My intent was to delineate a preliminary model for coaching expertise development.
As mentioned before, the results suggest that coaches develop their expertise primarily through a self-adaptive process, meaning, the coach drives his/her development process.
Certain personal characteristics appear to facilitate the process of expertise development: drive, commitment, dedication, passion, empathy for the athletes and open-mindedness.
In essence, these personal characteristics serve as a filter that acts on the inputs into adaptation process.
This process is circular and iterative.
Drive, commitment, dedication and passion will allow the coach to put the necessary amount of time into development.
The coach undergoes an adaptation process that involves experience as a player, experience as a coach, feedback (external and internal) and active knowledge acquisition (the coach seeks out learning activities that he/she feels will assist in his/her development).
These processes can be thought of as inputs into the adaptation or learning process.
External feedback could be from mentor coaches, peer coaches, the athletes, among other sources.
Internal feedback occurs via introspection
and was mentioned to be used for identifying strengths and weaknesses as a coach.
This process can only occur if the coach has the opportunity to work with athletes and spend a large amount of time doing so.
An environment that is conducive to development must also be present.
The model is not static as the role of various aspects of the model may change over time.
Conclusions
The results from this study suggest that the current definition of an expert coach requires some modification.
We need to look beyond the accomplishments the athletes have achieved and consider such factors as the level of athlete that is associated with an expert coach.
It was suggested that one could be considered an expert at lower levels of sport.
This should be of interest to those who study coaches of elite level athletes in the interest of developing coaching education initiatives.
It would perhaps be more useful to study expert coaches at various levels of sport since the coach of elite athletes may operate very differently and have a different knowledge base than coaches of young,
developing athletes.
We also need to address the type of coach being studied.
A head coach may be quite different than an assistant coach in their knowledge base and how they relate to athletes and they may have developed their coaching skills differently.
This work has provided suggestions in how we define an expert coach but more study is needed in this area.
I encourage other researchers to contribute to this line of research so that consensus on a definition can be reached.
There are many avenues that require exploration when it comes to expertise development in coaches.
The first is how the coach’s personal characteristics are developed (or if they are innate).
The issue of open-mindedness seems rather critical as it can facilitate the coach’s learning in a variety of ways (e.g., the coach is willing to learn and willing to accept assistance from others).
Reflective practice has been promoted in the coaching literature but the notion of being introspective has received minimal attention.
Since Lyle (2002) has suggested that being reflective requires introspection,
the development of introspection should be studied further.
Coaches in this study suggested that they identify their own strengths and weaknesses.
It would be useful to know how coaches do this.
It would also be fruitful to investigate the sources of feedback a coach receives in more depth and what the coaches do to adapt to the feedback they have received.
Another area in need of further study is if there is a difference in how team sport coaches’ versus individual sport coaches’ expertise is defined and developed.
It is clear that more research is needed to clarify the processes involved in developing coaching expertise and my goal is to refine the preliminary conceptual model I have presented here.
The end point of this line of research should be a more effective training program for coaches.
May 2014
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