You have already read Keith’s 1984 Use of Video in Sport. In its third section, Keith did not ask only whether a recording was technically useful. He asked who was to learn, what they were to learn, when and how they were to learn it. He asked whether coach and camera shared the same viewpoint, whether visual and verbal information should be combined differently for different people, and whether recording might help the coach as well as the performer.
Those questions make an important distinction. Showing someone a recording is an act of delivery. Learning requires something to happen in the person who receives it: they notice, compare, question, try, revise or become able to judge more independently.
Follow one practical question through the selected Clyde Street encounters:
When does analysis help someone learn, rather than simply tell them what happened?
At each stop, notice:
what the learner is being helped to see;who controls the explanation;what the learner is expected to do next; andwhether the analyst’s work increases or reduces the learner’s own judgement.
The posts were not written as a planned sequence. Read together, they let us reconsider the 1984 starting point without pretending that Keith followed a straight path.
2009 — Showing what might be possible
In Feedforward, Keith returned to Peter Dowrick’s work on self-modelling, which he later recalled encountering while researching his 1988 book Using Video in Sport. Dowrick’s idea was not simply to replay a learner’s mistakes. Carefully selected or edited video could show successful behaviour and allow learners to see themselves “not so much as they were but as they might be”.
Keith was attracted to this movement from feedback towards feedforward. The recording could become more than a report of the past: it could help a learner imagine and work towards a possible performance. Keith also kept the evidential limits visible. He reported studies with positive findings, but noted one basketball study in which improved shooting did not establish that the highlight videos caused the improvement.
What this makes visible: The analyst’s selection can shape whether a recording becomes an account of failure or a glimpse of possibility.
Think: If you were preparing video for a performer, what would help them see a realistic next step rather than merely relive an error?
2011 — Learning to notice, not waiting to be told
In Teaching Learners to Notice (2), Keith recorded Royce Sadler’s challenge to conventional feedback. Sadler owns the central argument: feedback often works as telling. The teacher or coach identifies the problem, judges the work, proposes the repair and gives the advice—although those are capacities the learner ultimately needs to develop.
Sadler describes capable learners as able to compare their work with quality, move between the whole and the detail, sense weakness or incompleteness, notice inconsistencies and consider the people who will use what they produce. Keith placed these ideas beside his continuing interests in observation and feedforward.
This does not mean that a coach or analyst should say nothing. It changes the purpose of their contribution. An explanation can draw attention to something the learner has not yet seen, but the longer-term aim is to help that learner recognise, question and act without always waiting for the answer to be supplied.
What this makes visible: Useful feedback is not measured only by how much information the analyst gives. It can also be judged by what the learner becomes able to notice.
Think: After your explanation, what should the athlete or coach be better able to recognise for themselves?
2011 — Less feedback can create more learner work
The next day, Keith wrote Bandwith Approach to Supporting Learning. A presentation by Sadler had sent him back to Peter Dowrick, to Ian Franks and Gary Miller’s work on coach observation, and to a study by Kristine Chambers and Joan Vickers.
Chambers and Vickers studied competitive youth swimmers. In their intervention, some immediate coach feedback was delayed and replaced by questions directed to the swimmers. They reported improvements in technique and later race performance, alongside greater self-regulation, personal control and active learning. The swimmers described doing more mental work; questioning also changed coach–athlete interaction. Keith read this as interesting empirical support, while openly acknowledging that he was attracted to “bandwidth” ideas.
The practical issue is not silence versus feedback. It is how much help to give, when to give it and when to use a question so that the learner still has intellectual work to do.
What this makes visible: Immediate answers may affect the next attempt, but frequent answers can also leave less of the noticing and judging to the learner. Short-term performance and longer-term learning are not automatically the same.
Think: Imagine an athlete asks, “Was that better?” When might a direct answer help—and when might asking, “What felt or looked different to you?” produce more learning?
2012 — The analyst as an educator
In #OAPS101: Enhancing Performance, Keith connected performance analysis with athlete and coach learning. He proposed that performance analysts could be educators and educational technologists: people who do more than produce information, because they think about how information is encountered, understood and returned to practice.
He linked this role with feedforward, performances of understanding and personalised stories. The point is not that every analyst must become a classroom teacher. For this encounter, we can treat every output—a clip, chart, report or conversation—as a set of educational choices. Someone selected the evidence, decided how to represent it, chose when to share it and implied what the recipient should notice or do.
What this makes visible: Analysis is not complete when the output has been delivered. Its purpose becomes clearer when we ask what it enables the coach or performer to understand and do.
Think: Choose one output you have made or received. What learning did its selection, timing and presentation appear to invite?
2013 — Personalising the re-view
In Personalising Performance Observations, Keith brought together a professional discussion, Richard Hill’s account of a distorted performance review, his own experience of review, and examples of visual and narrative communication. These encounters led him to reconsider how a performance “re-view” might be made personal through voice, screencast, notes and conversation.
Encounter 1 considered the analyst’s telling. Here the question moves on: what can the person receiving that telling do with it?
For this encounter, personalisation is not simply putting someone’s name on the same report. It asks whether the representation fits the person, purpose and relationship. A coach and athlete may need different explanations from the same evidence. A spoken account may make uncertainty easier to express than a score alone. A conversation may allow the person represented to question the analyst’s telling.
Keith’s ideas in this post are proposals rather than proof that a personalised form is automatically fairer or more effective. The risk also remains that a confident narrative can make subjective judgement appear objective.
What this makes visible: A recipient is not merely the destination for an output. The form of the re-view can give a coach or athlete more—or less—opportunity to question it, connect it with experience and take part in deciding what it means.
Think: How could you present the same analysis differently to an athlete and a coach without changing the evidence—or pretending that either version is the only possible account?
2017 — What is important enough to share?
In A letter to the Secret Soccer Analyst, Keith reflected on a profession facing an abundance of hardware, software and possible outputs. He asked two direct questions: “What is so important we have to share it?” and “Can less be more?” He then asked what had changed in training and competition and how feedforward might transform practice.
The questions return analysis to consequence. Producing more clips, metrics or reports does not guarantee that anyone has learned more. A learning implication we can draw is that selection can protect attention, make room for conversation and favour information that matters to the next judgement or action.
What this makes visible: The analyst’s educational responsibility includes deciding what not to show.
Think: If you could share only one observation after a performance, what would make it important enough to interrupt the athlete’s or coach’s attention?
What changed across the journey?
Read together, these encounters do not replace the questions in 1984. They make more of their educational consequences visible:
From replay to possibility:a recording can show what happened, but feedforward asks what the learner might become able to do.From telling to noticing:the analyst’s explanation matters, but so does the learner’s capacity to recognise quality, weakness and change.From immediate correction to timed support:more feedback can affect performance now without necessarily producing independent learning later.From output-maker to educator:selection, representation, timing and conversation shape what another person can learn.From a standard report to a situated telling:coach and athlete may require different accounts, while both need ways to question the analyst’s version.From abundance to restraint:when almost everything can be captured and displayed, deciding what is important enough to share becomes part of the analysis.
Read for learning, the selected encounters leave the analyst carrying three connected questions at once:
What should I show?What might this help the learner see?What should they become able to notice and judge for themselves?
The analyst as a designer of attention
This journey makes the analyst’s role easier to see. The analyst does not control whether another person learns. But the analyst does influence the conditions:
what is selected from the performance;whether the account looks backward or opens a possible next step;how much explanation is supplied;when a question replaces an answer;how the telling changes for coach or athlete;and whether the recipient can inspect, challenge and use it.
That is an educational role, even when the workplace does not use the word educator. The quality of the analysis lies partly in the accuracy of the information and partly in what the people receiving it become able to see, discuss and decide.
Discuss: what kind of support produces learning?
For each statement, mark AGREE, NOT SURE or DISAGREE. There is no answer pattern to discover. Use the account in this encounter to explain your position. The linked Clyde Street posts are available if you want to inspect the fuller context or test the summary.
If the information is accurate, sharing more of it will usually improve learning.Showing a successful possibility can sometimes teach more than replaying an error.A good analyst should explain the answer clearly so the athlete does not have to work it out.Delaying feedback can be useful when it gives the learner time to notice and judge.Coach and athlete should receive the same analysis so that the message remains consistent.Personalised analysis should allow the person represented to question the analyst’s telling.Choosing what not to show is part of an analyst’s professional responsibility.
Choose one statement on which your group disagreed. Share:
the detail from this encounter that informed your position;whose learning you were considering;what the analyst, coach, athlete or system would do;and what consequence would make you reconsider your judgement.
Test it against an analytical object
Choose one clip, chart, report or analytical summary you have recently given or received. Identify:
who was expected to learn;what the output made noticeable;what the recipient was expected to do next;one change that would give the recipient more opportunity to inspect, question or judge; andwhat evidence would show that learning—not merely delivery—had occurred.
Take the journey forward
Complete the three sentences. Name at least one Clyde Street encounter in your response.
In 1984, Keith asked us to think about …Across the selected Clyde Street encounters, that concern widened or changed when …- By the end of Clyde Street, analysts still need to judge …
The learning return is not a rule about how much feedback to give. It is a better question to carry into practice:
Question to carry
What will this analysis help another person become able to notice and judge?
Source note
The Clyde Street posts are the substantive sources for this encounter. Peter Dowrick owns the self-modelling/feedforward formulation; Royce Sadler owns the feedback and noticing argument recorded by Keith; Chambers and Vickers own the swimming study; Richard Schmidt owns the distinction Keith drew upon between immediate performance effects and longer-term learning; and Richard Hill owns the performance-review account Keith encountered. The sequence and undergraduate questions are an educational translation, not a curriculum authored by Keith.
Sources followed
1984 starting source
Keith Lyons, Use of Video in Sport, Resource Pack 9, National Coaching Foundation, Chapter 3.
Clyde Street sources
Keith Lyons, “Feedforward” — 09/06/28
Keith Lyons, “Teaching Learners To Notice 2” — 11/08/03
Keith Lyons, “Bandwith Approach To Supporting Learning” — 11/08/04
Keith Lyons, “Oaps101 Enhancing Performance” — 12/11/13
Keith Lyons, “Personalising Performance Observations” — 13/01/07
Keith Lyons, “A Letter To The Secret Soccer Analyst” — 17/01/17