Coaching Baseball with Positive Pedagogy

In this chapter, the author describes how he attempted to implement a Positive Pedagogy for sport coaching approach to coaching baseball. Fundamental to Positive Pedagogy and Game Sense are manipulations of time and space, using constraints or rules to create challenges, and using questioning to facilitate collaboration and problem solving to overcome barriers faced out in the field of competition. For hitters, line drives and grounded balls past the pitcher were the only ways to score runs, which would be the case in a true baseball game with teammates on second and third base. One last reflection on implementing Positive Pedagogy would be that, although the author mentions the invigorating feeling from creating new ways of thinking about and coaching baseball, it was quite a challenge once the game was implemented, in some practice sessions, to just let the athletes play the game and try out new things.