes through common sporting practices. In top level sport teams, different forms of competencies are socially distributed in the group. Apprenticeship; where participants develop their personal practical knowledge through observation, imitation and learning from other team members specific embodied knowledge, can be used as a pedagogical method in such a group.

Methods

Training practices in the national Norwegian Handball Team (women) were observed in different periods during the season 2002 - 2003. The team is among the leading teams in international handball, winning several medals in the international championships over the last years. Five observation periods (totally 46 training sessions) were accomplished. Qualitative interviews with the trainers were carried out before and after the observation period. The observation and interviews focused on the teaching/learning strategies underlying the practice. Especially the forms and variety of apprenticeship-relations were studied.

Results/Discussion

The study revealed that apprenticeship was used as a central learning strategy in the group, especially in relation to technical development. Players in the same playing position on the field was put together in parts of the training session (3 left wings, 3 centers etc.), to coach each other and develop the specific position skills. Often the players were position experts (Dreyfus & Dreyfus 1986) with different personal qualities, and each of them could pick up ideas by observerving/beeing observed and coching/beeing coached by their teammates. Rather than instruction-based strategies, this player-player strategy dominated the technical training in the team. Genuin practical knowledge, such as skills in sport, can not fully be catched by verbal instruction. To a large extent this kind of knowledge is tacid (Polanyi 1966) Apprenticeship was used as a strategy to utilize the embodied competencies among the expert players.

References

[1]. Dreyfus, H. & Dreyfus, S. (1986). Mind over Machine: The power of human intuition and
expertise in the era of the computer. Oxford, Basil Blackwell.
[2]. Lave, J & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning. Legitimate Peripheral Participation.
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
[3]. Polanyi, (1966). The Tacid Dimension. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul.