Reflective practices for better sports coaches and coach education: shifting from a pedagogy of scarcity to abundance in the run-up to Rio 2016

This paper is a call to action which describes, explains and then justifies why a shift from a pedagogy of scarcity to a pedagogy of abundance is necessary in coach education. It begins by (re)establishing the crucial links between emotions, thoughts and then actions. This is then taken further with an explication of how currently reflective practices in sports coaching and education could be called a pedagogy of scarcity. We argue that this is characterised by an anaemic and skel- etal conception of reflection and its practices which gives rise to two conse- quences: (1) a sense of placelessness; (2) borrowing practices. The second half of the paper presents a counterpoint which is a pedagogy of abundance. This has four characteristics: (1) a less myopic and more expansive view of the practices of reflection; (2) a greater focus on identifying and then building the strengths, gifts and talents of coaches; (3) a move away from a predilection of paper-and- pencil type reflective tools; and (4) recasting the process of ‘shared learning’ to positively utilise the benefits of modern information and communication technol- ogies in learning through reflection. We attempt to make the case that utilising the benefits of a pedagogy of abundance brings with it an opportunity for coa- ches and coach education to create new spaces for reflection, performative action, intervention and perhaps transformation in the run-up to Rio 2016.