Interest in sport coaching has grown significantly in the new millennium in line with coaching being perceived as a legitimate profession around the world, and an emerging field of academic study. These factors have resulted in an increase in the volume and scope of scholarly activity related to it (Rangeon et al. 2012; Lyle & Cushion 2010). In a recent review and citation network analysis of coaching research that included 3,891 references, Rangeon et al. (2012) found that:
■some of the most prominent sport coaching research articles have been traced back to the early 1970s;
■the yearly publication rate of coaching related research has increased dramatically;
■there are over 1,000 research studies on sport coaching published in peer-reviewed English-language journals;
■forty-one publications were identified as ‘key publications’ – the top three being a book (Sports Coaching Concepts: A Framework for Coaches’ Behaviour (Lyle 2002)) and two research papers (Cushion et al.’s (2003) article on coach education; and the ‘coaching model’, published by Côté et al. (1995));
■numerous overviews of the ‘coaching science’ literature are now available (e.g. Côté & Gilbert 2009; Gilbert & Trudel 2004; Horn 2008; Lyle & Cushion 2010); and
■“coaching science is highly influenced by a small set of key publications and researchers” (p. 103).
From this work, and as we have previously suggested (see Lyle & Cushion 2010; Cushion & Lyle 2010), there is now a considerable landscape of coaching research with a bewildering range of theoretical and empirical perspectives and insights into coaching. Despite this apparent depth of empirical work, we remain surprised that there is still a lack of in-depth understanding of coaching and a clear conceptual underpinning with which to inform coaching practice and coach education. Despite our research efforts, and a degree of ‘clustering’ of ideas around, for example, ‘coach effectiveness’ and ‘decision making’, these remain contested notions, leaving us with little consensus or clarity about the nature of coaching.
Cited in our earlier review of the ‘state of the field’ (Lyle & Cushion 2010), but still useful, is Ward and Barrett’s (2002) test of the utility and value of research to a practice community, which asks the extent to which its findings are (a) used as recommended practices in the preparation of practitioners; and (b) incorporated by practitioners in everyday practice. There are positive research examples to be found of interventions in coach education and coaching practice – but no evidence for the systematic application of these, or any other findings, in the development of coaching practice or coach education in terms of either methodology or results. As a result, the increased research attention devoted to coaching, with its considerable weight of research studies and the level of conceptual and theoretical development in coaching, has had little apparent impact on coaching practice or coach education and a somewhat disheartening picture of the ‘effectiveness’ of coaching research to impact practice can be drawn – we have yet to distinguish between our knowledge of how coaches operate and our capacity to describe this, or indeed how we educate and develop coaches.
KEY CONCEPT
There is a lack of in-depth understanding of coaching and a clear conceptual underpinning with which to inform coaching practice and coach education.
There are positive research examples to be found of interventions in coach education and coaching practice – but no evidence for the systematic application of these, or any other findings, in the development of coaching practice or coach education in terms of either methodology or results.
The purpose of this chapter is to give some consideration to why research is a low-impact endeavour when it comes to influencing coach education and coaching practice. It is not to conduct a ‘review of literature’ as such, but to provide some insight to, and suggest possible reasons for, the current impotence of coaching research in generating impact on practice. The chapter then goes on to develop a research agenda for coaching and considers the research process pertaining to coaching, the nature of the coaching process and assertions about coaching from which to demonstrate the generation of research questions.
AN OVERVIEW OF EXISTING RESEARCH
Coaching research has its own history and character. The early systematic observation studies (e.g. Lacy & Darst 1985) and leadership model (Chelladurai & Saleh 1980) were influential in the devising of coaching behaviour frameworks. It is not surprising, therefore, that Gilbert and Trudel’s (2004) review identified that ‘coaches’ behaviours’ were the main research interest from 1970 to 2001. These gave way to the interview and observation approaches of, for example, Salmela (1995), Gould et al. (1990), Gilbert (Gilbert & Trudel 2004) and Côté (Côté et al. 1995). In the last 10–15 years, the acknowledgement of a coaching process has spawned a search for the most appropriate means to represent and understand it (see Lyle 2002 and review by Cushion et al. 2006). While Rangeon et al.’s (2012) review showed this focus had shifted to research considering ‘coach development’, with 25 per cent of the most cited publications in their analysis directly dealing with this topic (a focus on coach education, learning and related developmental issues for coaches). They suggest that this shift is due to a growing field moving beyond description to understanding in terms of coach development and learning.
However, Cushion et al. (2010), in their review, point out that this area of coaching research suffers from a number of issues:
■being of mixed quality;
■often lacking a developed theoretical position;
■approaches coaching with implicit assumptions;
■research is from educational contexts with students, rather than with coaches;
■research is often cross-sectional perception/satisfaction studies;
■the research rarely sets a conceptual boundary for coaching or the domain under study;
■the findings are stretched in some way to fit all coaching domains, or are highly context-specific;
■meaningful research is often precisely that, namely highly context-specific; and
■it is difficult to find longitudinal, empirical evaluation.
While taken specifically from the coach learning and development research, we would contend that these issues would apply when considering the wider coaching research field. Importantly, as we have suggested previously (Lyle & Cushion 2010; Cushion & Lyle 2010), coaching research itself may be a misnomer, and we may be guilty of perpetuating here the concept of a unified field or consensual purpose that we argue does not exist currently. Without wishing to offer a taxonomy of research, we can point to the following areas of research interest, in addition to coach education and development:
■coaching practice, both environment and career;
■coaches’ behaviours, both intervention/delivery and interpersonal;
■coaches’ cognitions, both decision policies and decision making; and
■coaches’ expertise.
Rangeon et al. (2012) also identified the following research areas as ‘hotbeds’ of publication and citation – in order of ‘importance’ in their analysis:
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