Rethinking the factuality of “contextual” factors in an ethnomethodological mode: Towards a reflexive understanding of action-context dynamism in the theorisation of coaching

In this paper, an argument is made for the revisitation of Harold Garfinkel's classic body of ethnomethodological research in order to further develop and refine models of the action-context relationship in coaching science. It is observed that, like some contemporary phenomenological and post-structural approaches to coaching, an ethnomethodological perspective stands in opposition to dominant understandings of contexts as semi-static causal ‘variables’ in coaching activity. It is further observed, however, that unlike such approaches – which are often focused upon the capture of authentic individual experience – ethnomethodology operates in the intersubjective domain, granting analytic primacy to the coordinative accomplishment of meaningful action in naturally-occurring situations. Focusing particularly on Garfinkel's conceptualization of action and context as transformable and, above all, reflexively-configured, it is centrally argued that greater engagement with the ethnomethodological corpus of research has much to offer coaching scholarship both theoretically and methodologically.