Parameterising expertise in coaching: Past,present and future

Abstract

Research into expertise is increasing across a number of domains pertinent to sport. Whilst this increase is particularly apparent in coaching, a key question is how to identify an expert coach? Accordingly, this paper draws upon existing studies into expert coaches to address this issue; in particular, the criteria used to select expert coaches for research purposes and the methods used in expert coach research. Based on these data, we contend that the elements of expertise are not fully reflected within currently accepted criteria which, in turn, results in expert coaching research not necessarily identifying the appropriate individuals to study. The paper concludes with recommendations for more rigorous criteria for selecting expert coaches and highlights the associated implications for the future training and development of expert coaches.     

Talent development of high performance coaches in team sports in Ireland

Background: Coaches are central to the development of the expert performer and similarly to continued lifelong participation in sport. Coaches are uniquely positioned to deliver specific technical and tactical instruction and mentoring programmes that support the psychological and social development of athletes in a challenging, goal-oriented and motivational environment. The current study aimed to qualitatively investigate current coach learning sources and coaches’ educational backgrounds in team sports in Ireland. Methods: Coaches from five team sports in Ireland were asked to complete an online questionnaire. Subsequently male coaches (n?=?19) from five team sports who completed the questionnaire and met the inclusion criteria were invited to attend a follow-up semi-structured interview. Inclusion criteria for coaches were that they possess at least 10 years’ experience coaching their sport and were coaching more than 4 hours per week. Results/Discussion: Formal coach education does not meet the needs of high performance coaches who rely more on self-directed learning and coaching experience as their main sources of CPD. Although prior playing experience at a high level is both valuable and desirable, there are concerns about fast-tracking of ex-players into high performance coaching roles. Conclusions: Preferred sources of education and the best learning environment for coaches of team sports in Ireland are more informal than formal. Further research is needed to examine how this learning is applied in a practical manner by examining coaching behaviours and the impact it has on the athlete development process.     

教练员领导行为研究进展述评

通过对有关教练员领导行为研究文献的回顾,介绍了迄今国外教练员领导行为5个方面的研究成果,即多维度体育运动领导模式、领导者行为模式、教练员领导方式和决策方式,教练员与运动员的共容,教练员行为的评估与培训;同时介绍了国内有关教练员领导行为的研究,包括教练员的领导功能与作用、教练员的领导职责与素质、教练员的影响力与权威体系、教练员的领导方式与效果;提出了国内外研究存在的不足及改进建议。     

现代竞技排球运动教练员应具备的素质与能力

现代竞技排球教练员素质能力不仅关系到其自身的执教能力和水平,而且对运动员的成才和训练有着重要而深远的影响。通过对我国男排后备队伍青年男排教练员进行问卷调查,对现代竞技排球教练员所应具备的素质能力进行了分析和探讨,旨在为建立一支职业道德品质高、执教能力强的高水平教练员队伍提供参考与借鉴。     

Coaching commitment and turnover: a comparison of current and former coaches

Although coaching continuity is thought to be important in developing and sustaining quality sport programs, coach turnover is not well understood. Consequently, we used a commitment model to address why some coaches maintain their involvement while others discontinue coaching. For this study, 469 USA Swimming age-group coaches completed a mail survey designed to assess commitment model constructs, including coaching satisfaction, benefits, costs, investments, alternative options, social constraints, and commitment. To test the commitment model, we first used structural equation modeling to assess whether the model provided an adequate fit to the data for current and former coaches. Overall, satisfaction and investments were significantly related to commitment. Moreover, the standardized path coefficients between benefits and costs and satisfaction were also significant. Multivariate analysis of variance andfollow-up analyses revealed that current coaches reported higher commitment as well as less attractive alternative options, higher investments, and higher social constraints compared to former coaches. In replication of past research, we compared current andformer coaches on the benefits and costs associated with coaching.     

Integration of professional judgement and decision-making in high-level adventure sports coaching practice

This study examined the integration of professional judgement and decision-making processes in adventure sports coaching. The study utilised a thematic analysis approach to investigate the decision-making practices of a sample of high-level adventure sports coaches over a series of sessions. Results revealed that, in order to make judgements and decisions in practice, expert coaches employ a range of practical and pedagogic management strategies to create and opportunistically use time for decision-making. These approaches include span of control and time management strategies to facilitate the decision-making process regarding risk management, venue selection, aims, objectives, session content, and differentiation of the coaching process. The implication for coaches, coach education, and accreditation is the recognition and training of the approaches that “create time” for the judgements in practice, namely “creating space to think”. The paper concludes by offering a template for a more expertise-focused progression in adventure sports coaching.     

Elite cricket coach education: a Bourdieusian analysis

The social structures within coach education have been largely unexplored, undiscussed, and treated as unproblematic in contributing to coach learning, both in research and practice. The study used semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 11 elite cricket coaches to gather their perceptions of an elite coach education programme. In particular, this research attempted a more nuanced critical inquiry into the impact of culture on coach learning, habitus on knowledge production and the extent to which capital structures practice within the field of cricket coach education. Data analysis followed abductive reasoning, combining inductive thematic analyses of the data, with a deductive abstraction of these themes within a Bourdieusian framework to provide a level of explanation to the data. The findings present coach education as a complex social field in which coaches were active social beings in the (re)production of coaching knowledge. The culture of cricket was found to perpetuate a powerful doxic system that highlighted the tensions and conflict between an accepted model of coach education with a singular and prescribed body of knowledge and a strong underlying sporting culture and individuals hierarchically placed within it. This data further highlighted how coach education contributes to the (re)production of power within the field of cricket coaching.     

The Use of Statistical Significance: A Commentary Related to Franks and Huck

Abstract

This paper focuses on the processes by which people become high school coaches. Occupational choice, professional socialization, and organizational socialization are examined, using qualitative data drawn from naturally occurring observations of coaches and informal discussions and in-depth interviews with them. Over 50% of the coaches had decided that they wanted to become a coach before entrance into college. The decision to become a coach was subjectively warranted by personal characteristics and experiences in sports, a devotion to sport, and a desire to work with young people. Youth sport coaching and student teaching which involved coaching constituted the only formal professional socialization that most of the coaches received. However, because almost all of the coaches participated in organized youth and/or high school athletics, they had a first-hand opportunity to observe their own coaches and acquire some informal images and impressions about the coaching occupation from them. Regardless of whether a neophyte began as an assistant or a head coach, technical aspects of the job and the occupation's culture were acquired by observing and listening to more experienced coaches. Through these experiences, collective understandings began to form, and the shared meanings about the occupational culture took shape. Reality shock for most novice coaches came in the form of understanding the importance the coaching culture assigns to long hours and hard work and to the realization that coaching does take an enormous amount of time. By the end of the first season, a symbolic transformation takes place and internalization of institutional expectations occurs as the neophyte begins to understand what coaching is all about.     

Becoming a high school coach: from playing sports to coaching

This paper focuses on the processes by which people become high school coaches. Occupational choice, professional socialization, and organizational socialization are examined, using qualitative data drawn from naturally occurring observations of coaches and informal discussions and in-depth interviews with them. Over 50% of the coaches had decided that they wanted to become a coach before entrance into college. The decision to become a coach was subjectively warranted by personal characteristics and experiences in sports, a devotion to sport, and a desire to work with young people. Youth sport coaching and student teaching which involved coaching constituted the only formal professional socialization that most of the coaches received. However, because almost all of the coaches participated in organized youth and/or high school athletics, they had a first-hand opportunity to observe their own coaches and acquire some informal images and impressions about the coaching occupation from them. Regardless of whether a neophyte began as an assistant or a head coach, technical aspects of the job and the occupation's culture were acquired by observing and listening to more experienced coaches. Through these experiences, collective understandings began to form, and the shared meanings about the occupational culture took shape. Reality shock for most novice coaches came in the form of understanding the importance the coaching culture assigns to long hours and hard work and to the realization that coaching does take an enormous amount of time. By the end of the first season, a symbolic transformation takes place and internalization of institutional expectations occurs as the neophyte begins to understand what coaching is all about.     

Becoming a ‘good coach’

The purpose of this paper was to gain insight into how coaches problematized their coaching practices and the process in which they engaged to become what they perceived to be better coaches using a course based on critical reflective practice. We assumed that constant critical self-reflection would enable coaches to move closer to their individual idea of a ‘good coach.’ Scholars and coaches collaborated to develop course content. The course was built on principles of rational-emotive education. We drew on Foucault's conceptualization of self-constitution or modes of subjectivation and confessional practice and Knaus' approach to teaching for our analytical framework. Thirty-five coaches participated in this study. The data consisted of semistructured interviews, field notes, open-ended questionnaires and focus group. The results are presented per mode of change or transformation. We explored how coaches wanted to transform their coaching practice (ethical substance), how they defined a good coach (mode of subjection), how they worked on change (ethical work) and how they transformed themselves (telos). To gain further insight into this process, we also examined narratives of three coaches as they described why and how they changed. The practice of critical reflection seemed to meet the needs of the coaches involved in the study. They used it to continually examine their behavior and their normalized taken-for-granted beliefs and to transform themselves in the direction of their idea of a ‘good coach.’ Ontological reflection was seen as a tool and a process that requires continual practice.     

Using Appreciative Inquiry to explore Australian football coaches' experience with game sense coaching

This paper reports on a project framed as a strengths-based case study in the field of sport coaching. The aim of this research was twofold. First, the project trialled. Appreciate Inquiry (AI) for sport pedagogy research and explain how AI can be used in sport coaching research. Second, using an appreciative perspective, the aim of the research was to find greater meaning in the two coaches' practice to explain the forces driving the shaping and the implementation of Game Sense (GS) coaching. This is particularly pertinent given strong advocacy for GS as a preferred sport pedagogy but a slow deployment in the field of sport coaching in Australia. Through the story of experience that emerged a reculturing of coaching practice was revealed and the elements that sustained GS coaching highlighted. This research improves understanding of decisions made by coaches to change practice and which are sustained because they bring ‘life’ to the coach. AI has not been used previously to case study coaching practice generally and GS coaching in Australian football specifically. Further research examining the long-term and accumulated benefits of AI for qualitative sport coaching research is proposed, as is further investigation of coaches' experience with GS coaching across a broad range of sports from entry and grassroots through to elite level sport.     

Lived experience and community sport coaching: A phenomenological investigation

Coaching in the participation domain is the act of coaching participants that are less intensely engaged in sport than performance orientated athletes. This form of coaching is a popular activity occurring in community settings such as schools or sport clubs, and it is often undertaken with a broad range of social and health outcomes in mind. The experiences and practices of the large army of ‘community coaches’¹ have been under-explored in comparison to those of elite performance coaches who focus on competitive success and dominate much academic research. This study focuses on the little known world of the community coach. Drawing on the philosophy of phenomenologists such as Husserl, and in particular the methodology of Van Manen, the study explored the lived experiences of a single case study community coach. Derived from semi-structured interviews and in keeping with Van Manen's methodology, findings are presented in a narrative format. The narrative describes the ‘lifeworld’ of the coach and seeks to identify the ‘essential features’ of community coaching in this case. Specifically, the narrative illustrates a dichotomy in the lifeworld of the coach; between a frenetic practical delivery mode visible in the public arena and a ‘hidden’ largely unknown, private world used predominantly for planning and organising. For this case study coach, the essence of community coaching lay in two complementary activities; planning and then delivering fun based activities that achieved social, health and sporting outcomes. Additionally, interacting with others, such as parents, carers and teachers was identified as an essential feature of this coach's experience.     

Coaching athletes with disability: preconceptions and reality

It is now widely recognized that athletes with disability compete at an elite level which parallels that experienced by non-disabled athletes. The importance of quality coaching to develop an athlete’s full potential is similarly recognized. However, research in the area of coaching athletes with disability is still lacking compared to its counterpart in non-disabled sport. This research explored the holistic experience of coaching elite athletes with disability, and therefore encompassed not only the coaches’ preconceptions, but the rewards and challenges of their coaching experience. Semi-structured interviews were held with 12 coaches of elite athletes from sports including swimming, athletics, cycling, canoeing, triathlon, equestrian sport and wheelchair basketball. The results of the study identified that, although the coaches reported their experience as being overwhelmingly positive, they were also regularly confronted with difficulties not generally faced by coaches of non-disabled athletes.     

Phronetic social science: a means of better researching and analysing coaching?

The aim of this paper is to present the case for phronetic social science as an appropriate lens through which to view sports coaching. In doing so, we firstly define and then elaborate upon the principal concepts contained within phronetic social science as related to complex action, flexibility, moral reflection and power. By locating them within recent coaching research, the case is further made how such concepts can help coaching scholars and coaches to better understand the activity of coaching. Finally, a conclusion draws together the main points made, particularly in terms of how using such a perspective and conceptualisation of coaching could benefit future coach education programmes.     

Recreational and developmental youth coach learning

Background: Within the field of coach development, previous research has ascertained that elite coaches learn through a variety of formal, non-formal, and informal sources. Little is known, however, about how coaches from different coaching contexts such as recreational and developmental learn to coach.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate how coaches from youth recreational and developmental coach contexts access and appreciate various coach learning sources, and whether there were any differences between these two contexts.

Data collection and analysis: Basketball and soccer coaches (N?=?758) from the two different contexts (recreational and developmental) were recruited through their respective sport organizations to participate in an online questionnaire about their coach learning. Specifically, they were asked about which learning sources they consulted and how helpful they found each source to be. The two groups were compared using chi-square and odd ratios, independent t-tests, and factorial ANOVA analyses.

Findings: Findings suggest that developmental coaches access a greater number of learning sources than do recreational coaches; however, for most sources both groups of coaches report the same level of helpfulness. Together, these findings suggest that the specific coaching context (recreational versus developmental) is an important consideration when examining coach learning.     

社会足球青训机构教练员能力因素的研究

该文采用逻辑分析法和文献资料法来进行社会足球青训机构教练员能力因素的研究。社会足球青训机构教练员是足球教练员这个群体中的一个分类,随着草根足球和校园足球在中国的不断发展,社会足球青训机构教练员的数量正在不断增加。现阶段,社会足球青训机构教练员是绝大部分青少年的“足球启蒙教练”,因此对其能力因素的研究十分重要。该文以社会足球青训机构教练员为研究对象,研究了其指导运动训练能力、临场指挥比赛能力、团队管理能力和影响能力的综合因素。通过研究发现社会足球青训机构教练员需要各种能力,但最为重要的是指导运动训练的能力。     

Self-efficacy,perceived training needs and coaching competences: The case of Portuguese handball

Abstract

The aim of this study was to analyse handball coaches’ perceptions of self-efficacy and recognition of training needs related to coaching competences according to their coaching experience, coach certification level and academic education. Two hundred and seven Portuguese handball coaches answered questionnaires that included a scale of self-efficacy and another of recognition of training needs. Data analysis started with an exploratory factorial analysis with Maximum Likelihood Factoring and Oblimin rotation. From the factors obtained, a One-way ANOVA and Tukey's post hoc multiple comparisons were applied. Coaches’ self-efficacy revealed coaching competences related to: annual and multi-annual planning; planning and guiding training and competition; coaching methodology; implementation of sport development projects and coach education and meta-cognitive competences. Coaches’ recognition of training needs revealed four main areas: planning and guiding training and competition; multi-annual planning; management of sports careers and coaching education and leadership. Although an independent relationship between coaches’ perceptions of self-efficacy and training needs was confirmed, they perceived themselves as having competences and highlighted training needs in all areas. Coaches’ perceptions of self-efficacy were influenced by their coach certification level, academic education and coaching experience. The study suggests that sport specificity within the social culture in addition to the precise sporting domain of action influence the perceptions of coaches about their self-efficacy and training needs as related to coaching competences and, therefore, should be considered in the coach education curriculum.