“Over 800 data points”: how coaches and athletes collectively navigate data-rich learning encounters
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/ILS-06-2022-0084 |
| Published date | 28 February 2023 |
| Date | 28 February 2023 |
| Pages | 73-91 |
| Author | Nate Turcotte,Ty Hollett |
“Over 800 data points”: how
coaches and athletes collectively
navigate data-rich
learning encounters
Nate Turcotte
College of Education, Florida Gulf Coast University, Fort Myers,
Florida, USA, and
Ty Hollett
Department of Learning and Performance Systems,
The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, USA
Abstract
Purpose –The datafication of teaching and learning settings continues to be of broad interest to the
learning sciences. In response, this studyaims to explore a non-traditional learning setting, specifically two
Golf Teaching and Research Programs, to investigate how athletes and coaches capture, analyze and use
performance data to improvetheir practice. Athletic settings are well known for spurringthe proliferation of
personal data about performanceacross a range of contexts and ability levels. In these contexts, interest in
athletes’experiences with data has often been overshadowed by a focus on the technologies capturing the
data and their capabilities.
Design/methodology/approach –This ethnographic research focuseson the data-rich experiences of
golf coaches and students during two pedagogical encounters. Using Balka and Star’s (2015) concept of
shadow bodies, this article explores how golfing bodies can become infused with data, creating partial
representations of a lived experience that can be augmented and manipulated for pedagogical purposes,
dependingon the context and the individuals involved.
Findings –Interaction analysis helps the authors to examine the embodied and interactional nature of
coach-golfer pedagogicalencounters across two sites, a local Professional Golf Association golf course anda
Swing Analysis Lab. The authors alsosplit these encounters into two episodes to identify how coaches and
golfers usepartial representations of their bodies toanalyze performance and interpret data.
Originality/value –This research suggests that as data-driven practices continue to engulf athletic
settings, and teaching and learning settingsbroadly, emphasis needs to be placed on ensuring that athletes
(learners) –from the mostrecreational to elite users –have an embodied understanding of their performance
to improve their ability. Furthermore, this article raises questions about what data gets shared between
instructorsand athletes and how that data is used.
Keywords Golf education, Shadow data, Embodiment, Digital technology and learning,
Data tracking, Ethnography
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
The datafication of teaching and learning settings continues to be of broad interest to the
learning sciences (Wilkerson and Polman, 2020). As technological innovation and data
increasingly permeate learning settings, this research explores a non-traditional setting,
specifically Golf Teaching and Research Programs (GTRP) to investigate how athletes and
“Over 800 data
points”
73
Received27 June 2022
Revised16 November 2022
26January 2023
Accepted30 January 2023
Informationand Learning
Sciences
Vol.124 No. 3/4, 2023
pp. 73-91
© Emerald Publishing Limited
2398-5348
DOI 10.1108/ILS-06-2022-0084
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/2398-5348.htm
coaches capture, analyzeand use performance data to improve their practice. Our interestin
the GTRPs, in part, is driven by the proliferation of personal data about athletic
performance which has been documented across a range of contexts and abilitylevels, from
elite athletes to more recreational use (Clegg et al., 2020;Lupton, 2020;Rapp and Tirabeni,
2018). With the developments in technology, users can now monitor, capture and leverage
data to learn about their performance,and recently, researchers of sport and education have
directed their attention to how athletes, particularly elite athletes and their coaches are
leveraging data as a practice (Kohe and Purdy, 2019). However, Kohe and Purdy (2019)
suggest that for elite practicean:
[...] emphasis on data production and analytical measurement speaks to the entrenched
promotion of a techno-informed discourse that has become central to rationalising sport
organisation’s practice and, influenced approach to labour relations and work pressures,
potentially fragmenting coach-athlete relationships (p. 746).
With many sports programs using technologycapable of providing immediate performance
data (Baca and Kornfeind, 2006), coachesand athletes must consider collectively what data-
tracking technologies are used in their practice, why they have been chosen and how they
will be used to improve performance(Collins et al., 2015).
Subsequently, this research examines embodied forms of teaching and learning with
performance data across two GTRPs at two large universitiesin the eastern USA. Previous
research investigatinghow athletes interpret performance data frequentlysituates the users
as either amateur or elite performers(Rapp and Tirabeni, 2018), and while the golfers in this
study are pursuing professional careers in the golf industry, most are not at an elite level
where they can play professionally. However, during their program of study, students
partner with Professional Golf Association (PGA) certified coaches to improve their
performance while also leveraging data tracking technologiesto examine their performance
across lessons and practicesessions. We argue that coaches’and students’treatment of data
in the GTRP provides a micro-analyticopportunity to better understand how embodied data
can spur embodied action by exploringthe following research question:
RQ. How do coaches and athletes collectively determine what data gets analyzed and
the most appropriate methodfor analyzing it?
This research complements work exploring athletes’experiences with data through an
explicit focus on the nature of coaches’and athletes’embodied encounters with golf swing
data. We acknowledge that not all athletes leverage performance data equally, especially
those who are not considered elite athletes. However, we suggest that the abilityto “sense”
performance data supportsathletes’interpretation of personal data (Lupton, 2017;Rapp and
Tirabeni, 2018;Turcotte et al.,2021). As such, we identify how athletes (golfers) use
reflections of their bodies (and their data)to bring awareness to suboptimal aspects of their
golf swing (e.g. a poor clubfaceangle or angle of attack).
This article is structured in several parts. First, we briefly review literature that
examines embodied forms of teaching and learning in sporting contexts. We begin this
section by recognizing bodies as a fundamental element of learning and performance, and
we draw on Lupton’s (2017) definitionof data sense to suggest that learning about personal
data is both an embodied and visceral experience. In this manner, data sense is both
embodied and affective, and involves “entanglements of human senses and digital sensors
with sense-making”(Lupton, 2017, p. 1603). Next, we discuss how the use of data tracking
technologies in sportingsettings generates “data doubles”(Haggerty and Ericson, 2000) and
an algorithmic skin (Williamson,2015), or digital versions of bodies that “transcends human
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