The coaching model provides constant feedback through small drills and exercises that allow coaches to observe players and provide immediate feedback. Coaches can stop groups to discuss performance or bring the whole team together. Players also receive feedback from opponents during drills if skills are not executed properly. This formative assessment process helps players improve skills and avoid forming bad habits, unlike a model where coaches only provide feedback after games or tests when it is too late to impact the outcome.

1. The Coaching Model
Effective athletic coaches use a formative assessment and
feedback process to develop their players on the athletic
field. They set up small-sided drills wherein their players
are practicing a skill or tactic that is easily observable
because of the way the coach has designed the drill. Two
forms of feedback are built into this model. As a coach
moves around the field observing player interactions
within the small groups, the coach can stop to discuss with
a particular group of players, providing some feedback
based on what s/he has seen them do. The coach may
blow the whistle and bring the entire team back together
to provide such feedback, or s/he may choose to do it
individually. The other form of feedback is from other
players competing in the drills. If one does not execute
properly, opponents provide immediate feedback by
stifling the success of the player. The important thing to
note about the process is that there are constant
opportunities to provide/receive feedback based on
observations and player interaction. This way, bad habits
are less likely to be formed by players, and players are
receiving clarification about their execution of important
skills or tactics while they are in the process of developing
them. It would be a shame if the coach failed to use such a
process, but rather simply outlined with the team, at
practice or on a chalkboard, how they should play the
game, and then waited until after a match was played

2. against another team to provide feedback on how the
players executed the plan that had been discussed. Such
an assessment and feedback process would be executed
too late to affect the outcome of the match. However, in a
classroom in which instruction takes place, leading only to
a quiz or a test of student mastery of the subject matter,
the exact same process may be occurring – instruction
followed by a summative assessment leading to a grade
that is a measure of success or failure – too late to make a
difference.