Coaches' Perceptions and Proposed Solutions for Challenging Behaviors: Implications for Athletes with Hidden Disabilities

Abstract

Within sports, youth with hidden disabilities (HD) may have difficulty with understanding/following directions, physical coordination, remembering plays, and sustaining attention. These behaviors are often considered challenging for coaches. While previous research has addressed coaches' self-reports through surveys related to efficacy and coaching athletes with HD, they did not address questions regarding coaches' proposed strategies for addressing such challenging behaviors; such research may provide better understanding of their perceptions as well as information regarding coaches' knowledge about accommodating learning differences among their athletes. Therefore, the purpose of this descriptive study is to investigate coaches' perceptions of practice situations involving athletes exhibiting various challenging behaviors and coaches' proposed solutions to addressing these situations. Fifty-five youth sport coaches viewed four practice situations and completed questionnaires following the video clips. Results found that while coaches could often point to the need for demonstrations and checking for understanding, they often did not consider that the coach may have given faulty directions and would instead recommend repeating the instructions to make sure the athlete understood. Other times, the coach indicated that the athlete must not know terminology or perhaps had not been taught the skill used in the drill. Interestingly, these coaches all reported very high efficacy in: 1) appropriately redirecting the athlete(s), 2) effectively making accommodations to coach the athlete(s), and 3) preventing the athlete from interfering with coaching the athletes. This research continues to underscore the need for improved coaching education.

‘Everyone gets a kick’: Coach characteristics and approaches to inclusion in an Australian Rules Football program for children

“…Interestingly, no coaches suggested approaches around establishing behavioural guidelines/expectations which was in contrast to prior research. 13 Perhaps, this was due to the focus on inclusion and disability in the current study rather than managing challenging behaviour. It is also noteworthy that regardless of whether coaches were trained in disability, paid or volunteer, the same top eight strategies in terms of frequency were suggested by the coaches.…”

“…For example, Vargas et al. 13 explored coaches’ responses to a series of video scenarios demonstrating challenging behaviour including off-task behaviour and not following instructions. Strategies suggested by the coaches to manage these scenarios included tailoring instructional techniques such as giving simplified instructions, providing instructions more slowly and demonstrating each skill rather than only verbally communicating.…”

Life Narratives of Women-Recipients of University-Designed Extension Programs

“…Perkins (2010) mentioned that the observable outcomes of empowerment activities is the life and outlook-changing view of the individuals, organizations, and whole communities in the domains of adult well-being, positive youth development, locality development, and social change (Maton 2008). In order to maximize the effectiveness of empowerment activities, Perkins (1993) recommends doing it with smaller, locally-organized community interventions at the grassroots level (Perkins, 1995) and equipping them with the appropriate type or level of support (Vargas, Flores, Beyer, Block, & Vella, 2015).…”

Understanding the Development of Elite Parasport Athletes Using a Constraint-Led Approach: Considerations for Coaches and Practitioners

“…Historically, coaching in Para sport has been a challenge (Townsend et al, 2016); while some athletes have learned to coach themselves, others have been coached by individuals whose primary involvement (either as a coach and/or athlete) has been in able-bodied sports (Duarte et al, 2018). Coaches also find it challenging to locate information on sport-specific training and disability (Hammond et al, 2014;Vargas et al, 2015), and some coaches seek help from parents to develop a better understanding of athlete's unique needs and action capabilities (Martin, 2014). Lack of coach development and education programs lead to coaches relying on experiential knowledge and informal communication with colleagues as means of coach development (Dehghansai et al, 2019), even reaching out to coaches from different sports (Duarte et al, 2018).…”