Dr Liam McCarthy

Decisions pertaining to the role and function of assessment in professional development programmes for sport coaches are typically twofold. Either assessment activities are used as a mechanism to measure and certify at the end of a period of learning (assessment of learning), or they are used to prepare coaches for this moment by revealing the gap between present and required levels of knowledge, understanding, skills, attitudes, and behaviour (assessment for learning). Developing this dichotomy, the purpose of this chapter is to offer an underpinning and unifying assessment as learning approach, taking an and both versus either or position on the matter. Making the case that all assessment activities have the potential to be positive and powerful learning opportunities, this chapter sets out to reframe the why, how, and what of assessment practice in coach education and development programmes. The implications of this are discussed, with reference to task design, lifelong learning, and stakeholder roles and responsibilities.

This chapter focuses on the findings from a research project with the English Football Association (FA), exploring how coaches reasoned with and responded to project-based assessment as a feature of the FA Level 3 (UEFA B) in coaching football programme. The purpose of this chapter is to propose three principles of assessment, which if considered have the potential to drive positive outcomes through coach education and development programmes. First, the ways in which coaches engage with success criteria and develop an accurate view of what good looks like are suggested to be important. Next, navigating sophisticated approaches to assessment requires sophisticated skills and capabilities. Coach education and development programmes are encouraged to focus not just on what the coach should know and understand, but also on the skills necessary to demonstrate that knowledge and understanding. Finally, the importance of coaches’ networks of support is stressed, with specific reference to collaboration as a key feature of efficacious assessment experiences. The integrative nature of these principles is illustrated in a framework, intended to be useful to coach education and development programme designers and deliverers.

The purpose of this chapter is to make a cascading series of arguments that position coach assessment as a feature of coach education and development that requires attention. On the basis that sport is important within society, coaches are suggested to play a central role in the many and varied contributions that it makes. However, increasingly, attention is being paid to the quality of coaches’ practice and as a result, an assortment of interventions exists to support coaches in their work through professional development opportunities. As these opportunities (e.g., coach education and development programmes) have been subject to scrutiny from stakeholders and researchers, how coaches experience them, how they impact upon professional practice, and how they contribute to coach learning is being increasingly understood. Yet, despite being a consistent feature of coach education and development opportunities, the world over, assessment has failed to be prioritised within this agenda of continuous improvement. Attempting to address this through the book, this introductory chapter outlines a clear case for remedying the situation and details exactly how this will done.

This article discusses strategies and approaches for guiding student motivation in coaching and educational settings, drawing on theory and practice to support learner engagement.

Current research highlights the need for more studies focused on how high-quality assessment strategies can contribute to coach learning in coach education. The use of e-portfolios, as formative assessment tools, has shown to contribute to student-coaches’ learning in university-based programs, but studies on this topic are still scarce. The aim of this action research project is to investigate the potentialities and challenges of the e-portfolio as a formative learning-oriented assessment tool in an undergraduate sport coach course in Brazil. By sharing this, from the perspective of student-coaches and the assistant-professors of the course, we reflect on the evidence with the intention to both inform colleagues doing similar work and contribute to an emerging body of assessment in coach education literature.

Coach education and development programmes are central to the professional development experiences of sport coaches. Typically, these programmes are structured, sequenced in a linear pathway, and present an opportunity for certification which can be a pre-requisite to practice and/or employment. Increasingly, as learning becomes viewed as part of a coach’s lifeworld, versus simply as a means to an end, education and development provision is beginning to reflect this. This article introduces and explores the Coach Development Institute Programme, part of the Premier League’s Elite Coaching Plan, which seeks to improve the quality of football coaching in English boy’s/men’s football by engaging coaches in a two-year work-based learning opportunity. Built around a core of project-based learning and assessment, coaches are supported as they examine a series of meaningful performance problems in their unique practice environments. Through this work we demonstrate how theories, concepts, and principles from the adult education and assessment as learning literature might work as they are applied in a coach education and development context. With such sparsity of case-based examples like this within the peer-reviewed literature, we intend that our contribution could inform, promote dialogue, and raise questions about authentically supporting coaches beyond a minimum standard of practice.

Alongside knowledge and understanding of the sport (what to coach) and strategies to support learning (how to coach), critical reflection is an important feature of high-quality coaching practice. Accordingly, there is a clear need for evidence-based tools and frameworks for appreciating and developing coaches’ critical reflection skills, through coach education programmes. The purpose of this study is to share the results of an intervention intended to develop coaches’ critical reflection skills through a formal gymnastics coach education programme within the Flemish School for Coach Education (Belgium). A pre-test-post-test design was used to compare the development of written critical reflection skills in 25 gymnastics coaches (14 intervention; 11 control). Statistical analysis of data revealed that the intervention had a significant (p < .01) impact on the quality of coaches’ critical reflection. Coaches exhibited a positive, upward, trajectory from descriptive verbalizations to a deeper level of self-awareness and greater criticality, along with demonstrating a willingness to adopt alternative ideas/approaches. Findings are discussed in relation to existing research on critical reflection as a feature of coach education. This study offers a unique critical reflection strategy that has the potential to meet the learning development needs of coaches in a formal coach education programme.

In recent years, calls have grown for the implementation of heutagogy, a form of self-determined learning, in higher education settings. Although a key tenet of the heutagogic paradigm is a belief in the notion of human agency, our recent experiences as university tutors suggest that many students might not actually desire some of the aspects inherent in the approach, instead preferring more didactic, tutor-led modes of teaching and learning geared towards successful completion of assessed work. This paper reports the extent to which undergraduate students (N=35) at two different UK institutions, about to embark jointly on a module designed using a heutagogical approach, valued learner autonomy and self-determination in their studies. It also identified students’ major motivators when undertaking the module. Results suggest learner autonomy and self-determination were indeed valued by students, with four themes describing their main motivators: (a) achievement, (b) knowledge and understanding, (c), self-improvement, and (d) peer learning and interaction.

As sports coaching continues to professionalize, the demand for and importance placed upon high-quality education and development programs for sports coaches is increasing. As a result, the landscape of provision is changing, and there is now a recognition of the key role that higher education institutes play in the education, development, and assessment of sports coaches. In this insights article, the authors argue that as there is a scarcity of research focused solely on assessment as a feature of coach education programs, there is something to be gained from examining how higher education institutes assess sports coaches. This represents an important contribution to the research literature, given that assessment is a feature of nearly all coach education programs and that the attainment of a specific award communicates to stakeholders (e.g., employers, athletes, parents) that a precise standard of practice has been met. As such, the authors identify how some higher education institutes are addressing the issue of assessment with sports coaches and highlight a series of assessment principles, alongside practical examples from the literature, which are intended to stimulate conversation in what the authors argue is an important area of study.

While recognizing both the difficult yet important nature of sport coaches’ work, as they seek to achieve a wide range of positive outcomes across different participant populations and domains, it is important to acknowledge the value of professional development. As quality coaching becomes an increasingly important agenda item for sport coaching stakeholders, these learning opportunities have come under increased scrutiny. For example, there is growing interest in the role and function of assessment as a consistent feature of these programs. While appearing to be burdened by the legacy of educational concepts such as assessment for learning (formative assessment) and assessment of learning (summative assessment), which depict learning and assessment as distinct entities, the present article sets out to make a compelling case that learning and assessment are one and the same thing. In doing so, this article revisits and summarizes a body of recent work that proposes concepts with which to build a new approach and points to examples of such an approach in action. Engaging in the process of conceptual development, the article will then offer an assessment as learning metaphor for the attention of coach education and development program designers and facilitators. Through engagement with this work, readers are encouraged to reframe and reposition the role, function, and practice of assessment. In doing so, they are invited to consider how they would facilitate assessment opportunities differently if they were considered to be learning opportunities in their own right.

Positive psychology (PP) is a fast-developing area of research that emphasises personal growth and the positive qualities of life. This is the first book to apply the principles and practice of PP to sport and physical activity.

As large-scale coach education programs receive a growing amount of attention and investment (e.g., human and financial resources), the case for increased understanding of their impact is a pressing matter. In this paper, the authors outlined the creation of the Flemish Interactive Coaching Monitoring System (FICOMS) within the Flemish School for Coach Education (Belgium). The FICOMS is a data warehouse consisting of multiple databases, which was set up in 2019 to integrate data on coach education and coach certifications (1960–present), active coaches within club-organized sports (2014–present) and sport clubs, sports participants, and sports infrastructure. The FICOMS provides a variety of interactive and externally facing dashboards with useful statistics on coach education and coaching in Flanders. For example, the evolution of dropout ratios of qualified versus nonqualified coaches in sports clubs and sports federations can be identified, as well as the evolution of the percentage of qualified coaches in a specific sport, sports federation, or gender, or regional differences. By describing the main characteristics of FICOMS and sharing some emerging insights and early possibilities, the authors aimed to clarify the potential of this information technology for different stakeholders, such as governments, policymakers, sports federations, Olympic committees, education partners, municipalities, and researchers.

Over the course of the last two decades, coach education programmes have become a globally recognised mechanism for improving the quality of coaching practice (International Council for Coaching Excellence, 2013). As a result, they have attracted attention from sport coaching researchers who have examined different aspects of coach education programmes, in different ways (Gilbert & Trudel, 2004; Rangeon et al., 2012). However, it is argued that there has been a failure to adequately consider two important issues. First, assessment as a feature of coach education programmes has been overlooked in the peer-reviewed literature (Hay et al., 2012; McCarthy et al., 2021). Second, despite the well-resourced (relative to sport coaching more generally) nature of coach education programmes (and the systems within which they function) they are often subject to little meaningful evaluation.  Responding to both issues, the present study represents a critical realist informed evaluation of project-based assessment as a feature of the FA Level 3 (UEFA B) in coaching football programme. Drawing on realist evaluation (Pawson & Tilley, 1997), the ERE model (North, 2017), and adaptive theory (Layder, 1998) to form a hybrid research methodology, the study was undertaken in two phases. First, theories were generated to establish the intentions of project-based assessment; this involved a review of appropriate grey literature, a series of realist interviews with individuals who had influence on and/or designed the programme, and a review of the academic literature. Second, the resultant theories were explored in the field over nine months, across three programme delivery sites, working with 16 stakeholders (full-time coaching leads, coach educators, and coaches). Three findings are discussed, which each partially explain how and why projectbased assessment as a feature of the FA Level 3 (UEFA B) in coaching football 3 programme worked for specific coaches in certain circumstances. These include: the importance of establishing what is required and what ‘good’ looks like, the role of metacognitive skills, and access to networks of support. These are presented as an integrative framework for assessment in coach education which offers some important principles to be considered when designing and implementing assessment in coach education. 

In recent years, calls have grown for the use of digital technologies to transform coach education and enhance student learning; however, empirical research evidence for their efficacy is lacking. This paper describes our initial experiences of a Higher Education Funding Council for England funded project, designed to facilitate online peer mentoring and collaborative reflection between bachelor degree students at two separate UK universities. So far, the pedagogical approach has been differentially effective, with three categories describing our current perceptions of successful and/or unsuccessful student engagement in it. Namely, students require an adequate knowledge base, an appropriate technological and personal skillset, and the attitudinal dispositions to deploy them effectively.

This book is designed to offer support and guidance to sport coaches who are engaged in assessment, coach educators/developers who are delivering assessment activities, and programme designers/policy architects who are creating learning ...

The purpose of this report is to communicate findings from an evaluation of the Premier League Player-to-Executive Pathway Scheme (PEPS) pilot and offer a series of accompanying recommendations which may be considered in future programme development work. The aim of the report is to capture the perceptions and experiences of those involved in PEPS, providing a compelling narrative that points to some of the most salient features of the development programme and how they contributed to specific desirable or undesirable outcomes. The intent throughout is to support the Premier League in making sense of the complexity inherent in PEPS (as it is in all development programmes!) and provide a strong steer on where to direct attention, ambition, and resources in the future.

Building from previous chapters on curriculum and pedagogy in coach education programmes, the purpose of the present chapter is to shine a light on assessment as a feature of those programmes. Through this chapter, we outline and describe what coach education stakeholders stand to gain by considering the assessment of sport coaches in more detail. We introduce three principles of good assessment practice in coach education. We then share a case study of assessment on a coach education programme in England. While there is no suggestion that this is a model to be followed, we hope to stimulate dialogue about, and the development of, assessment practices in coach education.

Sport coaches play an increasingly key role in delivering positive outcomes through sport for individuals, groups, and societies at large. While the difficulty argument persists, guidance is available on evaluation methodology. Many other personal, social, and cultural factors and experiences outside a coach education program can both cause and prevent (un)intended program outcomes. The purpose of this chapter is to promote the important, but sometimes overlooked, issue of coach education program evaluation. Considering evaluation at the design and implementation stages of a program has the potential to benefit and empower affected stakeholders. Both case studies also made clear that evaluation work can both be conducted by internal or external evaluators and with a high level of stakeholder engagement. The evaluation of coach education programs can be empowering and lead to learning and development for people working inside an organisation. In some cases, internal evaluators are less costly and can promote the use of findings more effectively.

Heutagogy, a form of self-determined learning, is a learner-centred approach to learning and teaching, grounded in constructivist principles. This case study explores final year undergraduate students’ perceptions of the learner attributes required for (and resulting from) heutagogical learning. As part of a larger research study, data were collected at two UK universities, using an online survey that was intended to elicit their perceptions and experiences of a module designed using heutagogical principles. Results indicate that foundational knowledge, skills and attitude are a requirement for, and an outcome of, heutagogical learning. Potential implications for the use of heutagogical approaches to learning and teaching are discussed.

Recognising the important role that coach developers (CDs) can play in supporting sport coaches, national governing bodies are increasingly seeking to engage them in professional development pathways and programmes. In this article, we introduce the Coach Developer Academy (CDA), a season-long intervention that is situated in the Finnish cultural context. It is an initiative between Finnish Ice Hockey Association and Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences. CDA is designed for CDs who are employed by the junior ice hockey organisations in Finland. Specifically, this article explores the three modules that are central to CDA: (a) Communities of Practice in Sports, (b) Developing Coach Developer Skills, and (c) Planning and Implementing Learning Process. As part of this, the learning tasks and assessment methods that were a part of each of the modules are discussed. We offer reflections from the CDA facilitators that highlight strengths, lessons learned, areas of improvement, and the opportunities for CDA growth. Our intention with this Practical Advances article is to share a case-based example that will contribute to the visibility and discussion of CD development efforts in the peer-reviewed literature.

The purpose of this practice paper is to share our experiences of, and reflections on, facilitating an international virtual exchange for pre-professional sport coaches, in a higher education context. Between January and May 2024, for 12 weeks, 21 coaches from both Leeds Beckett University (UK) and James Madison (USA) participated in a pilot project to supplement an internship experience which they were engaged in as part of their coursework. Using Flip, a video-based discussion app from Microsoft, coaches were encouraged to share and explore their problems of professional practice with others as they emerged. By doing this, we hoped that coaches would contribute to each-others’ framing and developing understanding of authentic and meaningful coaching issues, begin to form networks of support, become increasingly independent learners, and develop a more global outlook. From our position as internship architects and facilitators, we hypothesised that with a greater appreciation of coaches’ issues and interests we could more meaningfully offer timely and bespoke support. As we reflect on this novel project, we deliberate over the practical value of some of the underpinning ideas, limitations to supporting pre-professional coaches in this way, and future directions.

Dr. Ian Cowburn and Dr. Liam McCarthy dive into why embracing Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) in Coach Education can positively support a student coaches learning journey.

Despite its obvious importance, we argue that assessment as a feature of coach education programmes has been overlooked in the peer-reviewed published literature. As a result, it is suggested that approaches to assessing sport coaches within coach education programmes can sometimes be ill-considered and lead to sub-optimal experiences for multiple stakeholders. To address this problem-situation, we tentatively propose five interconnected principles of assessment in the first section of this article. These include the integration of teaching, learning, and assessment; assessment as a means of developing metacognitive skills; authentic/practice-based assessment; clearly and transparently foregrounding success criteria; and collaboration within assessment activities. By considering these principles, we suggest that there is much to be gained by the coach education community. In the second section, we showcase how these principles have been adopted within a football coach education programme in Flanders (Belgium). With this example, we explain why assessment became a central concern of the organisation and how they developed an effective assessment approach. Finally, we invite considered discussion and comment on our paper, with a view to starting a conversation in an area which is scarcely spoken about.

Despite the increasing volume and variety of published academic literature which takes a position on the quality and efficacy of learning opportunities for sport coaches, we suggest that there is a scarcity of coach voices. Therefore, in this chapter, Alice offers a first-person perspective on her lived experience as a learner participating in a coach development programme for full-time academy football coaches in England. Of particular interest in this story, is the way in which Alice engaged with and succeeded through – what we consider to be – a novel and unique learning opportunity. Exploring the potential within a project-led approach to learning and assessment, which affords coaches the chance to identify and examine their current most meaningful and important issues, Alice articulates how, why, and with whom she developed a body of work that has had profound professional/practical and personal impact. The chapter concludes with a discussion about Alice’s unique contribution to better understanding and supporting parents as an essential collaborator in an academy football environment, where all of her project work was anchored. Finally, we summarise with several key messages: 1) allowing coaches and their context to speak for themselves is essential in better understanding increasingly sophisticated development programmes, 2) there is value in organising development programmes in such a way that they lead with the coaches interests and issues, not with content and pre-defined curricula, 3) when we do this we create opportunities for both personal and professional shifts, and 4) practical knowledge and ‘engaged scholarship’ like this is important and could feature more frequently in the published literature.

This paper seeks to explore the potential of embedding an intersectional approach to coach development practice, to contribute to addressing issues of social justice that permeate the field of sport and coaching, and manifest through interaction between coaches and coach developers (e.g., Gearity and Henderson Metzger, 2017; Rankin-Wright et al., 2017). With roots in Black feminism (Crenshaw, 1991), central to intersectionality is the recognition that race, gender, class, and similar systems of power are co-constructed, and produce interdependent, complex social inequalities (Hill Collins, 2019). In dialogue with other critical social theories, intersectionality offers a way of understanding how relations of power (structural, cultural, disciplinary, and interpersonal; Hill Collins & Bilge, 2020) manifest through social contexts to produce inequalities imbued in coach developer interactions. Intersectional analysis responds to previous work illuminating how coach developers’ biographies – including their identities – influence development and practice (Jones et al., 2023; Stephens et al., 2024). Through examining examples from programme evaluation interviews with coach developers, coach mentors, and coaches participating in positive action coach learning initiatives, we highlight some specific coach development practices where we propose intersectionality can be employed to generate critical awareness of the experiences of coach learners from marginalised groups. Until there is more diversity within the coach development workforce, critical reflection is necessary on our positionality as coach developers, and the privileges that certain identities afford in our contexts. Research has begun to consider how gendered power relations can problematically infuse coach mentoring relationships (Leeder & Sawiuk, 2021). Intersectionality calls us to do more, to not simply consider identities (and the power relations that produce them) in isolation. Critical awareness of how coach learners navigate intersecting inequalities including racism, sexism, ableism, and classism in their contexts, may have potential to help to build trust, authenticity, and collaboration within mentoring relationships. Our data suggest that in the absence of this, relationships can be perceived as superficial, inauthentic, and not for mutual benefit. To implement learner-centred approaches within programmes that are often characterised by high levels of predetermined content and assessment (Dempsey et al., 2021), coach developers can seek to understand the ways in which coaches’ oppressed identities enable and constrain their ability to engage with and apply learning. For example, how have some coaches been historically excluded from opportunities to acquire the meta-cognitive skills necessary for individualised learning (McCarthy et al., 2021)? This may partially disrupt the dominant discourse of learning as an unproblematic linear process, independent of context, that underpins much group-based coach learning initiatives (Cushion et al., 2021). Crucially, the goal of intersectional theorising and practice is not simply to add to the corpus of work demonstrating the nuance and complexity of coach learning and development. It is rather to seek meaningful ways of disrupting and challenging pervasive and unequal power relations that create conditions for inequalities to persist. We invite readers to engage in reflexive dialogue about what a more just, equitable, diverse, and effective coach development practice can look like.