Central and East European
Society for Phenomenology

Repository | Journal | Volume | Article

145234

"You gotta see both at the same time"

visually analyzing player performances in basketball coaching

Bryn Evans Richard Fitzgerald

pp. 121-144

Abstract

Developing novices' proficiency in skilful activities is central to the reproduction of human societies. The interactional practices through which instruction is accomplished have provided a rich focus for ethnomethodological and conversation analytic studies examining classroom settings, and, more recently, non-classroom environments of instruction in practical and manual skills. This paper examines the work of instruction in basketball training and in particular the correction of player performances, which are a ubiquitous and central feature of instruction in basketball training sessions. A central part of this instructional action relies on the coach observing training activities to determine players' competencies and to extract relevant correctables from the players' embodied displays, which are in turn embedded within complex arrangements of rapidly moving bodies situated in material environments. In this paper we examine the visual-analytic work involved in both organizing and observing a basketball training activity, demonstrating the sequential layering of multiple membership categorization devices drawn upon in producing and recognizing actions in this setting. We argue that the coach deploys spatial orientations which function analogously to membership categorization devices, with players' bodily positions relative to one another and the material structure of the surround generating category-like sets of rights, responsibilities, and sequential relevancies. As we demonstrate, these orientations provide crucial resources for the identification of players' errors and thereby for the organization of instruction in interaction in this setting.

Publication details

Published in:

(2017) Human Studies 40 (1).

Pages: 121-144

DOI: 10.1007/s10746-016-9415-3

Full citation:

Evans Bryn, Fitzgerald Richard (2017) „"You gotta see both at the same time": visually analyzing player performances in basketball coaching“. Human Studies 40 (1), 121–144.