Written by The road to mastery is a long and winding road that requires, not only technical knowledge and understanding, but these two components applied over time. We have all met sports coaches that race through qualifications collecting knowledge, like bees collect pollen, but are incompetent. We have also met sports coaches who have years of experience but lack important technical knowledge that places their athletes at risk. It is self evident that both knowledge and experience are extremely important. This has been recognised by some of our greatest philosophers dating back as far as Ancient Greece.
Despite lacking in current knowledge and understanding, regarding how the human brain functions, Aristotle encapsulated the learning journey with his episteme, techne and phronesis – or, knowledge, applied knowledge and practical wisdom. Competent sports coaches know and perhaps understand the concepts of training. They are aware that aerobic work relates to stamina and that anaerobic work relates to either basic speed or speed endurance. However, they also know how difficult it is to apply this knowledge and understanding when it comes to the training of athletes – it takes a long time.
It is continuous contextual feedback from practical experiences that enables this inductive learning. Given enough time we can become partially competent without knowledge gained from education or from reading respected authors. But full mastery will be denied to us. Benjamin Bloom specified six levels in his hierarchy of learning that need to be considered, namely – knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation (KC2AE). It is the integration of knowledge elements accrued with experience that leads to full mastery.
There are a number of dimensions to knowledge that contribute to mastery. Donald Rumsfeld (2002), in his famous speech during the Iraq war, captured three of the domains. He, quite rightly, stated that there are known knowns, unknown knowns and unknown unknowns. Translated these refer to things that explicitly we know we know, things that we know that we do not know and things that we know might exist but are hidden from us. He tried to add the fourth dimension by releasing a DVD entitled ‘The Unknown Known.’ He stated that this related to things we thought we knew but were wrong. Unfortunately he got that one wrong himself – badly wrong!
Science is continually correcting what we know with respected research. Our current knowledge is always subject to error and most of us are aware that this is the case. However, they are still known knowns whether they are right or wrong. What Rumsfeld should have realised is that there are things we know but we are not consciously aware that we know them, namely intuition. This enormous pool of tacit knowledge is the home of all our experience gathered over time. There are occasions when experienced sports coaches look at an athlete and know something is wrong but cannot articulate the problem. There are also sports coaches who make decisions about training activities that they know to be right but cannot explain why – they just know it.
Experiential learning is the main source of our unknown knowns and is an essential domain for developing mastery. Returning to Aristotle’s definitions episteme is a term denoting explicit conscious knowledge or, to put it another way, what we know that we know together with what we know we don’t know – knowledge gaps. Comprehension and application of explicit knowledge yields basic competence in the early stages but mastery requires inducted, unconscious, experiential learning that deductively applies both explicit and tacit knowledge over time. This type of knowledge is held in the tacit domain to yield phronesis.
Fig.1-1 displays the four components of knowledge we have gained through our own learning or knowledge that are held in the form of deeply embedded memes, or instinctual drives inherited from our ancestors – tags. In the diagram the horizontal plane comprises of two components each relating to our knowledge – that is, whether it is a known (K) or an unknown (U) to us. The vertical plane comprises of our level of consciousness associated with this knowledge – that is to say whether we are consciously aware of it (C) or whether we are unaware of its existence (U). Each of the four domains of knowledge is important, and each needs careful consideration.
The known knowns, the things we know that we know, are represented by the segment labelled CK-‘Episteme’ – that is knowledge we are consciously aware of and can articulate. The known unknowns, the things that we know we don’t know, are represented by the segment labelled CU- ‘Gaps’ – that is the unknowns that we are aware of and that need to be filled. The unknown knowns, the things that we know but we don’t know we know them, are represented by the segment labelled UK- ‘Intuition’ – that is the unconscious knowns or tacit dimension. Finally the unknown unknowns, the things that we don’t know we don’t know, are represented by the segment labelled UU- ‘The Void’ – that is the unconscious unknowns. This segment is shrouded in mystery and the hidden source of our imagination.
To conclude all four dimensions of knowledge are critically important to mastery. Knowledge gained through the continual deductive and inductive micro-level learning loop, becomes synthesized with our explicit knowledge over time to produce the bedrock of mastery. Miniscule incremental gains made during experiential learning provide a deep well of knowledge that adds to explicit knowledge gained through educational activities. Both the unconscious and explicit pools of knowledge also stimulate the imagination.
Sports coaches are advised to engage in coach education, reflect on their experiences after practice, and be reflexive whilst in action. Active listening to your body and discussing experiences with other sports coaches is also an effective way to learn and move beyond competence. Finally, intuition is a powerful source of knowledge. Although it is often referred to as a ‘gut feeling’, fuelled from instinctive drives, it is actually a library of learning. Intuition is sourced from all the domains of knowledge and should not be underestimated. Instinctive knowledge may mislead us but that gained through purposeful experience will certainly not.
References
Polanyi, M. (1966) The Tacit Dimension. Chicago, U.S.A. The University of Chicago Press.
Robbins, P. (2020) ‘Domains of Knowledge’. In: Intuition. The Journal for Professional Teachers and Trainers in the Further Education and Training Sector, 42 (1), pp. 34-35.
The Unknown Known (2013) [DVD] Directed by Errol Morris. USA: DHR Project, LLC and A&E Television Networks, LLC. Dogwoof Ltd.