Some of the current key influences driving change in coaching and coach education are:
Experiences of coaches and their participants
There is a growing recognition that coaches’ experiences of coach education has a significant impact on their learning and motivation to continue to engage in coach education and coaching. Research highlights that many coaches’ experience of coach education is negative.
Contexts that coaching happens in
Participants engage with coaching for a greater variety of reasons now, for example participation, health and wellbeing, talent development. Due to the increasingly inclusive and diverse offer of sport, the contexts coaches coach within have broadened. This means coaches now have to be more attuned to their participants’ needs and adapt their coaching practice to suit the people in front of them.
Our growing understanding of learning and development
There has been a significant change in our understanding of human learning, development, and skill acquisition over recent years. Whilst coaching has started to progress, coach education hasn’ t necessarily kept pace with the modern needs of coaches and their participants.
External forces such as technology, policies, and social or cultural changes
The pace of change within society is increasing. Some of the biggest forces have been, and continue to be, around the use and access to technology, the ways people access knowledge, changes to policies, and social or cultural influences.
These changes increasingly require a coach education workforce to be more skilful, flexible and adaptable. The move towards professionalisation of coaching requires coach educators to evidence continual professional development.
In response to these forces and the requests from our partners, we have developed a suite of learning and development opportunities for NGBs and coaching organisations to support their coach education offer.
Here For the Coach 5