Sport Coach Learning and Professional Development: Supporting Coaches in Performance Sport

Sport Coach Learning and Professional Development describes the genesis and theoretical foundations of an emerging workflow for supporting sport coaches learning and professional development in performance and high‑performance sport. It is the clear exposition and critical insight into coaches’ learning and professional development, and of coaching practice, that provides the foundations for an Embedded, Relational and Emergent Coach Learning and Professional Development Strategy.

Learning and development is not something that can be ‘done’ to people; rather, it is about working alongside, supporting experienced coaches to identify and resolve meaningful questions that generate personal and professional growth. This approach more appropriately attends to individual differences in biographies, perspectives, roles and socio‑ultural settings. Whilst the focus and nature of support shifts to reflect the goals that coaches and athletes are working towards relative to the changing demands of their context, the approach consistently centres around three overlapping themes:

1 Supporting coaches to learn through and from their everyday experiences.

2 Supporting coaches to reflect on and explore the nature of the experiences they create for others.

3 Supporting coaches by being available, listening, offering reassurance, support and caring.

Working through this process necessitates close cooperation and frequently incorporates reflective dialogue, collaborative planning and shared enquiry. The work is therefore both relational and developmental. Coach and coach developer both bring something to the working relationship, which in turn shapes and influences the nature of the work undertaken. The nature of the goals pursued, the strategies employed and the collective courses of action taken are always shaped and influenced by the interpersonal resources that emerge through the work together (the overlap).

The application and effective deployment of the strategy is illustrated and illuminated in a series of case studies. These demonstrate not only the efficacy of the strategy but also the lessons learned from working with coaches in their embedded contexts. This book is a key resource for coaches, coach developers, students and researchers working in the overlapping fields of sport coaching, learning and professional development.

Bob Muir is a Reader in Sport Coaching in the Centre for Sport Coaching, Carnegie School of Sport, Leeds Beckett University, UK. A senior men’s professional basketball coach for over 20 years, Bob has spent the last 15 to 16 years working as a coach development consultant with a range of sports organisations and governing bodies, including UK Sport, the Football Association, the British Sailing Team, Sport Scotland and Sport Northern Ireland. He leads the University’s MSc Coach Development and teaches on the Doctor of Professional Practice in Sport programme. His research interests are effective and ethical coaching and supporting coaches’ learning and professional development in performance sport.

John Lyle is a Professor of Sport Coaching in the Centre for Sport Coaching, Carnegie School of Sport, Leeds Beckett University, UK, and prior to that Dean of the School of Psychology and Sport Sciences at Northumbria University. He has played a significant role in the development of sport coaching as an academic field of study. A former national team coach in volleyball, he combines his role as an academic with that of a research consultant, collaborating with a number of universities and national sports agencies.