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The impacts of professional sporting culture and institutional discourse on coaching practices and ideologies have largely been unconsidered and undiscussed. Understanding coaching practice from a social perspective can provide insights into the prevailing culture that coaches are immersed within, pointing to patterns of discourse, norms and values that govern coaches' actions. The purpose of this study was to investigate the potential for (mis)alignment between coaches' ideological beliefs and the instituted philosophy of the professional football academy at which they worked. Thirteen male football coaches (M = 36.23 years) were observed coaching on three separate occasions, equating to 2584 min of footage (M = 66.26 min). Each recorded session was analysed using a computerised version of the Coach Analysis Intervention System (CAIS). All participants were interviewed twice (before first observation and after final observation). Coaches were questioned about the academy philosophy and their personal behavioural profiles. Data were subjected to thematic analysis and placed within a theoretical framework utilising concepts of Pierre Bourdieu. Findings highlighted that coaches' interpretations of the academy philosophy were impacted by their prior socialisation and position within the status hierarchy. The data also demonstrated 'philosophy' being used as a 'buzzword' throughout the academy, derived from loose interpretations, but offered few specific suggestions regarding how coaches 'should' behave. Coach interactions were used as forms of social control rather than addressing pedagogical concerns, with coaches' personal dispositions proving extremely strong and ultimately prevailing. It is worth questioning, therefore, the extent to which the academy 'philosophy' can be displaced, and the mechanisms required to ensure collective acceptance to an instituted coaching approach.

Background: The training of coaches is considered central to sustaining and improving the quality of sports provision. In Parasport, coaches are recognised at the highest level of international sport policy as performing a central role in achieving important sporting and social outcomes related to disabled people. However, an emerging body of evidence suggests that formal coach education plays only a minor role in Parasport coaches' development. To ensure equitable access and quality experiences and opportunities for disabled people in sport there is an ongoing challenge to theorise and implement the optimal structure for educating coaches. Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to address the central theme of disability and coach education reform in sport. The aim is to review critically the emerging literature on coach development in Parasport to provide some clarity and consensus on existing pathways and models for coach development, before outlining some potential ways forward for coach education. Discussion and Conclusions: Starting with a critical review of existing research on coaches' learning and development in Parasport, we then examine potential approaches to coach education, providing examples from existing research in coaching and the wider field of education. This is followed by some modest suggestions for coach education reform as it pertains to the inclusion of disability.

The purpose of this review was to address the central theme of technology-enhanced learning (TEL) in coaching. "Technology-enhanced learning" (TEL), has become a widely-accepted term for describing the interface between digital technology and teaching. The aim was to consider the evidence of TEL in coach education, and where appropriate the wider educational field. The review sought to contribute to an evidence base of suggestions that can be promoted and developed inside and outside of coach development structures and interventions for TEL. In addition, the review sought to outline future areas for research, and to stimulate debate about the implementation and effectiveness of technology-enhanced coach learning. The review utilised a critical methodology, using principles of systematic review to gather evidence pertaining to TEL in coaching. From this number, and considering the inclusion criteria, 64 articles were included and reviewed in detail. The review revealed how despite the use of technology in coaching, teaching and learning the evidence of their efficacy is weak, and the use of TEL in coaching requires further longitudinal research that considers learner, pedagogy and pedagogic design in context, in order to understand its potential impact on optimising coach development pedagogies, and therefore, contributing to a discourse of effective coach learning.

Sport is a breeding ground for exclusionary gendered discourses and this trend is evident within the coaching cultures of numerous national sports organisations in New Zealand. Drawing on an organisational case study of a New Zealand national sports organisation (NSO) data were collected through thirteen semi-structured interviews and observations with coaches and staff in the NSO. Engaging in a critical feminist approach, this paper explores the various ways in which women’s exclusion from high-performance coaching roles was maintained, reflecting critically on the extent to which hegemonic masculinity was reproduced within the organisation’s coaching history and culture. Specifically, we illustrate the ‘felt’ dimensions of gender exclusion, highlighting how women’s absence from coaching is not through choice but is reflective of the gendered power dynamics of coaching. Together, the analysis demonstrates the institutionalisation of hegemonic masculinity and the mechanisms through which this is maintained, solidified and undermined. This study, while focusing on a particular NSO, offers insights that extend to male-dominated sporting systems across New Zealand, bringing to light the challenges encountered by women coaches within high-performance sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a clear need to design more effective professional learning environments, particularly in sport coaching as a developing educational profession. The purpose of this study was to investigate the interplay between theory-informed pedagogic design, the role of the coach developer, and sport coaches' perceived learning in a Higher Education online undergraduate module on reflective practice. The project involved designing a module based on domain-specific theories of coaches' learning and implementing multiple 'reflective conversations' with 21 professional association football coaches to structure their learning. Thematic analysis of data from 24 reflective conversations, five follow up semi-structured interviews and four focus group interviews, as well as a coach developer interview, determined perceptions of design, delivery and development. Findings demonstrated that theory-informed design and the aligned skill-set of the coach developer was significant in developing depth of participant coaches' understanding, and connecting theory to authentic reflective practice. The findings provide evidence to support the need for developing underpinning pedagogic design in the effectiveness of professional learning environments for developing reflective practitioners in educative professions such as sport coaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coach developers play a critical role in the development of coaches. However, coach developers themselves remain under-researched, in particular the socially mediated process of becoming a coach developer is poorly understood. Eleven coach developers working across Regional and National Sports Governing Bodies took part in a series of interviews and in situ observations over the course of 12 months. Engaging a reflexive thematic analysis, this paper focuses on the power relations that contour the transitions into coach developer roles. Specifically, the analysis depicts an identity-making process in which power is exerted through different sites and modalities that structure and regulate coach developers' practice and roles through shared discourses. In efforts to secure their positions and maintain legitimate identities, coach developers operated within an uncritical selective culture, which saw them wield, maintain, and enhance the power provided to them. Building on existing research, we examine the contested nature of what it means to be a coach developer, specifically showcasing the navigation of inherently unstable professional learning cultures and critiquing coach developer training. This work begins to address calls for the voices of coach developers in their research, while identifying the reproduction of a cultural orthodoxy, and the lack of effective in situ coach developer training. Implications from the research suggest that further support and development are required in the training of coach developers in situ, as well as the need for research to interrogate the language and discourse framing the role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

In this paper we explore current theoretical approaches available from the discipline of critical disability studies (CDS) for conceptualizing physical disability and advocate how these understandings can advance sociological research on disability sport. After reviewing a dominant "models" approach that has historically been employed, we illuminate how theoretical architecture provided by selected sociological theorists (Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, and Zygmunt Bauman) and from aesthetic, cyborg, and new materialist approaches can help reveal the materialist conditions, sociocultural structures, and lived realities of disability. In doing so, we appeal to researchers of disability sport to develop critical understandings of why alternative theoretical approaches are valuable, what theoretical choices to make, and how we can use theory to highlight oppression and empower those involved in disability sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reflexivity is continually called for as a marker of quality ethnographic research. In this paper we put reflexivity to 'work', providing a critical commentary on data generated through ethnographic fieldwork in high-performance disability sport. Drawing on Bourdieu's reflexive sociology, we situate the ethnographer in the field of disability sport, turning a reflexive lens onto the practices that are associated with occupying the role of coach and researcher simultaneously. We illustrate the centrality of researcher subjectivity – through the reflexive device of 'crossing fields' – as a productive resource for examining the social and intellectual unconscious embedded in the process of doing ethnographic research. In so doing, we provide a unique example of how reflexive practice can offer a rigorous, power-conscious reading of an ethnography of high-performance coaching in disability sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on the theoretical concepts of Pierre Bourdieu to provide a critical analysis of the social construction of disability in high-performance sport coaching. Data were generated using a qualitative cross-case comparative methodology, comprising 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in high-performance disability sport, and interviews with coaches and athletes from a cross-section of Paralympic sports. We discuss how in both cases 'disability' was assimilated into the 'performance logic' of the sporting field as a means of maximising symbolic capital. Furthermore, coaches were socialised into a prevailing legitimate culture in elite disability sport that was reflective of ableist, performance-focused and normative ideologies about disability. In this article we unpack the assumptions that underpin coaching in disability sport, and by extension use sport as a lens to problematise the construction of disability in specific social formations across coaching cultures. In so doing, we raise critical questions about the interrelation of disability and sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]