The Career Experiences of Football Association Coach Educators: Lessons in Micropolitical Literacy and Action

ABSTRACT

Coach education has been the subject of increasing investigation in recent years. While such inquiry has provided important insights into coaches’ engagements with various forms of coach education provision, coach educators’ perspectives have remained curiously absent from the literature base. This study provides rich insights into the ways in which four Football Association (FA) coach educators interpreted their everyday workplace relationships with various significant others (e.g., their line managers, colleagues, and coach learners). In-depth, cyclic interviews were utilised to generate the data. The transcripts were iteratively analysed using symbolic interactionist and dramaturgical theorisations of social life. The analysis highlighted how the participants’ interactions and identity management were influenced by their understandings of others’ expectations of acceptable workplace performance, as well as their own career related aspirations. Here, the participants demonstrated a nuanced ability to ‘read’ and ‘write’ themselves into the micropolitical and uncertain terrain of coach education work. It is hoped that this study highlights the utility of symbolic interactionist and dramaturgical theories to the critical examination of coach education work and, relatedly, how such inquiry could be used to assist in the preparation and on-going professional development of coach educators.

KEYWORDS:

• Coach educator
• coach education
• dramaturgy
• micropolitics
• symbolic interaction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ashley Allanson

Ashley Allanson joined the Recreation & Sport Pedagogy Department from England as a Lecturer in Sports Coaching Education. A former professional soccer player for Hull City Tigers FC and Scunthorpe United FC, he attended the University of Hull in 2007 and achieved a first class honours B.Sc. degree in Sports Coaching & Performance. He then went on to obtain his Ph.D. in 2014 from the same institute. Ashley also holds a UEFA ‘B’ football coaching qualification, and worked for Hull City FC Academy for nine years coaching elite young soccer players. Additionally, he represented England at Futsal, as well as representing the England Universities soccer team in 2008.

Paul Potrac

Paul Potrac completed his honours degree in Sport Studies and History at Brunel University and obtained his Ph.D. from the same institution in 2001. After holding academic positions at the University of Otago, Brunel University, Edge Hill University, and the University of Hull, he joined the Department of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation at Northumbria University in December 2016. Alongside his academic work, Paul was a football coach for 18 years. He coached male and female teams at various levels in the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and New Zealand

Lee Nelson

Lee Nelson is a Reader in Sports Coaching and Chair of the Learning and Teaching Committee in the Department of Sport and Physical Activity. He joined Edge Hill in 2014 having worked at the University of Hull as a Lecturer in Sports Coaching and Performance (2009-2014). He was awarded his PhD from Loughborough University in 2010 having completed his MSc in Sports Coaching (2004) at Brunel University and BSc (Hons) in Sport and Exercise Science (2003) at the University of Bedfordshire.