What learning is valued and by whom? Athletic experience, accreditation and tertiary study

A key question in coach development that is rarely addressed publicly is ‘What learning is valued’? The answer to this question is important because a variety of personal and career decisions are made by and for coaches based on the answer, regardless of whether it is ever made entirely explicit. A similarly vexing question is ‘Whose answers to this question should we listen to’? Athletes value particular backgrounds, experiences, and qualifications in their coaches. Sports administrators place certain weightings on the varied personal and professional histories of the coaches they are seeking to employ. Coach developers make judgements about program eligibility and prioritise curriculum elements. Coaches themselves may find particular aspects of their development to be more or less valuable. Finally, just because a certain form of learning is valued, does not mean that there is any evidence it is valuable. Despite all being heavily invested, athletes, administrators, coach developers, and coaches have different perspectives on coaching and coach development. As Dieffenbach and Chroni (2023) wrote, all of these groups think they know who a coach is, what a coach does, and how to become one, yet not enough attention has been paid to how coaches develop. More specifically, these groups have different degrees and depths of understanding about what coaches do and how they learn to do it. Further complicating matters are the influential contextual, cultural, and temporal factors at play regarding coach development. As a result, we generally find a variety of contradictions and tensions – none more so than with respect to the value placed on learning through experience as an athlete, learning in coach certification systems, and learning associated with tertiary study. In seeking to explore these variably regarded sites of learning, sorting the valued from the valuable and the valuable from the ‘rubbish’, we will make use of the notion of becoming.