Although coaching has become a popular area for research, little is known about coaches of athletes with a disability (Cregan et al., 2007; DePauw & Gavron, 1991, 2005). The purpose of this study was to explore how disability sport coaches learnt to coach and, more specifically, how they learnt through interactions. Recent disability sport research has revealed that coaches work with their athletes to enhance their learning (Cregan et al., 2007; O’Neill & Richardson, 2008); as such, athletes also participated in this study. Data collection included 20 semi-structured interviews and 14 non-participant observation sessions with five coach-athlete dyads. A thematic analysis was conducted (Braun & Clarke, 2006), which revealed that coaches from various backgrounds commonly learnt through informal learning situations, most frequently through interactions with others. It is suggested that organizations nurture these informal situations and offer more disability-specific nonformal and formal situations to enhance coaches’ learning opportunities.

Although coaching has become a popular area for research, little is known about coaches of athletes with a disability (Cregan et al., 2007; DePauw & Gavron, 1991, 2005). The purpose of this study was to explore how disability sport coaches learnt to coach and, more specifically, how they learnt through interactions. Recent disability sport research has revealed that coaches work with their athletes to enhance their learning (Cregan et al., 2007; O’Neill & Richardson, 2008); as such, athletes also participated in this study. Data collection included 20 semi-structured interviews and 14 non-participant observation sessions with five coach-athlete dyads. A thematic analysis was conducted (Braun & Clarke, 2006), which revealed that coaches from various backgrounds commonly learnt through informal learning situations, most frequently through interactions with others. It is suggested that organizations nurture these informal situations and offer more disability-specific nonformal and formal situations to enhance coaches’ learning opportunities.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This study examines professional Australian coach and athlete perceptions of effective coaching. Rather than assess the ability or effectiveness of the coaches and teams involved, the purpose was to gather perceptions of what professional coaches and players believe it takes to be an effective coach. Given the broad range of tasks that fit under the auspice of coaching, an important question to address was ‘what’ a coach does in order to be considered effective. In addition, an understanding of ‘why’ and ‘how’ these factors are effective was also essential. These questions formed a starting point in order to find out what professional coaches do (including how they behave), and why players and coaches perceive certain coaching strategies to be effective. This study employed a qualitative research design to identify perceptions about, and strategies of, effective coaching within the professional sport context. Interviews enabled participants to discuss their interpretations of the world in which they live, from their own point of view – a key feature of the present research. Observational data allowed me to view coaching behaviours and interactions with players in training and competition contexts. Using professional Australian coaches and players from cricket, rugby union and rugby league, 6 coaches and 25 players were interviewed while up to 16 coaches and 80 players were observed during 41 observation sessions at training and competition venues. The constant comparative method (Côté, Salmela, Baria, & Russell, 1993; Côté, Salmela, & Russell, 1995b; Glaser & Strauss, 1967) was used to analyse the observation and interview accounts. This enabled rich descriptions of what effective coaches do as well as providing information regarding how and why they carry out certain actions. Findings from the current research indicated that an effective coach possesses specific personal characteristics, qualities and skills as well as a general philosophy or direction for the team. The effective coach uses their own unique leadership, player management, communication and planning skills to create and maintain the team environment to ensure that everyone involved with the team ‘works off the same page’. The interaction of all these features leads to the primary goal of player development, improvement in player performance and winning matches. This thesis identified key perceptions and applications of effective coaching based on Australian professional coach and player experiences.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This study examines professional Australian coach and athlete perceptions of effective coaching. Rather than assess the ability or effectiveness of the coaches and teams involved, the purpose was to gather perceptions of what professional coaches and players believe it takes to be an effective coach. Given the broad range of tasks that fit under the auspice of coaching, an important question to address was ‘what’ a coach does in order to be considered effective. In addition, an understanding of ‘why’ and ‘how’ these factors are effective was also essential. These questions formed a starting point in order to find out what professional coaches do (including how they behave), and why players and coaches perceive certain coaching strategies to be effective. This study employed a qualitative research design to identify perceptions about, and strategies of, effective coaching within the professional sport context. Interviews enabled participants to discuss their interpretations of the world in which they live, from their own point of view – a key feature of the present research. Observational data allowed me to view coaching behaviours and interactions with players in training and competition contexts. Using professional Australian coaches and players from cricket, rugby union and rugby league, 6 coaches and 25 players were interviewed while up to 16 coaches and 80 players were observed during 41 observation sessions at training and competition venues. The constant comparative method (Côté, Salmela, Baria, & Russell, 1993; Côté, Salmela, & Russell, 1995b; Glaser & Strauss, 1967) was used to analyse the observation and interview accounts. This enabled rich descriptions of what effective coaches do as well as providing information regarding how and why they carry out certain actions. Findings from the current research indicated that an effective coach possesses specific personal characteristics, qualities and skills as well as a general philosophy or direction for the team. The effective coach uses their own unique leadership, player management, communication and planning skills to create and maintain the team environment to ensure that everyone involved with the team ‘works off the same page’. The interaction of all these features leads to the primary goal of player development, improvement in player performance and winning matches. This thesis identified key perceptions and applications of effective coaching based on Australian professional coach and player experiences.

Although coaching has become a popular area for research, little is known about coaches of athletes with a disability (Cregan et al., 2007; DePauw & Gavron, 1991, 2005). The purpose of this study was to explore how disability sport coaches learnt to coach and, more specifically, how they learnt through interactions. Recent disability sport research has revealed that coaches work with their athletes to enhance their learning (Cregan et al., 2007; O’Neill & Richardson, 2008); as such, athletes also participated in this study. Data collection included 20 semi-structured interviews and 14 non-participant observation sessions with five coach-athlete dyads. A thematic analysis was conducted (Braun & Clarke, 2006), which revealed that coaches from various backgrounds commonly learnt through informal learning situations, most frequently through interactions with others. It is suggested that organizations nurture these informal situations and offer more disability-specific nonformal and formal situations to enhance coaches’ learning opportunities.

Coaching knowledge is an essential resource for improving competition quality. The purpose of this study was to explore the needs and wants of elite coaches from the African and small island regions of the Commonwealth at the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland. Specifically, their development of coaching knowledge and their context was analyzed to understand their needs and wants. Using a knowledge management framework, 19 semi-structured interviews identified the process of combining knowledge as predominant in the development of coaching knowledge within these regions. Tacit knowledge was developed through their social environment, mentorship, and athletic or coaching experience. The need for formal knowledge development opportunities and basic coaching resources were also identified. Finally, technology helped to reduce challenges around accessibility to knowledge, and coach certification programs helped with the transition from athlete to coach.

Parkour is a sport with a focus on overcoming obstacles. Parkour practitioners utilise specialised techniques relating to movements such as running, jumping, vaulting, climbing, swinging, rolling, and occasionally acrobatic manoeuvres in order to traverse a path through urban and rural environments. Parkour is a new sport, and as it continues to grow in popularity, there is an accompanying demand for parkour instructors. As a result, programmes to train parkour coaches have been created in various parts of the world. There has been minimal scholarly research conducted regarding parkour, and much of the current parkour research focuses either on parkour athletes, or the perceptions of parkour by non-parkour athletes. No research was discovered regarding parkour coaches. This exploratory study aimed to: (a) explore how parkour coaches learn to coach; and (b) explore the perceptions held by parkour coaches regarding parkour coach education programmes. In the first article, titled ‘How Parkour Coaches Learn to Coach: Coaches’ Sources of Learning in an Unregulated Sport’, participants’ responses related to the themes of: parkour coaching experience, previous leadership experience, experience as an athlete in parkour and other sports, other parkour coaches, non-parkour coaches, parkour coach education programmes, school, reflection, and the Internet. The second article, titled ‘What Does It Mean to be a Certified Parkour Coach? Parkour Coach Perceptions of Formal Coach Education Programmes’, shared participants’ perceptions of formal parkour coach education programmes, including: potential benefits and risks to participation in such programmes, modifications that could be made to the programmes, and parkour coach perceptions of coach education programmes for other sports.

Coaches in Canada are trained through the National Coaching Certification Program (NCCP) administered by The Coaching Association of Canada. The NCCP is the national standard and recently shifted its educational emphasis from the transfer of knowledge to the development of coaching competency. As a result, coaches are required to demonstrate competency in a specified sport and level prior to being awarded a coaching certification. The purpose of this study was to establish validity and reliability of an NCCP coaching competency assessment. Gymnastics Canada agreed to have their Community Sport coaching competency instrument tested for content validity, face validity, inter-rater reliability and intra-rater reliability. Their original assessment instrument was revised during content validity testing based on recommendations from five coaching context experts. Removing six items, adding one item, and revising four items for clarity modified the original 48-item instrument. An assessment of overall competency was added to the instrument to rate the coach as Beginner, Competent, Proficient, or Expert. Three certified coaches confirmed the face validity of the modified instrument. Reliability tests were conducted on the ratings provided by ten experts who observed a coach’s lesson on video. The result was a moderate level of inter-rater reliability, displayed by an Agreement Coefficient (AC1) of 0.43 and a Percent of Agreement (PA) of 72%. Nine of the ten raters assessed the coach’s performance as Competent, Proficient or Expert, while one of the ten rated the coach as Beginner. After a repeat observation of the same coaching performance, the intra-rater reliability of five raters resulted in agreement levels of Moderate (AC1 = 0.45; PA = 67%), Substantial (AC1 = 0.75, 0.77; PA = 81%, 89%), and Almost Perfect (AC1 = 0.87, 0.82; PA = 93%, 90%). The modified instrument has content and face validity. However, its usefulness is impacted by variability in rater preferences. The inter-rater reliability results attest to concerns about the consistency in assessment of a coaching certificate for Community Sport Artistic Gymnastics coaches. Suggestions to improve the reliability of the instrument include training raters to classify the coach’s competency on a standardized scale of sport-specific expertise.

6 ABSTRACT Title: Analysis of handball coaches' activities in selected area. Objectives: The aim of the thesis was to determine wether the activities of coaches in handball teams, divisions under the Regional North-Moravian Handball Association (OSSH), are in accordance with the recommendations issued by the Czech Handball Federation (CSH). Methods: For the entire research project was chosen the epirically analytical method. With respect to the geografically large area, we considered interrogation method which can be used to collect both quantitative and qualitative research data. All collected data were summarized by entering inno tables and graphs. In the verification of hypotheses the data was evaluated by using basic statistical methods, the arithmetic mean, absolute frequency and relative frequency. Results: The thesis was intended to result in recommendation for coaches' education and development in the mentioned region. With reference to the research results in this thesis the recommendation will not related to impetus for only participation in the trainings. As we found out, the passing of the education and training activities themselves is not a problem. The recommendation will be predominantly related to the change of approach. It is necessary to transform the passive approach into the active one...

This research study focused on the coaching practices of five internal Regional Learning and Development Managers in a multimedia organisation from 2009 to 2011. Twelve written narratives were initially used to gather information from both coaches and clients about their perceptions and experiences during a coaching session. Survey questionnaires were sent to all 135 managers who had completed the Coaching Programme since its inception in 2009, to supplement the information established from the narrative stage. Three problems were identified: employed Learning and Development Managers were expected to deliver a coaching programme in the workplace for which they were ill-equipped, unqualified and inexperienced; there was a lack of tangible benchmarks to demonstrate the success of the clients’ development; and an inconsistent standard of coaching was delivered potentially compromising ethical coaching practices and behaviour. Coaching is a specialised field of people development, which can have a noticeable impact on both employee performance and on achieving business aims. ‘Internal coaching’ has evolved from a necessity to develop people within the workplace using internal resources and a limited budget. The study reflects on an example of internal coaching and discusses the successes and failures of such a practice. According to the narratives and survey it is the coach who is the key to the success of coaching and a successful coach must be trustworthy with confidential matters; objective and able to understand the culture and operations of the company; have business credibility; is independent of the person being coached and, therefore, is not their line manager. A customised blend of appropriate styles including mentoring, instruction and coaching is recommended to achieve the best results in coaching.