By Brian Gearity, Bettina Callary, Gordon Bloom and Steven Rynne
I (i.e., Brian) have a confession to make. I’m part of a small, global community of
professors who research sport coaching and, on more than one occasion, I’ve wished
that I studied something like math or medicine. At least with math and medicine there
seems to be a public perception that they are useful and serious academic subjects that
the world cannot do without. Want humans to live longer or calculate the distance of
earth to the moon–math and medicine! Albeit very different in many ways, what if I told
you that the science of sport coaching is vitally important too?
In today’s world, sport coaching simply exists under the shadow of sport as a
public spectacle. More on this in a couple of paragraphs, but the quality of sport
coaching, its development, oversight, and regulation exist without much public
awareness or critical consciousness. Critical here means asking penetrating and tough
questions, not the silly or salacious that the media so often does regarding sport
coaching. A couple of questions to bring this to light. Who is coaching your kids, or if
you don’t have kids, what’s the typical youth or community coach like where you live?
What other job or career can people get into so easily with so few demanding
qualifications and exercise so much power over so many people? Moreover, many of
these people are presumed vulnerable populations, such as children, adolescents, and
high-performers limited in choices. Globally, massive sums of money are poured into
funding for math and science, but the money flowing into sport is for owners, coaches,
and athletes, not the much-needed science of sport coaching.
Sport coaching as a field of study, a social issue, a practice or job worthy of
improvement is an exemplary taken-for-granted assumption. This is so despite there
being massive global interest in sport, as evidenced everywhere—our modern Olympic
games, non-stop streaming services, 100,000 seat stadiums, billions of dollars poured
into professional sport (and now youth sport in the US), and on and on, including major
media outlets.
We scanned the headlines and sport sections of a variety of media outlets from
around the world, such as: Sports Illustrated, ESPN, The Guardian, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, The Athletic, Sport
Business Journal, and Al Jazeera. Recent box scores or the results of contests
dominate the headlines. The National Football League (NFL) draft garnered significant
attention. Also featured are the latest playoff winners and losers of the National
Basketball Association’s (NBA). Unsurprisingly, cultural expectations were
fulfilled—Canada featured hockey, Australia featured rugby, and the Middle East
featured soccer. White men and men’s sports are featured the most, with some
coverage of women’s sports, and a rare sighting of a Paralympian. The limited coverage
of sport coaches centers on their failures, such as being fired or abusing athletes. Yet,
the popular television show Ted Lasso, particularly in the UK and US, has become a
global phenomenon because onlookers cherish the good and affable Ted and believe in
the power of quality sport coaching.
We, the editors for the Handbook of Sport Coaching Research, believe in quality
sport coaching, too. The sport coach is often the primary reason why a young athlete
returns to play another year or leaves sport, perhaps forever. Sport coaches themselves
face unique stressors and pressures to perform and juggle varying goals and values.
Sport coaches, as microcosms of actors in societies, reflect inequities, constraints on
freedom, and abuses of power. To challenge sport coaching as a taken-for-granted
assumption and to encourage, stimulate, and create better research and better
practices, we crafted the Handbook of Sport Coaching Research.
Readers of this Handbook will win all the games, sign lucrative coaching
contracts, and be adored by all around the world. Ok, that’s hyperbolic; we confess
again. Indeed, this book is a topical review of major bodies of literature in coaching
science, which makes the intended audience academic and informed sport leaders and
policymakers.
We assembled this Handbook to reflect the early foundations and growth of the
study of sport coaches and sport coaching, what we commonly call “coaching science.”
Coaching science has become a robust and vibrant field of inquiry. Whereas this
scholarship used to be produced by a few scholars mostly within the US and Canada,
innovative and insightful coaching science is now taking place across many countries
and continents. With origins in physical education, psychology and sport psychology, as well as medicine and business (think health and disease prevention; the physiology of
worker productivity), yesteryear’s academic origins have exploded over the past 20 to
30 years.
Reflecting this worldwide growth, an internationally diverse group of scholars
have contributed to this fulsome Handbook; we are deeply grateful to them. In addition
to synthesizing the current state of literature, authors advanced novel arguments and
their implications for policy, practice, or additional research. Like a sport coach advising
the team to attack early, the first two chapters provide the origins, history, and current
state of coaching science and its paradigmatic pluralism. Next, the Handbook is
organized across the disciplinary perspectives of psychology, pedagogy, and sociology.
Research and scholarship are never merely about documenting what was or what
happened. Rather, they create futures and possibilities. Accordingly, the final section
explores new theories and conceptual tools and asks new questions of coaching
science, its researchers, and sport coaches.
Handbooks do not merely document, but shape trajectories. It is our hope that
one day soon we may see sport coaching viewed as a complex, dynamic, valued
academic subject and practice. To get there, we need to continue doing research that
will enhance public awareness and systems and social change.
‘The Handbook is a response to and a welcome addition to what is now a mature academic research domain. Although inevitably selective, it reflects major themes relating to sport coaching research. Particularly welcome are questions about the role of the researcher and a more critical and conceptually sound approach to research in this domain.’
– John Lyle, Leeds Beckett University, UK
Handbook of Sport Coaching Research is available in hardback and eBook here.