APPLIED COACHING RESEARCH JOURNAL 2021 , Vol . 7
Keywords Parents ; Learning ; Support ; Coaching ; Relationships ; Sport .
Introduction Parents play an important role in supporting and providing for their children , to enable them to be involved in sport and physical activity , and are often the ones who introduce their children to sport ( Light et al , 2011 ). Parents play a variety of roles to support their child ’ s involvement including tangible support ( eg finance , time and transport ; Holt et al , 2011 , Smoll et al , 2011 ) and emotional support ( eg providing comfort and attending matches ; Keegan et al , 2009 ). Indeed , for many , parents are a primary source of support and information ( Baheiraei et al , 2014 ), yet parents are not always aware of how they can best support their child in coach-led activity .
With the best of intentions , sometimes parents ’ behaviour and actions can contradict that of the coach , causing conflict . Parents are often criticised for their involvement in youth sport ( Jellineck & Durant , 2004 ). Sometimes parents may ‘ interfere ’ with their child ’ s coach-led activity by telling the coach what to do , which causes tension ( Horne et al , 2020 ), whilst others undermine the coach by giving contradicting messages to their children ( UK Coaching , 2019a ). This can lead to a negative parent-coach relationship , which can harm a child ’ s development . Yet other coaches value parental involvement but emphasise the importance of parent education so that their involvement does not have a detrimental effect on their child ’ s development ( Hill and Knight , 2019 ). A positive parent-coach relationship involving shared responsibility and two-way communication can enhance a child ’ s development ( Horne et al , 2020 ).
If we flip our thinking , parents can be an untapped resource that coaches can utilise to support children ’ s development . When parents exhibit undesirable behaviour , this may be due to a lack of understanding or information in how best to support their child ( ren ) ( Harwood and Knight , 2009 ) and while their actions may not always be viewed by coaches as positive , their goal is the same – to do their best for their child ( Horne et al , 2020 ). Indeed , previous research highlights the benefits of coaches working with parents and embedding them within the coaching environment ( Hill and Knight , 2019 ; Knight et al , 2017 ).
To enable parents to support their child effectively and work with the coach , rather than against them , it is important for parents to have access to information that can help them to be involved with their child ’ s coach-led activity . As a result , the purpose of this project was to explore the experiences of parents with children who take part in coached sport / physical activity and in particular , understand what types of resources and content they required to support their child .
Methods Participants
In June 2020 , an online survey was conducted with 467 parents ( 75 % female ) with an average age of 44 years . The majority of parents ( 97 %) reported that their child takes part in activity , which is coach / instructor led , with 89 % taking part on average at least twice a week 1 . Parents represented a variety of sports with the most popular being gymnastics or trampolining ( 55 %), invasion sports , such as football , hockey , netball , basketball , or rugby ( 40 %) and swimming and aquatics ( 32 %).
Questionnaire
The questionnaire consisted of a variety of multiple choice and open-ended questions covering a range of topics , including :
1 . Parent-coach relationship – including how well they know their child ’ s coach and the frequency of direct contact with the coach .
2 . Learning and resources for parents – including the types of resources accessed or wanted and interest in accessing learning / information linked to their child ’ s coached activity .
3 . Involvement / interest in coaching – including interest in learning more about coaching and learning preferences .
Data was mainly analysed using descriptive statistics . Open-ended questions were analysed using thematic analysis ( Braun and Clarke , 2006 ).
1
Although the survey was conducted when the country was in lockdown , parents were asked to consider their child ’ s involvement in sport and activity before Covid-19 .
13