Developing coach developers in and for performance development and high-performance sport

Citation

North J, Muir B & Gillott A (2024) Developing coach developers in and for performance development and high-performance sport. In: Rynne SB & Mallett CJ (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Coach Development in Sport. New York: Routledge, p. 19. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003160939

Abstract
The chapter provides a top-level 2023 take on a, to date, decade long UK programme of coach developer development for performance development and high-performance sport. It explores programme goals, resources, and activities. These are underpinned by ideational and practical ideas concerning practice, learning, content, and processes. The importance of characteristics of the programme participants and programme designers and deliverers (PDDs) is also noted. The programmatic area is sophisticated and integrated and cannot be easily captured, explained, and indeed delivered. However, ideas around complexity, emergence, layeredness, depth, and contextual dependence are important to both practical and developmental understandings and processes. Considerable emphasis is placed on practical in situ and social learning (PSL) although the wider andragogical strategy is pluralistic. Ultimately, programme participants, PDDs, work together in varied practical and other contexts, to engage in, explore and make sense of their individual and collective coach development and coaching experiences. This sense making engages ideas about coach development and coaching captured through ideas such as ‘problems before solutions’ and ‘meeting the learner where they are at’. Future work will provide more detail on the programmes as well as examples of lived experience and formal evaluation.