An exploration of the relationship between educational background and the coaching behaviours and practice activities of professional youth soccer coaches

Abstract

Background and Purpose Despite the proliferation in recent years of higher education establishments offering tertiary-level study in the field of sports coaching, there is a lack of research into the impact of such courses on coaching practice. The behaviours employed and activities used by coaches during practice sessions is an area where one might expect to see such impact, indeed certain studies have tentatively noted the educational qualifications of coaches and suggested that this may play a role in the application of behaviours more aligned with playerlearning. The purpose of this study was therefore to compare youth soccer coaches with and without tertiary-level qualifications, examining their coaching behaviours and practice activities. Method The participants were ten male professional youth soccer coaches aged 24-55 with an average of 13 years coaching experience. Five of the coaches had completed undergraduate degree courses related to sport coaching. All of the coaches worked with players aged under 9 to under 16 in the youth academy of an English professional soccer club. Systematic observation of coach behaviour and practice activities was carried out using the Coach Analysis and Intervention System (Cushion et al. 2012), while follow-up interviews were used to elicit the coaches" perceptions of, and rationale for, their behaviour. Findings The observation data showed that graduate coaches used significantly more divergent questioning than non-graduate coaches, while the interview data revealed a general trend for graduate coaches to show greater self-awareness of behaviours and changes in behaviour between practice types. Graduate coaches also provided more comprehensive rationales, for example, seeing silence as a means of facilitating player decision making as well as for observation. In contrast to previous research, sessions featured a higher proportion of playing form than training form activities and at over twenty percent of session duration, the "other" practice state was a prominent feature of contact time with players. While some coaches saw "other" as wasted time, graduate coaches identified this as an opportunity for group discussion and social interaction. The study adds to existing data about coach behaviours and practice activities, providing evidence that education background may indeed influence coaching practice.

International Council for Coaching Excellence (ICCE) 13th Global Coach Conference

“…Unique to this cricket context due to the changing role between coach and player was involvement in training (1.3%), in addition to less commonly seen behaviours such as feeding (1.2%) and conferring with players (2.9%). The manner in which the player-coach interacts with their players appears to differ to that of non-player coaches from previous research (Hall et al, 2016;Stonebridge & Cushion, 2018).…”

The Academic Background of Youth Soccer Coaches Modulates Their Behavior During Training

“…Note that in the present study, we performed only the Step 1 of a modified version of the "Coach Analysis and Intervention System" (CAIS) (see Table 2) due to the reason that we analyzed the verbal behaviors used by the coach during the main part of the training (excluding warm up and cool down). Previous studies (Cushion et al, 2012;Stonebridge and Cushion, 2018;Eather et al, 2020) have confirmed the validity and reliability of CAIS in the context of study of verbal behavior in youth soccer.…”

Microstructure of practice activities for team and individual sports

“…Another study provided corresponding findings with reference to professional football coaches for under 10 and under 16 players, albeit with a smaller gap between TF (53%) and PF (47%) [16]. Two newer football studies involving youth athletes demonstrated that most time was devoted to PF, followed by transition and TF [14,15]. The professional coaches for under 9-under 18 athletes devoted more than half of the session time to PF (57%), followed by TF (21%) and others (22%) [15], whereas club level under 11-under 17 teams utilized less than half the time on PF (41%), followed by inactivity (37%) and TF (22%) [14].…”

“…PF refers to match-like practice activities, involving games or tactical aspects, while TF denotes drill-like practice activities, involving physical or technical aspects. Some studies added a 'transition/other' category, for activities that were neither PF nor TF (e.g., water break) [11,12,14,15].…”