Coaching, caring and the politics of touch: a visual exploration

Abstract

This paper has three principal purposes. The first involves locating the ‘politics of touch’ as related to coaching within Noddings' theory of pedagogical caring. Noddings' framework is presented not so much as a prescription of ‘good practice’, but as a potential way to raise the profile and somewhat problematise the debate about touching as a part of coaching. The second objective of the paper is to further the case for visual methods, and in particular photography, as a means to address and explore the complexities and nuance of touch in pedagogical, more precisely, coaching settings. The focus here draws attention to the constrained and spontaneous nature of existence. Here, a debate is also presented both about the often assumed ‘realist’ nature of the data and on the use of precise theoretical explanations to clarify and rationalise them. The final goal relates to presenting some images of coaches' practice as related to both caring and touching.