scientific legitimacy for speculative ideas on the basis of little empirical evidence . For example , a researcher finds an idea useful or interesting and cites their original article , they create two publications carrying the idea – rinse and repeat and an apparent consensus of research articles has been created around a speculative or unproven concept ( Jussim & Honeycutt , 2021 ), giving the false appearance of new coaching knowledge . Through repetition , these ideas become accepted as ‘ facts ’ or ‘ the way ’ rather than ‘ a way ’ and become stubbornly resistant to alternative conceptions or evidence .
A close examination of the existing body of coaching research reveals that amongst the insightful empirical work , there is arguably also a large amount of what McDonald et al . ( 2002 ) describe as “ waving theory from the balcony ” ( p . 194 ) ( Lyle & Cushion , 2017 ). That is , researchers who are not immersed in coaching and are guilty of speaking seemingly authoritatively about an aspect of coach education or coaching practice based solely on the production of a well argued , but ultimately arbitrary , theory ( perhaps derived from their own research agenda , or through ‘ spotting a perceived gap , rather than driven by the needs of coaching ’) ( Lyle & Cushion 2017 ). For coaching , theory is necessary to act as signposts to new ways of seeing and understanding , and in a deeper conceptual development . It should not act as convenient scaffolding for isolated and unintegrated enquiry , or be a mechanism for promoting a pet theory into the coaching domain . Given coaching ’ s relative immaturity as an area of research endeavour , it does not yet have an independent ‘ professional body ’ nor an obvious source of research funding to impact or drive focused research – instead funding for research often comes from sport ‘ quangos ’ ( e . g . in the UK , UK Sport , Sport England , Sport Scotland , inter-alia ). These organisations are driven by , and therefore drive bigger , but sometimes fleeting , policy agendas that position sport ( and coaching therein ) as a ‘ silver bullet ’ to solve wider social issues ( e . g . anti-social behaviour and crime , sport for peace , social inclusion / cohesion , physical activity , and health ). While important , these policy agendas are not centred on coaching , which results in a poorly conceptualised idea of what coaching might or can deliver . The result for coaching research is the appearance of a diverse research community but which is seldom coaching specific ( more about what coaching might do ), driven by policy and disciplinary outcomes . Too often , this means that the ‘ coaching ’ within the research can be superficial , secondary or taken for granted .
In addition , subservience to ( sub ) disciplinary outcomes means that ‘ new ’ theories brought to coaching are often , in fact , recycled approaches and theories from other domains or are a result of ‘ idea laundering ’. This brings with it the danger of simply compounding perhaps already limited thinking , while recourse to models and theories from other fields has limited value in building a coherent conceptual or theoretical body of knowledge ( Lyle & Cushion , 2010 , 2017 ; Cushion , 2007 ). So , despite a seemingly comprehensive list of research areas ,
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