Coach Education and Continuing Professional Development: Experience and Learning to Coach

Research over the last decade has demonstrated that it is experience and the observation of other coaches that remain the primary sources of knowledge for coaches. Despite this, coach education and continuing professional development fail to draw effectively on this experience. Using the work of Pierre Bourdieu, this paper attempts to understand how the “art of coaching” can be characterized as structured improvisation and how experience is crucial to structuring coaching practice. An examination of current coach education and assessment demonstrates that coaching practice viewed as a composite of knowledge has not specifically addressed the pervasive influence of experience on coaching practice. Drawing on experiences from the educational field, we examine how coach education and continuing professional development can utilize mentoring and critical reflection to situate learning in the practical experience of coaching.     

“I thought we were supposed to learn how to become better coaches”: developing coach education through action research

ABSTRACT

Youth coaches play a crucial role in the development of young athletes and their physical, psychological and social well-being. Therefore, it is important to foster and develop youth coaches’ ability to govern and act effectively in their coaching practices. Sports organisations facilitate the development of youth coaches through formal coach education. However, research has shown this to be with limited effect. The purpose of this action research study was to involve youth coaches in developing a new and more effective coach education practice.

The coaches developed their practices through both dialogue and reflection with each other. A shift in the mindset of the coaches resulted in a more reflective and analytical approach in their way of thinking and talking about their practices. The most effective tools for improving the coach educational practice was the active management of the relations between the participating coaches and assisting the coaches’ reflection and dialogue through the use of scaffolding. In order to engage coaches in the educational practice, alignment between coaches’ expectations and both course content and form was crucial. These findings provide further insight into how coaches can develop their practices and how sports organisations can develop more effective coach education practices.     

Reviews

The aim of our study was to examine formalized mentoring as a learning strategy for volunteer sports coaches and to consider implications for other volunteer groups in the community. Despite the increasingly popular use of mentoring as a learning and support strategy across professional domains, and the sheer scale of volunteer sports coach activity in many communities, there has been comparatively little research on structured mentoring programmes in such settings. Data are reported from a 12-month longitudinal study of 6 mentors and 18 volunteer coaches who were organized into formal mentor partnerships in one region of the United Kingdom. Findings from our study revealed that mentoring was the result of continuous interaction between coach and context, and that context must be understood in both spatial and temporal terms. The implications for mentoring in other community based volunteer groups are explored.     

Tacit Knowledge in Expert Coaching: Science or Art?

Effective coaching is a mixture of pedagogy and principles of sciences, e.g., motor skill acquisition, sociology, and physiology, often referred to as the science of coaching. Instinctive or intuitive coaching has often been incorrectly viewed as the art of coaching. More important should be how coaches develop knowledge, how they access that knowledge at the appropriate times and how this affects their decision-making process. The study of expert coaches should allow inferences to be drawn from their development and applied to coach education. This article intends to clarify coaching expertise and examine the role of tacit knowledge within coaching. The lack of a clear development pathway for aspiring expert coaches is a clear indicator that the current coach education system needs review. Any effective education system should be based on knowledge and understanding rather than mimicry and the implications for the future of coach education are considered.     

Making Mentoring Work: The Need for Rewiring Epistemology

To help produce more expert coaches at the participation and performance levels, a number of governing bodies have established coach mentoring systems. In light of this trend, against the limited literature on coach mentoring and the risks of superficial treatment by coach education systems, this article critically discusses the role of the mentor in coach development, the nature of the mentor–mentee relationship, and, most specifically, how expertise in the mentee may best be developed. If mentors are to be effective in developing expert coaches, we consequently argue that a focus on personal epistemology is required. On this basis, we present a framework that conceptualizes mentee development on this level through a step by step progression, rather than through an unrealistic and unachievable leap toward expertise. Finally, we consider the resulting implications for practice and research with respect to one-on-one mentoring, communities of practice, and formal coach education.     

Coaching the Mentor: Facilitating Reflection and Change

The purpose of this study is to explore the process of coaching a mentor of experienced teachers. In particular, we sought to determine if coaching would help a mentor to compare her espoused beliefs about mentoring to her mentoring behaviors and possibly resolve any dissonance. The mentor and coach (the co‐researchers) participated in a platform conference, three coaching conferences, and a debriefing conference. In the platform conference, the mentor espoused the use of nondirective mentoring behaviors. The mentor and coach used the coaching conferences to review audio recordings of the mentor working with mentees during conferences intended to improve the mentees’ teaching, and to engage in reflective dialogue concerning the mentor’s interpersonal behaviors. The mentor experienced cognitive dissonance on several occasions during the coaching conferences when she discovered her use of directive behaviors in some interactions with mentees. Eventually, the mentor resolved this dissonance, primarily by changing her beliefs about mentoring and shifting from a nondirective to an eclectic platform. We conclude that the coaching of mentoring explored in this study has considerable potential for future research on the coaching process.     

Conceptualizing the adventure-sports coach

As a comparatively recent development, the adventure-sports coach struggles for a clear and distinct identity. The generic term ‘instructor’ no longer characterizes the role and function of this subgroup of outdoor professionals. Indeed, although the fields of adventure/outdoor education and leadership are comparatively well researched, the arrival of this ‘new kid on the block’ appears to challenge both the adventure-sports old guard and traditional views of sports coaching. In an attempt to offer clarity and stimulate debate, this paper attempts to conceptualize the adventure-sports coach in the context of the existing roles in the field and current motivations for activity in the outdoors. We identify issues that are specific to the adventure-sports coach while also recognizing those skills and competencies shared with other professionals, both in the adventure sports profession and traditional sports coaching fields. Based on this review, we offer a conceptual model which may be used to focus debate, stimulate research and, at a possible later stage, to underpin accreditation, training and professional development.     

Knowledge Construction and Personal Relationship: Insights About a UK University Mentoring and Coaching Service

This article examines interview data from 12 mentors/coaches and eight of their clients in order to explore a mentoring and coaching service among UK university staff. Both mentors/coaches and clients were administrative or academic employees of the Institute of Education or affiliated colleges at London University, UK. Their roles related to the administration for, or leadership of, teaching programs as well as educational research and consultancy projects pursued by the institute. The mentors/coaches in this service aimed to construct or co‐construct knowledge with their clients rather than to transmit advice to them. The author explores the learning of mentors/coaches and clients, conceptualizing their “co‐construction” of knowledge as either collaborative construction or as participation. She examines the link between the construction of knowledge and personal relationship, considering the personal relationship both of mentor/coach with clients, and among mentors/coaches themselves. Additionally, the author draws on the divide between functional and personal. She concludes by considering implications from the findings about mentoring and coaching. Emphasized is their potential to play a subversive role within the established functional systems of an institution, if mentoring and coaching prioritize personal relationship.     

The Transferability of Sport Coaching Research: A Critical Commentary

ABSTRACT

The utility and applicability of research in sport coaching is widely reported to be problematic. This article offers a critical commentary on the factors impacting the potential transferability of research findings into coaches’ practice and into coach education, arguing that a more nuanced appreciation of these factors is necessary. The issue is conceptualized as one of knowledge transfer, and the article examines the roles of the researcher and the practitioner in facilitating research-informed practice. Single-focus disciplinary research, an absence of application research and the paucity of studies on coaching interventions are identified as limiting factors. A more realistic appreciation of the particularity of role, domain, and context is required, along with a recognition of their influence on coaches’ perceptions of the relevance of research findings. It is suggested that the inertia of academic publishing practice may continue to constrain more pragmatic and interdisciplinary research in this field.     

Exploring coaching actions based on developed values: a case study of a female hockey coach

There are few empirical studies that demonstrate how values are developed and how they are linked to coaching actions. There can be a discrepancy between the statement of coaches’ values and their actual coaching actions. In order to examine how coaching actions are influenced by values that are developed over a lifetime, the purpose of this article is to first describe a female hockey coach’s approach to coaching using five key coaching actions, then identify the underlying values that influenced those actions, and then explore how these values were developed in different experiences throughout her life. A time-oriented network analysis was conducted based on four semi-structured, in-depth interviews with the coach. The results present five key coaching actions: (a) organizing coach education programmes for athletes, (b) creating groups to help athletes bond, (c) bringing in experts from various domains, (d) asking athletes to reflect on attitudes and goals, and (e) giving athletes playing time based on hard work and effort. We identify the core values guiding these actions as: (a) equity, (b) connectedness, (c) holistic development, (d) respect, and (e) effort. Finally, we present a number of the coach’s experiences that demonstrate the complexity of developing these values throughout her life. The importance of reflecting on and discussing coaching actions, experiences, and the underlying learned values may help coaches develop coaching actions that are guided more explicitly by those values.     

Dialogue in the support of learning to teach: a case study of a mentor/mentee pair in a teacher education programme

In this paper, we examine the role of reflection in teacher preparation, specifically within a mentoring relationship between cooperating and preservice teacher. We report findings from a case analysis of this pair who engaged in problem-posing dialogue within pre- and post-conferences around practice over one year of their work together in an elementary-level classroom. The context is an innovative programme in which cooperating teachers pursue their Master’s degree while undergraduates (preservice teachers) complete their elementary education degrees. Our analysis of talk about teaching during six coaching cycles as well as supporting documents illustrates how Jane’s mentoring supported reflective practices and disrupted a notion of a field experience as simply a place to ‘practice’ pedagogical knowledge with corrective feedback. Additionally, we explore the tensions in this approach to mentoring. This case study has implications for teacher educators who seek to bolster teacher preparation through the support of mentoring relationships.     

A Review of the Game-Based Approaches to Coaching Literature in Competitive Team Sport Settings

ABSTRACT

Game-Based Approaches (GBAs) have been advocated as a pedagogy to improve decision-making, skill execution, and physical fitness in physical education teaching and sports coaching. To date, no review paper has reported on the use of GBAs in competitive team sport settings. The purpose of this article was to review the research evidence conducted on GBAs specifically within competitive team sport settings and discuss the implications of these findings for sports coaching researchers and practitioners. The current review identified 23 articles investigating GBAs in competitive team sport settings. The review supports the efficacy of GBAs in the development of athlete decision-making and tactical awareness. GBAs promote personal and social development (e.g. player responsibility) along with positive affective outcomes for athletes (i.e. motivation, enjoyment). There was less support for the development of technical skill through GBAs. The review concludes by identifying future research directions and implications for competitive team sport coaches’ practice.     

What can be learned from action learning coaching? Learnings of novice action learners and their coach

Action learning coaching (ALC), a form of action learning that integrates leadership coaching, is suggested as a method and ethos to build future capacity, specifically in novice HRD practitioners. The purpose of this article is to offer an account of learning from the perspectives of novice action learners, who were new to the field of human resource development (HRD) and to the concept of ALC, as well as their similarly noviced coach. Data from budding practitioners and their coach, participants in an action learning action research (ALAR) study, are analyzed to show how they used action and generative learning through ambiguity to apply learning to their new roles. Action learning coaching elevated participants’ skills, self-concept, efficaciousness, professionalism, commitment to action, and capacity for learning and growth. Participants changed themselves, their practice, and ultimately the way they approached human resource development as novices.     

Toward the development and validation of a career coach competency model

The career coaching profession is a dynamic field that has grown over the last decade. However, there exists a limitation to this field's development, as there is no universally accepted definition or empirically based competencies. There were three phases to the study. In the first phase, a conceptual model was developed that highlights four unique and distinct domains of the career coach. The model illuminates the triadic relationship between the client, the organization, and the coach. The second phase established a definition for career coaching, and the third phase involved using both the definition and conceptual model to create a list of skills and abilities, which was used to design a survey that was administered to 424 career coaches internationally. Through the use of factor analysis, an eight‐factor competency model emerged. Finally, it is hoped that these findings will lead to a vigorous academic and professional debate for the development of a universal, empirically based career coaching competency model.     

Learning to Coach in Practice-Based Teacher Education: A Self-Study

In some forms of practice-based teacher education, one important task for the teacher educator is to undertake in-the-moment coaching during rehearsals of practice. However, being such a coach is a new role for many teacher educators and requires a different skill set to other forms of teacher educator practice. In addition, there is little literature to which teacher educators can turn when seeking to address the problem of enactment in this context. This article seeks to address this gap in the literature. It reports a self-study undertaken by one mathematics teacher educator as he learned to coach pre-service teachers on the fly, while in turn they learned to orchestrate whole-class mathematical discussions. It seeks to illustrate how the process of journaling can support the journey of discovery that is the development of new practice. Through consulting the literature and story-telling, a picture is painted of how the educator addressed early concerns such as “what is a coach supposed to do?” and “what should a coach pause a rehearsal to talk about?” and began to master coaching – work that was never routine, but rather situated, adaptive, and responsive. The stories draw from a personal journal of field notes and reflections from such events as student rehearsals, lesson conferences, team meetings, reading student work, and professional reading. Journal entries from 12 rehearsal cycles over four years were consulted.     

“Becoming” a mentor between reflective and evaluative discourses: A case study of identity development

This case study interpreted the experiences of a teacher as she grew her coaching and mentoring practices by working with preservice teachers and participating in professional development focused on reflective coaching, mentorship, and literacy teaching. We drew on the notion of “becoming” from critical and sociocultural theories in analyzing how she constructed a teaching identity through mentoring, and how her identity enabled her to enact reflective coaching practices. Our findings outline her agentic moves to provide the preservice teacher with reflective support, rather than evaluative critique, in opposition to the surveillance and regulation that characterize many existing teacher evaluation models.     

班主任心理辅导模式的理论研究

学校心理辅导包括发展性心理辅导与矫治性心理辅导,班主任心理辅导属于发展性心理辅导模式。发展性心理辅导有三个要点:面向全体学生;促进学生的人格健全发展;促进学生的个体潜能发挥。学校心理辅导是德育的组成部分和现代教育的重要内容。与理论内涵对应,班主任在涉入心理辅导领域时,也要涉入德育领域和教育领域。因此,班主任应具备三种角色的品质:教育内涵的教师、德育内涵的班主任、心理辅导内涵的心理辅导员。     

论教练员工作状态的自我调节

针对竞技体育的不断向前发展和日益激烈的比赛竞争使教练员的工作节奏不断加快，工作中承受更大压力的现实提出：良好的精神状态和身体条件是教练员更好地进行训练工作的前提，教练员合理地调整自己的工作压力、情绪、工作时间和身体健康情况，保持良好的工作状态是现代教练员所应具备的一种技能．     

Exploring perceived support of postgraduate medical science research students

There is still much to learn about the support required by postgraduate research students, across academic disciplines, to facilitate successful completion of a research degree. The primary aim of this study was to explore postgraduate medical science research students’ perceptions of academic and mentoring support at different stages during their degree programme. A second aim was to explore the feasibility and acceptability of peer mentoring as a strategy to enhance student support in this population. A mixed method study design was used. Students first completed an online questionnaire, which was then supplemented with focus group discussion to explore emergent findings in greater depth. The main results indicated that the nature and quality of academic supervision support have a significant influence on research student training and development. ‘Functional’ and ‘relationship development’ concepts of supervisory styles were highlighted as important aspects to perceived support in this research population. The main facilitators to enhance academic support were effective communication, project planning and timely feedback. There was a high degree of acceptability for a peer mentoring programme as a complementary approach to enhance student support. Peer mentoring psychosocial functions such as friendship, counselling and career guidance were considered potentially beneficial to enhancing student support. Students also discussed peer coaching as central to their learning and research skill development. This work is a useful starting point to explore perceptions of research student support in the target population. Further work is required to develop strategies to enhance student support in academic practice.     

The foci of in-action professional judgement and decision-making in high-level adventure sports coaching practice

This article continues a theme of previous investigations by the authors and examines the focus of in-action reflection as a component of professional judgement and decision-making (PJDM) processes in high-level adventure sports coaching. We 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. It was discovered that adventure sports coaches utilise a combination of questioning and observation to collect and constantly verify the information that forms the basis of their PJDM. Each coach responds to matters of immediate security, collecting information until a best-fit decision can be made regarding changes to the environment, task or individual. Implications for professional training, accreditation and development are presented against these data, offering a template for a more expertise-focused progression in the adventure sports coaching profession.