coaching is individual , has its own contextual make-up , is in constant flux , and where the aim is understanding these inherent complexities , and diversities , and assisting coaches in becoming capable of adapting to contextual demands . The dominance of psychology ’ s influence on coaching research means a ‘ tight link ’ between so-called coaching science and sport psychology . As a result , it still often reflects the wider sport science and particularly sport psychology research field . That is a predominantly narrow , reductionist , and rationalistic approach to research . This has resulted in ‘ coaching ’ research having distinct and fragmented categories , and coaching itself reduced in scale and scope , often viewed as unproblematic and portrayed as a matter of simplistic technical ‘ transfer ’.
In circumstances in which there has been an attempt to investigate the ‘ how ’ of delivery , for example , through issues such as motivational climate , feedback , coach behaviour and communication , a singular focus does not have the capacity to capture sufficiently the dynamic and complex nature of coaching . Furthermore , research topics such as the coach-athlete relationship and decision-making are self-evidently important to coaching but the mostoften used methodologies limit how they can embrace the wider coaching context . This means that these issues are typically considered devoid of context and not placed in their socio-historical and cultural moment . In addition , although an integral part of coaching practice , they alone do not account sufficiently in their resultant prescriptions for the breadth of coaching expertise . From a practitioner ’ s perspective , they are presented with often competing ideas of what to do and where to start with coaching practice . This has been described as a ‘ competition of importances ’ ( Cushion et al ., 2006 ) and has resulted in creating confusion and a degree of turf war about what is most important or useful . Also , and not unsurprisingly , this creates a perception of much research being disconnected and irrelevant , because it is not directly linked to coaches ’ real world practice and experiences ( Lyle & Cushion 2010 , 2017 ).
It is important at this stage to strike a cautionary note and be careful about generalising across all coaching research , and about criticising research for not being something that it did not set out to be ( Lyle & Cushion 2017 ). Therefore , we might be critical of coaching research for paying less attention to the complexity of the coaching milieu , but we also need to address the methodological challenges that this brings . However , the overall outcome is a body of work that is in some part useful , but ultimately limited in developing our understanding of aspects of coaching .
Coaching research consistently , and frustratingly , reduces the complexity of practice ( Lyle & Cushion 2017 ). More seriously perhaps , there persists a fundamentally flawed assumption that a disciplinary focus , inevitably reducing coaching to episodes of dependent and independent variables , can account fully for what coaching practice entails ( Lyle & Cushion 2017 ; Cushion 2007 ). Indeed , the process of separating and specializing components
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