Learning in a Self-Study Community of Practice: A Collaborative Journey in Coaching and Teaching

Learning to teach, and learning to coach, are complex pedagogical processes underpinned by social interaction. In this chapter, the authors discuss the development of a small self-study community of practice (SSCoP) centred on our volunteer Gaelic football coaching activities in an Irish university. As we are also teacher educators in this university, we explore how our participation in this SSCoP enabled us to better understand our coaching practices, while simultaneously providing us with insights into our professional identities as teacher educators. Accordingly, our perspectives are framed by Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner’s (Learning in a landscape of practice. In: Wenger-Trayner E, Fenton-O’Creevy M, Hutchinson S, Kubiak C, Wenger-Trayner B (eds) Learning in landscapes of practice: boundaries, identity, and knowledgeability in practice-based learning. Routledge, 2015, p. 13) definition of a landscape of practice as a “complex system of communities of practice and the boundaries between them”. We describe how our coaching roles evolved over the course of five seasons, and identify instances where our deeper understanding of sports pedagogy and practice helped us to become more empathetic teacher educators. The themes of caring and discomfort were developed to explore our learning across our landscape of practice. By exploring the boundary area between coaching and teaching, we gained a deeper understanding of our practice in both.