This study aimed to bridge the gap in the literature on real-world analyses of coaches’ approaches to planning. A 12-week qualitative case study of a Spanish canoeing coach was carried out to examine the relationship between long- and short-term planning, analyze adaptations made to the original designs, and thus, enhance current understanding of this dialogue in a specific real-life context. To achieve this purpose, the first author followed the participant during training sessions in an unobtrusive manner, recording any relevant topic related to the research goal in the form of field observation notes. Weekly semistructured interviews were also carried out. Data were examined through thematic analysis, and two main themes were identified: (a) interplay and tension management between short- and long-term planning and (b) the dynamic tension between club and national team planning. Findings observed that the coach’s application of concepts related to planning usually had to be adapted. Indeed, external factors and demands obligated the coach to attribute more emphasis to short-term planning, despite the existence of a long-term plan. Moreover, findings established the need to understand sports planning as a micropolitical process, influenced by external pressures, organizational demands, and the constraints generated by sports practitioners.
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Relationship Between Short- and Long-Term Planning in Sports: A 12-Week Case Study of a Spanish Canoeing Coach
Jardel Costa, Gonçalo Neves, Fábio Yuzo Nakamura, João Ribeiro, Ana Ramos, Lee Bell, Manuel Loureiro, Filipe Manuel Clemente, Isabel Mesquita, Patrícia Coutinho, and José Afonso
In Every End, There Is Also a Beginning: Experiences of Career Transitions Through Sport
Christine Nash and Melissa Thompson
In sport, as in life, people experience transitions on a regular basis. This exploratory research examined the experience of the transitional process within sport using a qualitative methodology. The seven participants had worked within their sport for over 30 years, first as an athlete, then a coach, and finally a coach developer. Semistructured interviews with each participant (x2) allowed for exploration of their experiences of changing roles within their organizations and revealed three themes: importance of timely support, ongoing professional conversations, and where am I going with this? These themes, exemplified by the use of direct quotes from the participants, were used to provide context and deeper understanding of the transition from athlete to coach to coach developer. The participants revealed a certain degree of serendipity, due to a lack of structure and process in their experiences. As a result, we suggest some practical steps that organizations could adopt to assist in this process.
Burnout, Help Seeking, and Perceptions of Psychological Safety and Stigma Among National Collegiate Athletic Association Coaches
Julie M. Slowiak, Rebecca R. Osborne, Jordyn Thomas, and Adna Haasan
Sport coaches face unique work-related demands that, over time, can lead to negative well-being outcomes, such as burnout. The link between burnout and mental health is supported in the literature, and public stigma around mental health has been identified as a prominent barrier to seeking help. The aim of this study was to investigate how burnout and help-seeking attitudes of National Collegiate Athletic Association coaches are impacted by psychological safety and public stigma associated with seeking help. A sample of 187 National Collegiate Athletic Association coaches participated in a cross-sectional online survey and reported sociodemographic and job-related characteristics, public stigma, self and team psychological safety, burnout, and attitudes toward help seeking. Regression-based mediation analyses revealed that greater psychological safety predicted lower levels of exhaustion and disengagement as well as more positive help-seeking attitudes. In addition, public stigma partially mediated the influence of psychological safety on exhaustion and disengagement and fully mediated the relationship between psychological safety and help-seeking attitudes. No differences in exhaustion, disengagement, and help-seeking attitudes among National Collegiate Athletic Association coaches across Divisions I, II, and III were observed. Findings lend support for intervention development to increase psychological safety as a burnout management strategy as well as to reduce public stigma associated with help seeking.
Understanding Well-Being in High-Performance Coaches: A Constructivist Grounded Theory Approach
Marketa Simova, Peter Olusoga, Christopher J. Brown, and Stiliani “Ani” Chroni
Objectives: The purpose of the study was to explore, in depth, well-being within the unique context of high-performance sports coaching. The aim was to capture the process of well-being while considering the contextual nuances and influences of high-performance coaching environments in a mid-range theory of coaches’ well-being. Design: Constructivist grounded theory served as a guiding approach for data collection and analysis. Method: Individual interviews (n = 20) were conducted with methodological rigour enhanced by originality, usefulness, resonance, and credibility. Aligned with the methodology, we utilised theoretical sampling to aid the development of individual categories. Results: Findings suggest that well-being is an integrating process between coaches’ personal values (identity) and culturally prescribed values (identity), with a degree of harmony as the overall goal. Conclusion: The mid-range theory presents a contextually bound process of coaches’ well-being. It provides a more practical insight into the area and highlights the importance of cultural considerations and competencies.
Appropriateness Applied: A Renewed Coaching Perspective to Reach Out to Every Athlete
Ana Ramos, João Ribeiro, José Afonso, and Isabel Mesquita
Beyond teaching models/approaches, currently sports coaching literature is lacking on conceptual frameworks that offer a pedagogical structure capable of being adjusted and applied (i.e., appropriated) to athletes’ needs and diverse sport contexts. The Appropriateness Framework (AF) is a pedagogical structure to help sport practitioners in building meaningful learning environments while respecting inter- and intraindividual variations throughout the learning process. The innovative character of the AF relies on integrating simultaneously well-known and widespread concepts and principles from sports pedagogy and coaching, as well as extending the concept of representativeness to athletes’ features and motivations. This practical advance article aims to present the AF, namely their conceptual pillars (i.e., premises) and sequential procedures of operationalization (i.e., steps), as well as to exemplify how it can be used through practical cases. From a theoretical viewpoint, the application of AF is independent of any teaching model and/or specific athlete-centered approach. Thus, from a practical standpoint, this paper represents a guideline for coaches adopting process-oriented learning perspective that might be applied in several sport contexts and potentiates the “reaching out” of every athlete.
A Principles-Focused Evaluation of a Coach Education Program
Sara Campbell, Jori N. Hall, and Bryan McCullick
There is little evidence that coach developers have put research on coach education programs (CEPs) to use. Thus, the purpose of this study was to conduct a principles-focused evaluation of a CEP. Principles-focused evaluation posits an evaluation should be judged by whether it produces information that is useful to program stakeholders. The evaluation took place over 17 months and included three phases. In Phase 1, the evaluator assessed and built readiness for the evaluation. In Phase 2, the evaluator worked with five practitioners from the CEP to develop a list of principles guiding the program. In Phase 3, the evaluator and CEP practitioners collaboratively designed and implemented an evaluation of the principles. The evaluation findings revealed how the practitioners applied the principles, along with which principles were meaningful to them. These findings were used to make changes to the original list of principles and to teach others in the program about the principles. Moreover, the practitioners underwent changes in thinking and behavior as a result of participating in the evaluation. This study demonstrates the potential of program evaluation, evaluation theories, collaborative inquiry, and renewed focus on how, or if, findings are used by practitioners.
Coaching Transitions Across Borders: The Pursuit of Individuals Advancing Coaching Careers in the Competitive Global Landscape of Olympic Sports
Yoon Jin Kim and Minhyeok Tak
Intensified international competition for sporting success has facilitated coaches’ cross-national migration, which constitutes a space for coaches’ career transitions and development. This paper examines elite coaches’ international migration as part of coaching career transitions within the context of the global sporting arms race. Using a qualitative case study design, data were generated from documents and semistructured interviews with six South Korean coaches who had moved to Western nations to coach national teams in two Olympic sports. The analysis reveals an underlying mechanism of the coaches’ international mobility: dual imbalances existing between the sending and receiving countries—one in the levels of sporting performance; and the other in the perceived levels of modernisation in coaching cultures and sports systems. The migration opportunities were created by the performance imbalance between the home nation and destinations amid the structural context of the global sporting arms race. However, equally important is the individuals’ strategic initiative to seize the opportunities for their career development and mitigate the perceived modernisation imbalance in coaching practices. By highlighting coaches’ agentic capacity to navigate their career pathways within the global context, this study contributes to the literature on both international coach migration and coaching transitions.
Integrating Psychosocial Skill and Characteristic Development Into an English Academy Soccer Coaching Program: A Preliminary Investigation
Tom O. Mitchell, Ian H.J. Cowburn, Dave B. Alder, Kevin Till, Martin A. Littlewood, Tony Cook, and David Piggott
This study aimed to assess the impact of a psychosocial development program on academy soccer players with coaches being central design and delivery. The 8 Pillars program (designed to foster Communication, Control, Commitment, Confidence, Concentration, Resilience, Presence, and Self-awareness) was delivered through player workshops, coaching practice, and coach-led environmental manipulation. A total of 25 academy soccer players (M age 14.7 ± 0.3) completed the Psychological Characteristics of Development Excellence Questionnaire-2 pre- and postseason, and a self-report scale for each of the eight prescribed psychosocial skills and characteristics at five time points across the season. Significant (p < .05) improvement between pre- and postseason for “Imagery and Active Preparation,” “Seeking and Using Social Support,” and “Active Coping” factors within the Psychological Characteristics of Development Excellence Questionnaire-2 were evident. Significant (p < .05) improvements were shown for “Communication,” “Control,” “Commitment,” “Concentration,” and “Resilience” scales across the season. These findings give initial efficacy that a targeted, multifaceted program, largely delivered by coaches, can improve player self-reported psychosocial skills and characteristics in a U.K. academy soccer setting.
Bridging Boundaries Between Life and Sport: Exploring Sports Coaches’ Micro Role Transitions
Paul A. Davis, Faye F. Didymus, Scott Barrass, and Louise Davis
Coach education notes the importance of effective transitions between life and sport, yet research evidence supporting coaches to make such transitions is lacking. The present study used a mixed-methods design to explore 41 highly qualified coaches’ perceptions of how responsibilities in life beyond sport spill over to coaching practice. Additionally, we examined coaches’ transitions between roles in life and sport and the implications for their health and coaching practice. Coaches completed questionnaires measuring perceived stress and emotion regulation, and a writing task about how roles outside of sport impacted their coaching practice. Linguistic analyses using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software revealed that coaches with lower levels of perceived stress expressed more positive emotions when writing about the influence of life commitments on their coaching practice. The findings also suggest that coaches’ perceptions of the coaching process can be both positively and negatively influenced by life commitments spilling over into sport. Further, coaches reported challenges with the process of undertaking micro role transitions and highlighted implications for their mental health, coaching effectiveness, and relationships in both sport and life. Integrating organizational and sport psychology research, we offer guidance to optimize coaches’ transitions between roles to promote health and optimal performance.
A Foucauldian Autoethnographic Account of a Male Former Soccer Player’s Move to Coaching Female Players: A Call to Problematize the Importation of Gendered Assumptions During a Common Coaching Transition
Luke Jones and Zoe Avner
It has frequently been observed that the disproportionate number of male coaches within women’s soccer is problematic, not least, because it limits the opportunities for the progression of female coaches. Despite this, the transition from “male former player to male coach of female players” is one that remains common, is likely to continue, yet is not widely discussed in the sport/coach transition literature. This is an oversight given the numerous problematic outcomes that are routinely connected to the presence of male coaches in women’s sport. In this confessional, analytical autoethnography, we build upon our existing work regarding coaching women’s soccer that has been informed by Michel Foucault’s conceptual framework. Precisely, we use a collection of creative narrative reflections to discuss the first author’s transition from that of a British semiprofessional soccer player context, to an Assistant Coach of a female soccer team in a North American varsity program. In so doing, we trace and map some of the (problematic) learned gendered assumptions which initially shaped and guided the first author’s coaching assumptions, relationships, approaches, and practices within this context, before unpacking some of the challenges he navigated along the way (with varying degrees of success). We end by summarizing our paper and a call to male coaches working with female athletes to reflect on how “thinking with Foucault” might help them to coach in more ethical and gender-responsive ways by both problematizing imported gendered assumptions and developing active allyship practices.