Search

This paper overviews an intensive 1:1 coach development workflow developed and used in U.K. performance and high-performance sport. The workflow has been field tested with over 60 coaches in mainly Olympic and Paralympic settings in a variety of sports. The workflow proposes six main stages: "beginning new relationships," "seeking first to understand," "preparing for reflective conversations," "engaging in reflective conversations," "working with difference," and "supporting change." The stages are tailored pragmatically to context, and the workflow does not suggest a fixed sequence. The application of the workflow requires adaptive expertise based on considerable coach development experience and a breadth and depth of coaching and coach development knowledge. The workflow suggests the need for coach developers to build and support trusting, collaborative, and supportive relationships with the coach, as a foundation for the coach development task. Coach development practices and the workflow are continually being developed and refined in a U.K. context, and future work will provide case studies, evidence of outcomes, and refinements to the work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women coaches have remained underrepresented within sports coaching at all levels. Thus, the purpose of this paper was to describe the factors surrounding the development, progression, and retention of women coaches within the United Kingdom. The study involved semistructured interviews with 15 women coaches who were coaching female athletes in team sports. Content analysis of the qualitative data identified barriers and enablers at individual, interpersonal, organisational, and sociocultural levels. Results indicated that women coaches face several barriers because of their gender, which their men counterparts do not often encounter. Practically, individuals and organisations can both take action to reduce damaging stereotypical ideologies that produce challenging predicaments for women within the coaching landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to investigate the attachment orientations of coaches within the competitive and elite youth coaching community with the aim of understanding their possible impact on the coach-youth athlete relationship. 107 participants were recruited (level 2 or higher qualified UK based youth coaches) across multiple sports. Data was collected using the Experience in Close Relationships – Relationship Structure questionnaire (ECR-RS) to determine participants’ attachment orientation. Results found that 51% of youth coaches presented as securely attached, while 13% presented as dismissive, 25% as preoccupied, and 11% as fearful-avoidant. This suggests that a large proportion of the coaching community have the potential to struggle with their emotional regulation under emotional stress. Research within sports psychology suggests that to improve an athlete’s wellbeing and to help create positive coach-athlete relationships coaches need to demonstrate secure attachment behaviours (secure base, safe haven, and close proximity). This paper highlights the disparity between these two positions – the expectation of ideal coaching affective behaviour and the innate capability of coaches to deliver such behaviours. This understanding suggests that any intervention aimed at strengthening the affective element within the coach-youth athlete relationship needs to consider the attachment nature of the coaching community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coach education is a learner-centred process, which often fails to consider the preferences of the consumer. Historically, research into performers' experiences of coaching have been influenced by the social constructivism of learning: in short, an expressed preference for what the performer has experienced as determined by their coach, rather than their own personal preferences. Therefore, this research used skateboarding as a natural laboratory in order to explore the current practices and preferences of performers in a coach-free environment. Ninety-one skateboarders from parks in the United Kingdom and New Zealand offered information relating to their current learning practices, how they learnt about learning, and how the top-level performers in their environment were differentiated. Findings suggest that a number of learning tools are used by performers, which are closely aligned with a more traditional, cognitive view of coaching (e.g., demonstration, drills, and error usage). Results also suggest that performers deployed a number of cognitive skills (e.g., imagery, analogy, and understanding) to enhance storage of a movement as an internal representation. Finally, in the absence of formal coaching, performers use their knowledge of learning to appoint informal leaders. Implications for practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By examining on-course pedagogical practices, recent research has sought to inform the development of National Governing Body (NGB) coach education courses. Coach education programmes are, however, social constructs, and are influenced by policies and socio-economic factors. To inform future provision, there is a need to understand the construction of policy and the influences affecting course design. This study examined how the English Football Association (FA) redeveloped their coach education policy in 2016. The 2016 changes are pertinent because calls for educational provision to be informed by social constructivism have been made. The FA's coach education policy (2016) claim to be informed by such a philosophical stance. This study, therefore, reports on what policy was created, and how it had been disseminated within the organisation. Twenty-eight interviews were conducted with 14 participants (staff members with different roles within the FA) across two separate points in time, 12 months apart. A thematic analysis identified three key themes: (1) Three Elements of Curriculum/Course Design (A learning strategy informed by social constructivism; a body of content for courses; a coaching competency framework and qualification specification); (2) Recontextualisation of the policy and some confusion during dissemination; and (3) A restricted code when disseminating policy. The significance of these findings extends beyond the case presented and policy makers who seek to inform course design with learning theory may wish to offer elaboration throughout the workforce via text and discourse. Future research should build on these findings and consider how knowledge is selected and legitimised by policy makers, and how coach developers implement recontextualised policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coach education research has focused on studying coaches' perspectives about coach education programmes with limited studies investigating the practices of other key stakeholders involved in programme design and delivery (e.g. managers, educators). The purpose of this study was to investigate the interactions and practices of coaches, coach educators, and coach education managers in two contexts of the United Kingdom Coaching Certificate Coach Level 4 (UKCC CL4) award. Over a period of 18 months, ethnographic fieldwork was conducted with 53 participants, comprising of 250 h of participant observations and informal conversations, as well as 51 semi-structured interviews. Symbolic interactionist writing by Blumer ([1946]. The field of collective behavior. In A. McClung Lee (Ed.), New outline of the principles of sociology (pp. 167–169). New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc.; [1969]. Symbolic interactionism: Perspective and method. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc.), Mead ([2015]. Mind, self & society – The definitive edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.), and Strauss ([1997]. Mirrors and masks: The search for identity. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.) was utilised to make sense of the processes, relations, and tensions created by the UKCC CL4 award. The themes explore consequences and challenges of novel collaborations between course organisers from Governing Bodies (GB) and Higher Education institutions (HEi), opportunities and issues arising when university lecturers mediate theoretical course content for practitioner cohorts, and the value of postgraduate study to coaches' professional lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study centers upon accounts of master women coaches in the UK, connecting the participants' experiences of the structural practices within the coaching profession to their feelings of being undervalued and marginalized. By going beyond previous positivist and interpretive approaches to the issue of women coaches' underrepresentation, I locate the participants' narratives and their oppression within the wider sociocultural context of sport. The strength of patriarchy within sport and coaching is revealed in the private lives of the coaches. Consequently, the findings provoke methodological and theoretical implications for an alternative approach to understanding women's long standing minority status within sports leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research frequently demonstrates that coaches learn by refl ecting on practical coaching experience (Gilbert & Trudel, 2001), hence both refl ection and experience have been identifi ed as essential elements of coach education (Cushion, Armour, & Jones, 2003). The case being studied was a United Kingdom (UK) National Governing Body (NGB) in the process of developing a coach education program. The purpose of this study was to empirically explore the use of refl ection as a conceptual underpinning to connect and understand coach education, theory, and practice. Findings suggest that the curriculum could promote refl ective practice, albeit in a largely decontextualized learning environment. Future research should attempt to directly measure, in situ, the impact of such courses on coaching knowledge and coaching practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Formalized mentoring programmes have been implemented increasingly by UK sporting institutions as a central coach development tool, yet claims supporting formal mentoring as an effective learning strategy are often speculative, scarce, ill-defined and accepted without verification. The aim of this study, therefore, was to explore some of the realities of formalized elite sports coaching mentoring programmes. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews with 15 mentors of elite coaches on formal programmes, across a range of sports. The findings were read through a Bourdieusian lens and revealed the importance of understanding the complexities of elite sports coaching environments, that elite sports coach development is highly specific and, therefore, should not be over-formalized, and how current elite sport coach mentoring programmes may be better conceptualized as a form of social control rather than being driven by pedagogical concerns. Following this empirically based analysis of practice, a number of implications for Governing Bodies, mentors and mentees were considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Heidegger's influential text; Being and time (1927/2005), the phenomenological question of what it means to 'be' has generated a vast body of work. This paper reports data from a phenomenological study that investigated what it means to 'be' a youth performance coach. An overview of the interpretive phenomenological methods used is followed by presentation of coaches and data. Data analysis resulted in the identification of three constituent 'essences' of youth performance coaching: (i) care; (ii) a commitment to educate athletes authentically for corporeal challenges to come; and (iii) working with others to achieve a specialised corporeal excellence. The three identified essences manifest themselves in a broad lifeworld that includes settings on and off the field of play (FOP). Given the very different insights into the practice of coaching that emerge from this study, we argue it would be useful for future studies of coaching practice and coach education to extend their focus to take into account coaches' wider lives both on and off the FOP. We also argue for further exploration of coaching by drawing on phenomenological concepts such as care and relationality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Primary physical education (PE) lessons tend to be taught by one, or a combination of, three different groups: generalist classroom teachers, specialist primary PE teachers and so-called adults other than teachers, who are almost exclusively sports coaches. Drawing upon data gathered from one-to-one interviews with 36 subject leaders (SLs), this study sought answers to two main questions: ‘Who delivers primary PE nowadays?’ and ‘What are the consequences?’ The findings revealed that the most common model for the delivery of PE involved responsibility being shared between the generalist class teacher and either a sports coach or specialist PE teacher. The SLs recognised strengths and weaknesses in all of the three main approaches used. However, while they favoured the use of specialist teachers because of their subject knowledge and expertise, the more prosaic constraints of cost and flexibility meant that the use of coaches had become increasingly popular. Whether or not, the growth of coaches is de-professionalising the delivery of PE, it certainly appears to be exacerbating any existing tendency to turn primary PE into a pale imitation of the sport-biased curricular of secondary schools. Ironically, the apparent ‘threat’ to the status of PE in the primary curriculum (as well as the status of PE specialists) posed by the growth of coaches in curricular PE in primary schools may well be exaggerated by the Primary PE and Sport Premium which appears to have added momentum to a change of direction regarding staffing the subject—towards sports coaches and away from generalist classroom teachers and PE specialists. As the shift towards outsourcing PE to commercial sports coaches becomes increasingly commonplace, it seems appropriate to talk of transformation, rather than mere change, in the delivery of primary PE. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reflects on and offers a critical analysis of the relationship between youth sport and citizenship development, in practice and in the UK policy context of sports coaching and physical education. While deploying data and insights from a recently completed research project1in England, which identified substantial tensions in intergenerational relationships in sport and coaching, the argument and analysis also invokes wider international concerns and more generally applicable implications for policy and practice. Drawing heuristically upon the philosophy of Dewey (2007 [1916]), it is recognized that the concept of citizenship as a form of social practice should seek to encourage the development of complementary traits and dispositions in young people. To develop socially and educationally thus entails engagement in meaningful social and cultural activity, of which one potentially significant component is participation in youth sport, both within and outside formal education. However, it is argued that any confident assumption that sporting and coaching contexts will necessarily foster positive traits and dispositions in young people should be considered dubious and misplaced. Deploying a Lacanian (1981) perspective to interpret our data, we contend that ‘liaisons’ and interactions between coaches and young people are often treated suspiciously, and regarded as potentially ‘dangerous’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this study was to investigate long corner kicks within the English Premier League that entered either the goal area (6-yard box) or the critical area (6-12 yards from the goal-line in the width of the goal area) with the defining outcome occurring after the first contact. A total of 328 corner kicks from 65 English Premier League games were analysed. There were nine goals scored from the first contact (2.7%) where the ball was delivered into either the goal area or the critical area. There was a significant association between the area the ball was delivered to and the number of attempts at goal (p<.03), and the area the ball was delivered to and the number of defending outcomes (p<.01). The results suggest that the area where a long corner kick is delivered to will influence how many attempts at goal can be achieved by the attacking team and how many defensive outcomes can be conducted by the defensive team. There was no significant association between the type of delivery and the number of attempts at goal from the critical area (p>.05). It appears as though the area of delivery is more important than the type of delivery for achieving attempts at goal from long corner kicks; however, out of the nine goals observed within this study, seven came from an inswinging delivery. From an attacking perspective, coaches should reflect on what determines a successful corner kick. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study centres upon the accounts of master women coaches based in the UK, exploring how they have individually experienced such acts of resistance as reaching the top of such a male dominated profession. By going beyond previous positivist feminist approaches to this focus of inquiry, I employ a feminist cultural studies framework to understand how the social construction of what it means to be a woman impacts women coaches' individual sense of self and confidence to lead. The discussions are based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with six senior national women coaches of team sports in the UK. The data highlight the success of masculine hegemony of coaching through documenting women's reluctance to advance their coaching career through a lack of self-belief and motivation as a consequence of their culturally and historically marginal position. The findings illustrate a pressing need for a revision of the dominant values inherent in professional sport in order to engage and retain potential women leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This text introduces recently completed research on ‘no touch’ sports coaching, by placing it in a broader social context which problematises the way child abuse and child protection (or safeguarding) are conceived and discussed in terms of policy and practice. It also provides a brief indicative summary of the research findings and offers a discussion of moral panic, risk society and worst case thinking, before drawing on Foucault's work on governmentality to offer an explanation of how the current situation arose. The authors suggest that the approach to discussing child abuse, and the guidelines and training stemming from the dominant discourse, for the most part initiated by the NSPCC's Child Protection in Sport Unit, together create an environment in which many coaches and PE teachers are confused and fearful, and consequently unsure of how to be around the children and young people they teach and coach. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper offers a genealogical account of safeguarding in sport. Drawing specifically on Foucault's work, it examines the ‘politics of touch’ in relation to the social and historical formation of child protection policy in sports coaching. While the analysis has some resonance with the context of coaching as a whole, for illustrative purposes it focuses principally upon the sport of swimming. Our analysis demonstrates how the linked signifiers of ‘abuse’, ‘protection’ and ‘safeguarding’ produce both continuity and change in the philosophy and meaning around coaching practice, giving rise to particular notions of ‘government’ and regulation, risk aversion and prohibitions, and values. Within a culture of fear in sports coaching and society, the analysis traces the development of swimming policy following the exposure of select high-profile cases or critical incidents, where such historical events prompted a series of authoritative statements about the nature of child protection discourse in sport and education, and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although an increase in the quality and availability of sports coaching is one of the ‘soft’ legacy targets for the organisers of London 2012, little is actually known about the ongoing relationships between the Olympic Games and Britain’s coaching traditions, social practices which form an important part of the nation’s intangible cultural heritage. Using newspaper reports and organisational archives, this paper explores how the London Games in 1908 and 1948 impacted on British attitudes to coaching at the level of elite sport and highlights in the process the lasting impact of the cultural heritages of amateurism and voluntarism. The debates and coaching initiatives that followed these Games challenged some of the fundamental tenets of British sporting heritage but amateurism was so ingrained into the sporting culture that changes were always slow and highly contested. As Britain prepares for 2012, coaching is at the forefront of the drive for success but the experiences of previous home Olympics suggest that cultural heritages such as coaching practice can be highly resistant to change and that intangibles such as preferences for voluntarism will continue to impact on attempts to professionalise coaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to discuss a theory of everyday gendered homophobia as a way of understanding lesbian coaches’ experiences of their profession. I discuss the need to gain a better comprehension of homophobia achieved through deconstructing women’s day-to-day experiences of professional coaching, examining how their lives are individually organized along multiple power lines, namely sexual orientation and gender. Through this, it is possible to connect the macro-structure of sport to the micro- and recognize the everyday inferiorizations that take place within the participants’ lives. The main focus of the article is to explore the power of understanding the everyday and present the key conceptual issues and processes underpinning a theory of everyday gendered homophobia. The conception of everyday gendered homophobia is based upon data from in-depth semi-structured interviews with 10 professional women coaches who identified themselves as lesbian, from both individual and team sports within the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this study was to explore strategies for the development of aspiring female coaches based on the ideas of existing high-performance female coaches. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with national-level female coaches in the United Kingdom, four recurrent ideas for developing female coaches in a male-dominated profession emerged. These were (1) role modelling and mentoring, (2) greater frequency and quality of coaching opportunities, (3) the creation of supportive networks, and (4) a policy of positive discrimination. Using a feminist cultural studies conceptual framework, this paper highlights how a culture dominated by masculine hegemony restricts the participants' opportunities for career development. Their experiences also reveal a lack of responsibility taken by governing bodies for the development of aspiring female coaches. As a result, I make a call for the inclusion of a more complex, sustained programme of socio-cultural education for coaches to inform women of the reasons for their underrepresentation as coaches, and call for greater action and leadership to be taken by sporting governing bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to recent academic reviews, formal coach education courses are rarely considered important or useful events in a broader coach learning process. At present, there is insufficient research to define the nature and extent of this problem which is likely to become more important under the prevailing governing rationalities of modernisation and professional accreditation. The purpose of this paper, therefore, was to explore coaches' experiences of formal coach education to determine the extent to which they are considered useless and to describe their nature. Neo-Foucauldian concepts, specifically ‘governmentality’ and ‘power/knowledge’, were drawn on to interpret data from semi-structured interviews with 12 coaches from a range of sports. The findings suggest that, where courses were governed by prescriptive and rigid rationalities, coaches found them useless; whereas, open and discursive courses, though in the minority, were considered more useful. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is informed by a UK based Economic and Social Research Council funded research project which developed and deployed a case-study approach to issues of touch between children and professionals in schools and childcare. Outcomes from these settings are referred to, but the focus here is shifted to touch in sports coaching and its distinctive contextual and institutional characteristics. We consider the broader context of no touch coaching practice, including relevant theoretical accounts, review policy which impacts on coaching activity and report on preliminary enquiries. We argue that the disembodiment of practice has undermined the conception and experience of sports coaching and its contribution to educating and socialising young people. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Revista Kronos is the property of Revista Kronos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Based on interview research, this study examined how master female coaches based in the United Kingdom experienced relations with men within their profession. Using feminist cultural studies approach to examine how sport promotes and maintains a gender order unfavorable to women, we found that female coaches felt the need to continually prove themselves and often experienced coaching as a hostile and intimidating culture. Participants reported a gradual reduction in such unwelcoming behavior from men, seemingly because they had proved to be no threat to the existing patriarchal structure. A critical exploration of coaching is needed to understand how masculine hegemony leads to women's relative powerlessness as coaches. Furthermore, the findings present a case for a greater emphasis on sociocultural education within the UK coaching curricula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the 2nd European Coaching Psychology Conference sponsored by the British Psychological Society Special Group in Coaching Psychology (SGCP) on December 15-16, 2009. Topics include the performance and transitions in coaching, coaching psychology practices, and the coaching relationship. The conference featured several participants including Julie Allan, Louise Weston, and Vicky Ellam-Dyson.

the United Kingdom (UK), a significant Government investment was made into recruiting, developing and deploying 45 'Coach Development Officers' (CDOs). One of the CDOs' roles was to provide 1:1 development support to coaches - therefore establishing relations with, and facilitating and directly providing development opportunities for, practicing coaches. This article provides evidence of impact of the CDO's 'coach developer' role using qualitative interviews with 46 coaches who had received CDO support. The evidence suggests that the CDOs provided a range of services including access to information and signposting (for example, to workshops and mentoring opportunities), and direct support. It was these direct services - support through Training Needs Analysis (TNAs), Personal Development Plans (PDPs), observing sessions and providing feedback, and being an informal mentor or critical friend - which were the most valued. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coaching has a long history in athletics, dating back to the era of professional pedestrians such as Captain Barclay. By the early twentieth century, because of the dominance of the amateur hegemony, the notion of coaching in British athletics was in retreat. Governing bodies like the Amateur Athletics Association associated coaching with professionalism. However, due to the rise in international competition, especially the Olympic Games, this idea was reconsidered. As Britain began to slip from its place as the pre-eminent sporting nation, coaching took on a greater significance among the athletics hierarchy at least as far back as 1912. This article examines this process from 1912 to 1947, when criticism over Britain's performance increasingly began to be thought of as a reflection of national prestige and the fitness of the nation. In addition, it locates coaching developments not only within the shifting nature of amateurism but argues that coaching itself had an important role in changing the subtle and complex meanings of amateurism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article the author discusses aspects on the ability of an executive coach to support his or her associate football manager regarding his or her behavior towards coaching in Great Britain. She notes that managerial actions to confront and provoke needs to be considered and supported to attain success but requires high degrees of sensitivity and skill. An overview on the manager's involvement in diagnostic activities and remedial action is also presented.

Careers in coaching are a relatively new phenomenon in the UK and at present appear to be limited to the performance coach. This study, using an interview approach, examined the transition of expert coaches (n = 9) through various stages in their careers. The main aim of this study was to ascertain if expert coaches could explain the process of their development to perceived expert status. The interviewed coaches could offer no real insight into their designation as experts. They did raise some questions regarding the value of current coach education provision, especially as it related to their current role as coaches of elite athletes. Their methods of development were considered to be informal, with networking with other coaches of like mind believed to be essential to their progress. The ability to contextualise knowledge and information to suit both the individual and situation, as well as appropriate mentors at the initial stages of their coaching careers were also regarded as vital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the status of women coaches in the U.S. as compared to its counterpart in Great Britain. It states that the inadequacies of the coaching system in Great Britain have contributed to the inferior status of women coaches. It emphasizes that the cultural value of men's sports has impacted women's opportunities as coaches, thus coaching can be an isolating profession for women. It is concluded that applying a liberal feminist approach by merely increasing the numbers of women will not completely address the issue.

Affirmative action is a problematic, but common, organizational approach to redressing gender discrimination as it fails to address discourses underlying organizational definitions and practices in highly masculinized sites like English football. Unstructured interviews with 27 key personnel and participants in coach education in the north of England within a regional “division” of the organization regulating English football (“The FA”) were conducted to explore the gendered construction and enactment of football and coaching, and the framing of women-only (separatist) coaching courses. Critical discourse analysis identified the deployment of discourses concerning the undermining of standards and the privileging of women as strategies used to neutralize the significance of gender and previous gender discrimination, while re/producing the centrality of masculinity for key definitions and identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article gives an inside story of and specific toolkit for introducing competencies for coaching. The instance described involved about 30 UK practitioners within a large provider. Benefits and drawbacks of having competencies for coaching are addressed and illustrated. Benefits include the value of explicitness, the potential for better matching, and also using the introduction of competencies as a process for lessening structural divisions between internally competing teams and coteries of coaches. Particular attention is paid to the significance of the process of introduction mirroring in its style the type of culture being introduced. In this instance the process was participative, involving a process of gaining assent and a mirroring competency system involving self-assessment, which linked in to CPD. Collusion as a possible outcome is acknowledged while being placed in a broader, as yet unaddressed context. The competency system specifics are fully laid out. Emphasis is given to the framework as a system of practical meaning (praxis) and the epistemological implications of this. The non-sectarian, integrationist path chosen is described, as is the consequent theoretical price paid: syncretism not synthesis. Finally, factors relating to gaining assent from non-coaching stakeholders from within the coaching provider are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of the paucity of research addressing the critical concerns of social interaction at the micro level of the coaching process, this study aimed to generate an in-depth understanding of the coaching behaviours utilized by a top-level English football coach. A mixed-method approach was used to not only identify the pedagogical behaviours used by the subject in the practice environment, but to also generate an in-depth insight into the rationales that underpinned their use. Using the concepts of 'social role', 'power' and 'the presentation of the self' [E. Goffman (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Garden City, Doubleday)] to analyse the data, it is suggested that the subject's coaching practice was influenced by his perceived need to establish a strong social bond between himself and his players; a bond founded on the players' respect for his professional knowledge and personal manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the findings of a literature review and survey conducted on sport sponsorship in the UK. The paper seeks to establish relevant material published that addresses the issue of the transferability of techniques and skills from sports to business. The findings of the literature review high- lighted the close relationship between the two mediums. The results of the sponsorship questionnaire showed evidence of the transference of mutually beneficial skills between the organisations offering the assistance, and the sporting organisation receiving the funding. The survey indicated that a majority of sports sponsoring organisations offered more than just monetary assistance to their beneficiaries. Sponsors also assisted with the management of specific events, and operated the complicated software and computer equipment required for the smooth running of the sporting activity. These organisations supplied the sports with key personnel, and highly skilled staff who were experts in their respective fields in marketing, public relations, corporate hospitality, and management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the developments in identifying elite athletes and coaching in sports science in Great Britain. Everyone involved in sports science are developing plans for their contributions to the upcoming 2012 London Olympics. This will bring extraordinary opportunity for the emerging area of coaching research to establish itself in the run-up to the prestigious sports event. To complete the overhaul of the coaching qualifications, the UK Coaching Certificate has been developed.