Staff Profiles

Modules taught

SPOR4003: Human Movement & Skill in Sport

SPOR5003: Coaching Practice to Theory 2

SPOR5006: Sport Development 

SPOR6003: Advanced Coaching Practice 

Research group membership

Sport & Body Cultures Research Group (SBC)- Canterbury Christ Church University

Sport, Exercise & Physical Activity Research Group (SEPARG) - Oxford Brookes University

Research projects

I am currently undertaking my PhD under the working title: To Take Away Our Expression, Is To Impoverish Our Existence - An Ecological Approach to Perception, Action and Cognition. 

Deconstructing the implications of a Non-Linear Pedagogic Approach

The role of the Quiet Eye and skilled behaviour 

Further information

ResearchGate

GoogleScholar

Journal articles

• Renshaw I, Davids, K, Araujo D, Lucas A, Roberts W, Newcombe D, Franks B, 'Evaluating Weaknesses of Cognitive Perceptual Training and Brain Training Methods in Sport: An Ecological Dynamics Critique '
  Frontiers in Psychology 9 (2019)
  ISSN: 1664-1078
  Abstract

  The recent upsurge in “brain training and perceptual-cognitive training,” proposing to improve isolated processes, such as brain function, visual perception, and decision-making, has created significant interest in elite sports practitioners, seeking to create an “edge” for athletes. The claims of these related “performance-enhancing industries” can be considered together as part of a process training approach proposing enhanced cognitive and perceptual skills and brain capacity to support performance in everyday life activities, including sport. For example, the “process training industry” promotes the idea that playing games not only makes you a better player but also makes you smarter, more alert, and a faster learner. In this position paper, we critically evaluate the effectiveness of both types of process training programmes in generalizing transfer to sport performance. These issues are addressed in three stages. First, we evaluate empirical evidence in support of perceptual-cognitive process training and its application to enhancing sport performance. Second, we critically review putative modularized mechanisms underpinning this kind of training, addressing limitations and subsequent problems. Specifically, we consider merits of this highly specific form of training, which focuses on training of isolated processes such as cognitive processes (attention, memory, thinking) and visual perception processes, separately from performance behaviors and actions. We conclude that these approaches may, at best, provide some “general transfer” of underlying processes to specific sport environments, but lack “specificity of transfer” to contextualize actual performance behaviors. A major weakness of process training methods is their focus on enhancing the performance in body “modules” (e.g., eye, brain, memory, anticipatory sub-systems). What is lacking is evidence on how these isolated components are modified and subsequently interact with other process “modules,” which are considered to underlie sport performance. Finally, we propose how an ecological dynamics approach, aligned with an embodied framework of cognition undermines the rationale that modularized processes can enhance performance in competitive sport. An ecological dynamics perspective proposes that the body is a complex adaptive system, interacting with performance environments in a functionally integrated manner, emphasizing that the inter-relation between motor processes, cognitive and perceptual functions, and the constraints of a sport task is best understood at the performer-environment scale of analysis.
  

  Website 
• Roberts WM, Longhurst S, Franks B, Taylor N, Bush AJ, 'Chaordic learning systems: reconceptualising pedagogy for the digital age'
  Higher Education Journal of Learning and Teaching 1 (1) (2017)
  ISSN: 2515-4400 eISSN: 2515-4400
  Abstract
  This article focuses on an explorative and experimental project seeking to implement Chaordic Learning Systems (CLS) as a pedagogic approach in Higher Education. We outline a project that embraced technologies of Web 2.0 to show how both physical and virtual spaces can be used to support and develop a strong and dynamic learning community in which staff and students work alongside each other to co-produce learning resources. Drawing on theories of Communities of Practice and Situated Learning a new teaching framework was introduced to a Level 5 undergraduate module (7.5 ECTS credits) that had not, until this project, used both face-to-face and online learning tools to engage students in the critical and discursive debates pertaining to sport and physical culture. We undertook this project with the belief that Higher Education should be concerned with answering the calls of an increasingly digital society for whom learning is not restricted by the physical boundaries of the university or the political landscape within which learning finds itself.
  Website 

Book chapters

• Roberts W, Newcombe D, Longhurst S, Franks B, Cutter K, 'Boing and Physical Literacy: A Play Based Movement Programme for Community, School and Sport' in Rudd J, Renshaw I, Savelsbergh G, Chow JY, Roberts W, Newcombe D, Davids K (ed.), Nonlinear Pedagogy and the Athletic Skills Model, Routledge (2021)
  ISBN: 9780367457945 eISBN: 9781003025375
  Abstract

  This case study offers an overview of a research project currently being undertaken by academics based at the University of Gloucestershire and Oxford Brookes University (United Kingdom). Our aim is to support practitioners to create playful, active and inclusive environments that support the development of physical literacy in community, school and sport settings. Our focus is twofold: firstly, to provide meaningful developmental experiences for practitioners to support the delivery of play-based, problem-based environments for young people, and secondly, through those practitioner, support children to develop their physical literacy through active play. The underpinning work is based on the theoretical constructs of an ecological dynamics framework and grounded on the premise that problem setting and solving is key to young people's development.

  Website 

Other publications

• White AJ, Franks B, 'Film Review: Concussion (2015) Sony Pictures Entertainment'
  International Review for the Sociology of Sport 54 (8) (2019) pp.1020-1024ISSN: 1012-6902 eISSN: 1461-7218
  Website 
• Franks B, Newcombe D, Roberts WM, Jakeman J, 'Shhh… We're talking about the Quiet Eye! A Perceptual Approach to the Transfer of Skill: Quiet Eye as an Insight into Perception-Action Coupling in Elite Football'
  (2017) Abstract Amidst the continued theorising and objective epistemological approach to perceptual research
  (Michaels and Beek, 1995), there remains little clarity regarding what information athletes use to
  direct decision making in performance settings and how skill is transferred from training to performance. The role of perception-action coupling within decision-making in team sports has been discussed at great length (Vaeyens et al, 2007; Pinder et al, 2011). With scholars reaching some consensus that skilled performers are not blessed with superior visual ability, rather, their ability to locate and interpret key specifying information is what determines expertise in a particular skill (Vickers, 2006). The methodological accord has often been to recreate core, single action motor-control tasks in the hope of elucidating data to suggest a change in behaviour in any given number of constraint manipulations (Vickers, 1996; Williams, Singer and Frehlich, 2002; Vine and Wilson, 2011). However, research remains in isolation of the complexities of the real world (Vaeyens, 2007; Williams and Grant, 1999). The Quiet Eye (QE) has become increasingly popular (Vickers, 2016), it details the final fixation towards a specific location or object within 3* of visual angle or less for a minimum of 100m/s (Vickers, 2016). It is reasonable to suggest that QE describes the variable in which to examine the relationship between perception and action (Vickers, 1996; Panchuk and Vickers, 2006). A SensoMotoric Instrument – Eye Tracking Glasses (SMI-ETG) binocular system will be employed within an elite level goalkeeping context. QE data will be collected in three different practice environments and compared to QE measures taken in a representative performance simulation. The practice environment design will be informed by principles of ecological dynamics as presented in the Environment Design Framework (Newcombe et al, in press). The data will be coded to establish the relationship between increased variability and the location, onset and off set of the Quiet Eye. Effect size measures will be conducted to see the variance between the 3 training trials and the representative simulation to determine the level of fidelity, between training and performance. This key data set will allow coaches to design practices and training environments in accordance with key perceptual cues used by Goalkeepers to inform their decisions and actions. Website 
• Roberts WM, Taylor N, Longhurst S, Franks B, 'Towards chaordic learning: Innovative pedagogy for the digital age'
  (2016)
• Franks B, 'The Impact of Chronological Age on the Quiet Eye in Youth Development Phase Goalkeepers in a Professional Youth Academy'
  () Abstract Whilst there has been much speculation, there remains little clarity regarding what information athletes use to direct decision making in performance settings, and how skill is transferred from training to performance (Michaels and Beek, 1995). The role of perception-action coupling within decision-making in team sports has been widely considered, and there is some consensus that skilled performers are better able to locate and interpret key information determining expertise in a particular skill. The consideration of Quiet Eye (QE) has become increasingly popular in assessing the critical moment in which an action is initiated (Vickers, 1996), and as the consistent perception-action variable in elite performers. Quiet Eye data (onset; offset and location) will be collected in a 1 v 1 dyadic system, with the primary purpose being to understand the impact of chronological age in academy Goalkeepers (13, 15, 18 y/o) against their expert counterparts (Senior Professionals). This research study has implications for coaches and researchers to i) be able to faithfully sample relevant specifying information in practice environments ii) further the theoretical and practical field in regards to intra-indivudal age variance and attainment of expertise and iii) allow for greater insight into research in elite sport. Website 

Areas of expertise

Ecological Approach to Perception, Action and Cognition 

Non-Linear Pedagogy 

Human Movement and Skill Development 

Consultancy

Boing - Research, Education and Development Consultant

Emergence Movement - Global Coach Education Partner 

Press, publicity and reviews

https://perceptionaction.com/2020/04/14/

https://www.thetalentequation.co.uk/single-post/2019/05/16/keep-your-eye-on-the-ball-or-dontits-up-to-you-a-conversation-with-ben-franks

Further information

Progress toward ambiguity (wordpress.com)

Twitter