Coaching Development

The Importance of Coaches’ Education: Where are We Headed?

BY CAMERON KIOSOGLOUS, PH.D.

A discussion about the future of sports coaching needs to start with reviewing where coaching has come from as a profession. More formalized coaching education gained traction with structure and universal systems in the United States during the 1970’s (Campbell, 1993; Sutcliffe, 1995). We are dealing with a relatively short history of establishing systems that are coordinated and well organized.

Why is developing coaches’ skills and efficacy important?

Coaches play a critical role in the quality of the athlete experience. Developing a coach’s knowledge, skills, and abilities is critical to helping athletes improve their performance. This is a well-documented topic of discussion (McCullick et. al, 2009).

SafeSport and optimizing the athlete experience

Larry Nassar and Jerry Sandusky represent two of the most highly publicized sexual abuse cases in sport and have changed the nature of sport forever. Establishing the U.S. Center for SafeSport has been a major step forward in creating structures to address the reporting and investigation of misconduct and to make athlete wellbeing the centerpiece of sport culture through abuse prevention, accountability, and education (U.S. Center for SafeSport, 2022).

Lessons learned for sport and coaching

Even beyond the United States, the fundamental question for leaders in sport is: What lessons have we learned from these cases of misconduct and abuse? Shining the spotlight on these issues has been hard to listen to, and it is even harder to believe that such tragic events in sport have happened.

How will coaching education move forward?

If we look at the world of medicine, cases of misconduct and error continue to occur despite much more sophisticated levels of certification. Even in our everyday experience, we hear on the news and see during our daily commutes that poor drivers who are in error cause accidents. As the profession of coaching advances, leaders of coaching education and development programs need to recognize and adapt systems that are more formalized and structured to prioritize improving coaching skills, knowledge, and abilities.

Conclusion

If there is one takeaway from a discussion on coaches’ on-going learning and the future of coaching education, it is to prioritize how we prepare coaches. Adherence to the standards of quality coaching needs to be the focus in order to prioritize and optimize our athletes’ experiences.

References

Campbell, S. (1993). Coaching education around the world. Sport Science Review, 2(2), 62-74.

McCullick, B., Schempp, P., Mason, I., Foo, C., Vickers, B., & Connolly, G. (2009). A scrutiny of the coaching education program scholarship since 1995. Quest, 61(3), 322-335.

Sutcliffe, P. (1995). Comparative coaching studies. Leeds: National Coaching Foundation.

US Center for SafeSport. (2022). Media Resources. https://uscenterforsafesport.org/about/news/

Cam Kiosoglous

Cam Kiosoglous is an Assistant Clinical Professor and Sport Coaching Leadership Program Director at Drexel University. Cam was a US Olympic rowing coach at the 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016 Olympic Games. He also serves as President with the United States Center for Coaching Excellence (USCCE). He has consulted with a variety of organizations in coaching development including the International Council for Coaching Excellence and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee. Twitter: CKiosoglous

Mission

The mission of the USCCE is to strengthen the quality of coach development systems through guided program development, training and support for coach developers, and the accreditation of coach education and training provision all of which are based on cutting-edge sport coaching practices.

Vision

All sporting organizations have a systematic, integrated, continuous approach to the development of coaches that is guided by theory and best practice and led by qualified coach developers. The profession of coaching is elevated to a status where coach developers and coaches are fully prepared for the sporting environment in which they work.

The USCCE

The National Association for Sport and Physical Education (NASPE; a part of SHAPE America) to create the National Standards for Athletic Coaches in 1995. The revised second edition, the National Standards for Sport Coaches: Quality Coaches, Quality Sports was published by NASPE in 2006. The standards represent 40 core domains identified as being essential areas of knowledge and training for sport. On that foundation and in response to the growing international development of the field of professionalism in coaching and sports coach education development led by the International Council for Coaching Excellence (ICCE), the United States Center for Coaching Excellence was able to grow and hosts the National Coaching Conference (renamed the North American Coach Development Summit) to reflect the emphasis on the importance of the continued professionalization and developmental support of the field. https://uscoachexcellence.org/