Exploring the impact of a coach development programme through the perspectives of Saudi Arabian sport coaches

ABSTRACT

Background: National Governing Bodies (NGBs) and National Sporting Organisations (NSOs) invest significant resources into the design and delivery of learning and development opportunities for sport coaches. This has attracted the attention of sport coaching scholars, who are now focussing their efforts on better understanding the principles of effective coach learning and development. This work has led to principles associated with democratic forms of education being drawn upon to inform how coach learning could be thought about. However, this work to date has almost exclusively focussed on learning from educational programmes where the coaches are known to the coach development/research team, the programmes have been delivered face-to-face, and/or cultural considerations and expectations have not been a factor. With an international interest in sport coaching, coach education is now receiving attention beyond the western world, where coaches are not always known to coach developers prior to the start of an educational programme. These issues requiring research attention.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the utility of an online educational programme based on democratic principles to a group of Saudi Arabian coaches working in participation and/or developmental coaching contexts.

Methods: An online programme based on democratic education principles (i.e. a focus on dialogue and collaboration) took place over a nine-week period with 13 Saudi Arabian football coaches based in Saudi Arabia. Coaches were recruited through communications about the study being sent to clubs based in Riyadh, with those interested asked to contact the second author. Reflective conversations were used at two-time points; once before the educational programme to learn about the coaches and their coaching, then again afterwards to capture the perceived impact and value of the programme. Observations of seven of the 13 coaches took place prior to the educational programme with these data used alongside the first reflective conversation data to inform the programme design. Data were treated to thematic analysis.

Results and discussion: Three themes were generated from the analysis. These were (1) making connections between prior and new pedagogical knowledge, (2) collaborative learning as a means of enhancing coach understanding, and (3) credibility of programme deliverers. Learning about the coaches through the reflective conversations, coach observations, and the initial face-to-face workshops supported the development of content relevant to what coaches wanted and needed to know more about. The ways in which this content was delivered through providing opportunities for coaches to discuss ideas with the education team and other coaches to understand connections between theory and practice seemed an important part of why coaches perceived the content to impact their practice. However, it was the coaches’ perceptions regarding the credibility of the educators that perhaps explained why content was so wilfully accepted as being ‘right’, and thus perceived to have been implemented into practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Coach education
• coach development
• coach learning
• democratic education

Introduction

Developing ‘better coaching’ through coaches’ learning, and development forms a main component of sport coaching and pedagogy literature (e.g. Cushion, Armour, and Jones 2003; Stodter and Cushion 2019; Trudel and Gilbert 2001). Added to this, there is a significant investment by National Governing Bodies and Sporting Governing bodies (NGB, SGB) in the design and development of professional development opportunities for sport coaches. For example, in football in England, the Elite Player Performance Plan (The Premier League 2022) has invested £1.94 billion over a 10-year period in youth development, with the education and development of sport coaches at its core. Such investment enables the design of more bespoke and personalised coach education and development activities such as offering coaches one-to-one support with a coach developer within their coaching contexts.

Coach developers are described as people who ‘plan for, implement, and sustain strategies and interventions in support of skilled performance in sport coaching’ (CIMSPA 2021, 4). Recognising the role coach developers play in the coach learning process, some NGBs have provided their coach developer workforce postgraduate university qualifications (Partington et al. 2021; Redgate et al. 2022). Here, the focus has been to develop better understandings and explanations for practice by challenging coach developers to reflect on their underpinning theories of practice (i.e. knowledge is passed down from experts) (cf. Partington et al. 2021; Redgate et al. 2022). The investment from sports in the professional development of coach developers runs parallel to the academic interest in this role. Since a Coach Developer Special Issue published in The International Journal of Sport Coaching in 2019, there has been a concerted effort to better understand who coach developers are and how they attempt to support and develop coaches.

One aspect of practice for coach developers is tools or frameworks that can be used to inform thinking about effective coach development and the coach developers’ role. An example of this is through democratic forms of education, which above all else, places the idea that (coaching) problems are mutually defined by learners (coaches) and researcher (coach developer); the researcher (coach developer) and learners (coaches) collaborate in seeking solutions to practically based problems; and results from democratic education contribute to a collective knowledge about practice (coaching) and learning and are shared with others to improve (coach) education.

Using democratic education principles as a basis for coach development is not new to the sport coaching literature (e.g. Krane, Eklund, and McDermott 1991), but despite its promise, application to date has been limited. Recently, there has been a specific and sustained interest in the use of collaborative action research (CAR) to inform coach develop policy (Cope et al. 2022). For example, Evans and Light (2008) employed CAR in a sport coaching context and reported three outcomes: (1) increased (player) motivation; (2) an increased sense of player autonomy and (3) improvements in the relationship between the players and the coach. Following this were studies using CAR as a basis for coach development by Clements and Morgan (2015), Chapron and Morgan (2020), Voldby and Klein-Døssing (2020), and Cope et al. (2021). Findings from these studies revealed how coaches were able to create a better motivational climate (Clements and Morgan 2015), and increased collaboration with each other, resulting in more sophisticated reflective practices being employed (Chapron and Morgan 2020; Voldby and Klein-Døssing 2020). Coaches also expressed a greater freedom to learn, feeling cared for through the educational process, and developed some sense of improved reflexive capabilities (Cope et al. 2021). Critical to all these studies was the role the coach developer played, as ‘a more knowledgeable other’ (Vygotsky and Michael 1978), supporting coaches to deconstruct learning materials engaged in to move beyond their current understanding (see also Stodter, Cope, and Townsend 2021).

Despite the promise of democratic principles to support the learning and development of sport coaches, the evidence generated has been until now narrow in focus. For example, CAR studies in sport coaching have been with coaches who operate in a performance context where an existing relationship was in place between the coach and researcher/coach developer, and the CAR process was a single mode of delivery, i.e. face-to-face. Clearly, sport coaches work across a range of contexts and so understanding the potential of approaches such as CAR in these contexts is important. Equally, relationships between researcher and educator that are trusting, and collaborative are crucial to the success of democratic education (Frankham and Howes 2006). Yet, if these were formed prior to the start of the research, we know little about the possibilities of employing democratic education in circumstances where the researcher/coach developer and coach are not familiar with one another; the circumstance is most often the case in recreational and developmental domains. Added to this, and a departure from previous work is how democratic education is utilised cross-culturally in sport coaching. That is, where the coaches are of a different nationality and based in a different country. In this case, the coaches who were all Saudi Arabian. As coach development and education become recognised and established in different coaching cultures (Chen and Chen 2022), it is critical to understand what approaches might work and why, and what considerations are needed beyond those discussed in westernised cultures.

Finally, since Covid-19, NGBs and NGOs have accelerated and increased their educational offer through online and blended means. Indeed, it has been reported that sport coaches are amenable to online learning given its ease of access and opportunities to learn anytime and anywhere (Cushion and Townsend 2019). Further, online coach development can be a useful and innovative means to support and structure coaches’ learning, through the integration of technology in the design of coach education pedagogy (Cushion and Townsend 2019). With increased online coach education and development, it is important to understand how such educational approaches can be delivered and received effectively. With these factors in mind, the purposes of this study were to investigate the utility of democratic education principles, namely, (1) researchers learn about coaches and their practice to inform the development of an educational programme to meet coaches learning needs and wants, and (2) the design of the educational programme enables coaches’ opportunities to collaborate with each other and educators to further develop their coaching knowledge and understanding.

Methodology

Intended educational programme design

Informed by CAR studies in sport coaching (i.e. Clements and Morgan 2015; Cope et al. 2021), this educational programme used a dialogic process with coaches to co-construct their knowledge and understanding alongside other coaches and a more knowledgeable other (Chapron and Morgan 2020; Cope et al. 2021; Stodter, Cope, and Townsend 2021). Like studies using CAR, methods used to generate data were also methods used for the educational intervention. Fundamental to democratic education and in line with the traditions of action research (AR), was starting with the coach and the coaching issues they faced in their practice (Capobianco 2007). Indeed, and as Clements, Morgan, and Harris (2022) highlight, for any coach development programme to impact coaching practice, it must talk to the realities of the coach’s everyday role. Typically, a coaching issue is one in which there is no obvious answer or solution (Moon 2013), which requires engagement in deeper levels of reflexive practice alongside a more knowledgeable other (Clements, Morgan, and Harris 2022; Moon 2013; Stodter, Cope, and Townsend 2021). The inclusion of a more knowledgeable other (the lead author in this study) has been found an especially important part of helping coaches become aware of and change their coaching practice (Clements and Morgan 2015; Cope et al. 2021; Evans and Light 2008). This is because coaching beliefs and understandings of practice are hard to identify, with coaches needing support in uncovering implicit and tacit knowledge and understanding (Stodter, Cope, and Townsend 2021).

Coaches learning about their issues were planned through observation of coaches’ practice followed by conversations based on these. Rather than relying solely on self-report and perceptions of practice, coach observations were used (cf. Cope et al. 2022) and intended as a catalyst for discussion and dialogue about what coaches did (Voldby and Klein-Døssing 2020). The aim of the observations was to enable pedagogical discussion, rather than assess coaching competence (Cope et al. 2022). This process had the ambition of leading to shared sense-making (Clements, Morgan, and Harris 2022) where the lead researcher used a reflective conversation framework (Stodter, Cope, and Townsend 2021; Trudel and Gilbert 2001) intended to privilege the coach’s voice, allowing them to discuss and explain their coaching practice drawing on the observations.

Data and insight generated through observations combined with reflective conversations shared a joint purpose. The first of these purposes was to engage coaches in sense-making and the second was to use the insight generated to design a relevant and meaningful curriculum, addressing areas of the coaches’ practice that required development. However, and taking inspiration from the work of Clements, Morgan, and Harris (2022), our intention was not to only focus on aspects of practice that were perceived as requiring improvement but also to support coaches to build upon the good work they identified and discussed.

Participants

The participants of this study were 13 coaches based in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Coaches were recruited through a combination of purposive and convenience sampling. First, an advert explaining the study and its purpose was distributed to all known clubs based in Riyadh. Coaches who made contact and worked in recreational or developmental contexts and showed a desire to develop their coaching and commitment to the project were selected for the study. An overview of the 13 coaches is provided in Table 1.

Table 1. Coaches’ demographic information.

Coach name	Age	Highest coaching qualification	Years of coaching experience	Context coached in (i.e. age group coached, playing level)	Occupation outside of coaching (if applicable)
Coach A	40	AFC B Diploma	15	U19	Nurse
Coach B	28	C license	4	U17	Public relation
Coach C	31	C license	9	U13	Police officer
Coach D	38	Judo coach (advanced)	10	U17	Military
Coach E	31	C license	2	U13	Administrative
Coach F	37	B license	2	First team	Network technician
Coach G	29	AFC C	3	U8 – 16	a social researcher
Coach H	31	C license	2	U9 – 12	Operator at plant
Coach I	33	C license	2	U17	Administrative
Coach J	43	C License	4	U14, 13, and 12	Apache flight
Coach K	33	AFC C license	2	U12	Petrochemical plant operator
Coach L	35	C license	3	U8	Executive sales
Coach M	36	AFC C license	6	U13	Engineer

The research team who designed and delivered the research project and education programme were experienced pedagogical researchers, who have published widely on sport coaches’ learning and development, and have supported and influenced a range of NGBs and SGBs in designing coach education and development provision.

Education procedure

Phase one

Shortly after the coaches’ agreed to be involved in the study, two, three-hour face-to-face workshops were delivered with the coaches in Saudi Arabia. The purpose of workshop one was to meet with the coaches and tell them more about the study. Workshop two, which followed the day after served to understand coaches’ views on what constituted effective coaching and perceptions of how they coached their players (i.e. what did their coaching practice look like). These workshops were led by the first author, with contents translated into Arabic from other members of the research team. Both workshops were filmed allowing conversations to be translated from Arabic into English and data were generated from these interactive workshops.

Phase two

Phase two of data collection sought to video record each coach’s practice. The purpose of generating these data was to help us understand the coaches’ interactions and how they designed their coaching sessions. Due to a range of contextual factors affecting the scheduling of sessions (i.e. Ramadan, Eid), seven of the 13 coaches were observed coaching once. Ideally, we would like to have observed all coaches’ practices to get a sense of individual issues, however, the recorded sessions enabled a general picture of what coaches did. Coaching sessions were video recorded and translated enabling an explanation of the sessions. The total observation time was 867 min, with the average session duration being just over two hours per coach.

Phase three

Phase three took place alongside phase two and engaged the 13 coaches in individual reflective conversation interviews. Previous studies (i.e. Stodter, Cope, and Townsend 2021) have shown reflective conversations can develop deeper levels of coach reflection with coaches being more inquisitive regarding why certain coaching issues are occurring. The purpose of these conversations then was to help coaches better understand and explore areas of their coaching they wished to develop. The observations and initial face-to-face workshops were critical in revealing the ways coaches currently practiced and spoke about and understood their practice. In both cases, we paid specific attention towards coaches’ use of pedagogy to support player learning. This meant observing coaches use of different practice activities, and coaching behaviour, speaking to them about their understandings of these during the face-to-face workshops. The insight generated from these activities led to reflective conversations focussed on coaches’ broader understanding of effective coaching, but with specific emphasis placed on their pedagogical understanding concerning their intended practice design and coaching behaviour. Prior learning experiences coaches considered most and least valuable to contributing towards their understanding in these areas were also discussed. 442 minutes of reflective conversation data were generated across the 13 coaches.

Phase four

Data generated from observations, face-to-face workshops, and the subsequent reflective conversations, revealed physiological and technical knowledge were areas of coaching, coaches perceived they had the most knowledge off, and that effective coaching was being able to demonstrate high levels of these knowledges. We wanted to broaden coaches’ understanding of the knowledge required to be an ‘effective’ coach, and in line with our expertise, sought to support coaches’ development of pedagogical knowledge.

Phase five

The final phase of the education project engaged coaches in a second reflective conversation after the educational programme had finished. This aimed to explore the value coaches attributed towards the programme and discuss coaches’ attempts to apply ideas discussed in their practice. The second round of reflective conversations resulted in 437 min of recorded data.

Reflective diaries

Alongside the reflective conversations, coaching observations, and delivery of the educational programme, the first author, who led the education project captured their reflections through reflective diaries. Not initially conceived as part of the data collection process, it became apparent early in the project documenting the educational implementation was important in providing a context to the data generated. Diary entries captured the process of implementing the educational programme based on the democratic educational principles discussed in the introduction of this paper. The reflective diaries were undertaken on a bi-weekly basis starting in November 2021. This led to a total of 78 A5-sized pages of handwritten notes. The first and final authors met towards the end of each month to discuss the first author's reflections on the implementation of democratic educational principles. The final author served as a supportive aid offering suggestions for how the coaches’ voice could be celebrated within the online educational workshops, and to prompt the first author to thinker deeper and more critically about the ongoing data generation. As the project evolved, discussions related to cultural factors took up significant parts of the meeting. For example, coaches seemed receptive to the content, never questioning whether what we were saying was right. Our interpretation of this was that we were perceived by the coaches as ‘experts’.

Educational programme

The programme was delivered by members and non-members of the research team who were considered knowledgeable in the topic’s areas. In total, there were five presenters (but only two who were engaged in this research project) all with a combination of academic and practical experience and knowledge. The programme took place from mid-July to mid-September. Workshops took place online via Zoom, with each scheduled for one hour and 30 min once a week. After four workshops there was a one-week break intended to allow coaches opportunities to reflect on their learning and consider the application of the ideas discussed in their practice. Table 2 provides an outline of the topics covered within the educational programme.

Table 2. An outline of the topics covered within the educational programme.

Week number	Topic focus
1	Designing different types of coaching practices
2	Planning coaching sessions
3	STEP principle
4	Coaching using games
5	An introduction to studying coaching behaviour
6	Coach behaviour and its impact on player learning: instruction and feedback
7	Coach behaviour and its impact on player learning: questioning
8	Developing coaching awareness

Besides the considerations of content, just as critical was the way learning was designed. Providing coaches an opportunity to engage in dialogue with each other and the research team was a fundamental democratic education component (Capobianco 2007). We attempted to stimulate dialogue through video footage of coaching practice edited to focus on the theme of the workshop. For example, in workshop one, we showed examples of coaches delivering practice in different-sized playing areas. Prior to watching the video, coaches were asked questions related to what they were noticing, why they considered the coach was modifying practice, and their perceived impact the changes to practice had on player learning. Each workshop took a similar format of posing questions, showing videos, and then engaging in discussion with one another and the research team. This activity was book-ended with an introduction to the topic area and reference to research evidence discussing the benefits of adopting certain coaching behaviours and designing practice in certain ways. In attempts to relate the content to coaches’ practices, the final part of the workshops asked coaches to reflect on and consider where the ideas discussed might be applied within their coaching. This part of the workshop took a question-and-answer format between the coaches and the presenter.

Data analysis

Reflective conversations were recorded and analysed in Arabic before being converted to English to enable the lead author to analyse all data. Analysis followed the principles of thematic analysis (TA) (Braun and Clarke 2006; 2012) to identify shared meanings and experiences of the coaches from the educational programme (Braun and Clarke 2012; 2019). Braun and Clarke (2012) suggest there are multiple forms of TA, including inductive TA, which is driven by what exists in the data, and deductive TA, which takes theoretical ideas and concepts (in this case, concepts of democratic education) and uses these as the basis of the analysis. We combined these to undertake what is known as abductive analysis (Morgan 2007). This meant initially avoiding being influenced by published work that has discussed the outcomes of approaches based on democratic education principles, to then using what has become known to formulate an understanding of our dataset and extend knowledge of coach education programmes that have taken such a stance.

Given data were collected over a nine-month period, issues of potential interest were identified early, with the reflective diaries and ensuing conversations between the first and final author serving as a platform to generating increased meaning. For example, the level of respect coaches showed us was apparent early in the study and something we continued to think and talk about. The length of the data collection period lent itself to the moving backwards and forwards between the datasets, with the reflective diaries being a critical sense-making tool. Towards the end of the research, the first and final author’s conversations moved to discussing the data from this study through the lens of coach development research that had adopted similar research focusses and designs. The inductive generation of initial codes led us to identifying the importance of coaches being provided opportunities to collaborate, and the pedagogical knowledge coaches seemed to be developing (see Table 3). We then used the ideas of dialogue and collaboration, which are well-established components in democratic education research, as the basis of our inductive and deductive analysis. The reality was that inductive and deductive analysis was occurring concurrently. For example, some ideas were new to us and the literature (i.e. the credibility of the educators), while others were not (i.e. collaboration as important for learning).

Table 3. An example of the thematic analysis undertaken.

Meaning unit	Code	Category	Theme
‘I learned a lot from networking with other coaches who have more experience than me’	Networking Experienced coaches	Learning from a more knowledgeable other	Collaborative learning as a means of enhancing coach understanding
‘Asking good questions was something that stood out to me. Through focussing on this since (the programme) I think I am helping my players better understand their performances’	Questioning The programme Players	Coaching behaviour Perceived impact of the programme Supporting player learning	Making connections between prior and new pedagogical knowledge

Supporting the analysis process was a research assistant (RA), who was undertaking postgraduate study in the UK and spoke fluent English but was a Saudi native. The author shared their analysis with the RA, asking them to go back through all the original data before being converted to English to check whether the themes identified spoke to the non-translated data. The RA was recruited four months into the nine-month project, and so it was at this point that the process described here started. After the initial themes had been presented to and reviewed by the RA and final author multiple times, these were finalised and named as: (1) making connections between prior and new pedagogical knowledge, (2) collaborative learning as a means of enhancing coach understanding, and (3) credibility of programme deliverers.

Results and discussion

Making connections between prior and new pedagogical knowledge

Through engagement in the educational programme, coaches discussed developing their pedagogical knowledge and application of this knowledge within their coaching practice. Specifically, coaches highlighted the development and use of questioning techniques to support their players’ development, for example:

I learned a lot of questioning approaches and the importance of utilising this within my coaching. Since trying to ask more questions that checked my players understanding I can tell they have become more confident and see this in the way they play. (Coach B)

Asking good questions was something that stood out to me. Through focussing on this since (the programme) I think I am helping my players better understand their performances. (Coach C)

Coach questioning was the focus of workshop seven thus providing an initial stimulus for exploration of the benefits of employing this behaviour. Data suggest that coaches were convinced by the benefits of asking questions to checking for player understanding.

Another pedagogical concept coaches discussed was their ability to use differentiation strategies in relation to several facets of practice. For example, one coach discussed the importance of varying the equipment used to give the players different challenges:

I learned for example that there are specific training plans I should be using for when I’m in a small space versus a larger space – and I’ve done this with my players afterwards and noticed that they have better control of the ball, even with the smaller ball that’s harder to control. (Coach D)

A different coach discussed a similar point, where they had taken a practice used regularly and looked to change this to provide players an alternative and greater level of challenge:

So now I have started making the boundaries smaller and teaching my players to be more aware of what their teammates are doing. (Coach E)

I started focusing on smaller games now. I used to do them just to do them but now that I know their importance in their development, I started taking my time. (Coach A, post programme interview)

These data show that the educational programme was perceived by coaches to have impacted on the generation of new knowledge, and that the coaches thought that this led to changes in practice. As noted in the reflections below, the importance of coaches identifying their perceived learning needs, supported by coach observations, prior to the design of the educational programme served to ensure the coaches could connect and see the relevance of the programme content:

I was taken back by the level of questions asked of us by the coaches. I don’t know why, but I wasn’t expecting such understanding of what we were talking to them about to be shown. It made me think about the importance of the initial reflective conversation, and where possible, observations of coaches’ practices to provide an informed view of what they needed supporting with. (First author reflections)

It is the coupling of existing knowledge and new knowledge that is considered a necessary condition for learning (Gijselaers 1996). Generating an understanding of coaches’ prior knowledge meant the development and delivery of new knowledge could be understood within existing knowledge structures (Mayer 2004). It has been reported across numerous educational contexts that educators who are deliberate in their educational design linking new knowledge to existing knowledge develop better learner outcomes, and/or the learning is experienced more positively (Manfra 2019; Stodter, Cope, and Townsend 2021). Reflections from the first author revealed how coaches’ pedagogical knowledge could have been enhanced further:

In the early workshops, I think I was too concerned both in my practice and in my instruction to other members of the research team that we should stick to some introductory ideas related to the topic area. In being conscious of the messages being understood and followed by the coaches, I think I fell into the trap of pitching information below coaches’ understanding. (First author reflection)

Indeed, the point above was picked up by one of the coaches, who felt the workshops could have extended their thinking more than they did:

I enjoyed the workshops but do feel they were a little simplistic and basic. I wanted to be challenged more. (Coach F)

While the reflective conversations and observations undertaken prior to the educational course gave us some insight, clearly a full awareness of coaches’ existing understanding of their coaching and future learning needs was lacking. Unlike other studies in sport coaching that have used democratic forms of education, we had no prior knowledge of these coaches, and this explains the statement made by coach F. This was compounded through the language barrier and while a translator supported in understanding what was being said during observations and reflective conversations it was not always possible to transcribe verbatim. This raises questions regarding the extent to which coaches need to be known prior to commencing democratic education, and the added difficulty supporting coaches in a different language brings. Although previous coaching research has offered some problematising of the implementation of democratic education, such as CAR (i.e. Voldby and Klein-Døssing 2020; Chapron and Morgan 2020), generally work has failed to capture the messiness and non-linearity of identifying a problem, developing a plan, collecting, and analysing data, and implementing a solution. Sharing the experiences of Smith, Williams, and Bone (2023), the process of attempting to co-produce knowledge with research participants is time-consuming and requires considerable skill on the part of the research team to tease out exactly what coaches need and want from a learning experience. Our learning suggests that democratic education cannot be picked up and willfully applied, but instead, certain conditions for the ‘successes’ of democratic educational approaches (i.e. spending sufficient time observing and speaking with coaches to understand them and their practice) are necessary.

Collaborative learning as a means of enhancing coach understanding

Affording opportunities for collaboration between learners, and learners and educators is important for learning (Gijselaers 1996; Shabani 2016). The idea of learning from peers and ‘more knowledge others’ is central to Vygotsky and Michael’s (1978) zone of proximal development (ZPD) concept, which is based on the premise that social mediation with dialogic interaction leads to higher levels of cognitive functioning. Related studies in sport coaching have shown coaches’ receptiveness to collaborative working and being supported by ‘more knowledgeable others’ (i.e. Clements and Morgan 2015; Cope et al. 2021). Findings from this study showed how the creation of collaborative learning spaces was an important part of the perceived learning that occurred:

Even though there was a language barrier between us and Dr XXXX, I still felt like everything was easy to understand and we all felt comfortable to ask questions. (Coach E)

I loved the speakers that came to talk about their experience as coaches in clubs. I appreciated that we were able jump in and talk about our own experience as well. (Coach G)

‘I learned a lot from networking with other coaches who have more experience than me. (Coach I)

At the heart of democratic education is participation and partnership between learners and researchers achieved through discussion and dialogue (Bradbury-Huang 2010; Capobianco 2007; Feldman 1999). Wegerif (2008) discusses how dialogue offers people the chance to reason and discuss new ideas through opening themselves to new ways of thinking. The reason a more knowledgeable other is so important in this process is that this person(s) can support coaches to move past the limitations of their own knowledge (Stodter, Cope, and Townsend 2021; Vygotsky and Michael 1978). The impact of professional development programmes that provide learners the opportunity to discuss their experiences and issues with such people has recently been shown (i.e. Cope et al. 2021; Stodter, Cope, and Townsend 2021), and more broadly have been found to support changes to practice (Lieberman 2009). Opportunities for researchers/coach developers to co-produce with coaches with the aim of identifying learning needs and wants would seem an important next step to enable a stronger sense of how ideas discussed can be applied in practice. However, while coaches outlined their valuing for opportunities to engage in conversation, researcher relfections revealed this could have happened more:

I was consciously worried about the language barrier and the time it took to convey information or ask a question and get a response due to the need to translate. Perhaps there needed to be a different forum that wasn’t about the delivery of content but instead purely focused on giving coaches opportunities to ask questions to the educators and other coaches. (First author reflection)

An increase in opportunities to collaborate could have further extended the possibilities for the research team to support coaches in connecting the to-be-learning material, with existing knowledge and understanding. However, it is not simply the opportunity for collaboration that leads to learning. It is the situatedness of the discussion relative to what the learner needs to know, which is a crucial factor contributing towards learning (Shabani 2016).

While an isolated example, there was one coach who identified further opportunities for collaboration as being beneficial:

I think it would have been beneficial to have an initial discussion meeting, as well as a meeting after to assess our level before the start of the workshops and afterwards. (Coach E)

Time to discuss such theoretical ideas in ways highlighted by Coach E seems required and helps to avoid what Smith, Williams, and Bone (2023) term as a tokenistic attempt to co-produce knowledge through collaboration. This is an important point, which leads us to question how learning spaces are created to enable sufficient time for coaches to discuss coaching ideas and concepts in a way that further knowledge and understanding. It is known that follow-up activity to initial learning is key to supporting coaches’ sense-making and ongoing critical reflection of their practice (Thurlow and Mills 2009). Building on other work in coaching, the ZPD is a useful concept to help those concerned with designing coach learning and development to think how coaches could be supported in taking theoretical ideas and applying these in practice. A critical principle of the ZPD is that learners have some understanding of what it is they are advancing their learning in, and this learning is relevant to what is needed to be known (Vygotsky and Michael 1978). In other words, there needs to be a connection between prior knowledge and experience and to-be-learned information. This further points to the importance of making attempts, through such means as reflective conversations, prior to educational programmes to learn about coaches and their practice. Without this, opportunities built in for collaboration could fail to meet their potential.

Credibility of programme deliverers

Coaches’ perceptions of the credibility of the delivery team seemed a critical factor in why the ideas we suggested were accepted as beneficial by coaches. For example, coaches stated that:

Finding credible resources. I enjoy working with professors like Dr XXXX, he’s an academic and I know he’s a valuable resource. I try to look for information that’s backed by science now. (Coach E)

I would have liked to take full advantage of having access to these professors and all this knowledge. (Coach F)

Dr XXXX was the most beneficial for me because the material was clear and it was from FIFA and even in the practical assessment, he was very influential because of his expertise. (Coach K)

The value placed on the credentials of the ‘educator’ was a point identified as important in Abu-Tineh and Sadiq’s study (2018) examining the characteristics of teacher professional development in Qatar. The association between academic credentials and NGB ties as markers for expertise was particularly evident with these coaches. When discussing how they sought to develop their coaching further, coaches referred to working with other coaches who fitted a certain profile:

We recently brought in an expert coach who has the highest qualifications, so I work with him a lot to improve my own teaching skills. (Coach I)

I try and surround myself with coaches who have more experience than I do and coaches who managed to get higher coaching certifications/licenses than I do. (Coach H)

Reflections from the first author, stimulated through meetings with the final author, noted how there seemed to be significant respect from the coaches to the delivery team:

I found it quite uncomfortable being addressed as Dr. XXXX all the time. Fellow delivery staff who held the same title were also addressed in the same way. Comments from the coaches at the end of each session were full of gratitude that we had given up our time to speak with them, and that they had been ‘chosen’ to be part of this project. (First Author Reflections)

Coach educators’ credibility and the level of respect shown seemed to be validated based on their experience, qualifications held, or both. Indeed, as Cushion, Griffiths, and Armour (2019) demonstrated, a crucial issue in understanding the success or failure of coach developer practice and of learning was linked to the possession of educators’ social capital. This is a concept recognised in some research but rarely considered as critical to the ‘successes’ of coach education and development. Specifically symbolic capital (Bourdieu 1989) that is deemed legitimate in the field, and is found in the form of prestige, renown, reputation, and personal authority (Cushion, Griffiths, and Armour 2019). Possession of symbolic capital enables the setting of the parameters for knowledge production to which everyone is required to tacitly respond. This is well illustrated in similar studies to this in coach development; the individual(s) leading this process were expert and/or experienced coach educators/developers, and who had strong connections to academia. The findings here suggest that like coaching more broadly (Cushion, Armour, and Jones 2003, 2019), social capital is likely a pre-requisite to the delivery and ‘successes’ of democratic education. Importantly, the coaching field and those therein ‘all follow specific logics’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 97), with their own unique stakes, and distinctive dynamics, providing their own rules and regularities requiring negotiation. In this case, the findings suggested an educational hierarchy existed that served as a powerful determinant of ‘buy-in’ to the learning.

This research supports previous assertions (e.g. Cushion, Griffiths, and Armour 2019) that a voice requires a certain position (capital) within the field to be heard and listened to (cf. Cushion, Armour, and Jones 2003; 2019) and therefore could be a powerful determining factor in why coaches value coach education as an important source of learning. Stodter and Cushion (2017) in their grounded theory of coach learning argued that coaches accept or reject coaching ideas based on their coaching biography. While we are not denying biography is important, the coach developer also has a critical role to play in ‘gatekeeping’ the acceptance or rejection of ideas. This was particularly so in the context of this study where cultural factors could be used to explain why the researchers’ ideas were not challenged. In other words, different types of social and cultural capital commanded different levels of respect and deference (credentials, qualifications, and/or coaching experience) from the learners (Cushion, Griffiths, and Armour 2019). Understanding just how significant a role coaching researchers/developers play in supporting coaches’ learning based on their profile and possession of social capital is a necessary area of future study.

Finally, educational provision in Saudi Arabia, particularly in the early years places a strong focus on children being loved and cared for by their teachers (Aljabreen and Lash 2016). Love and care are two concepts closely associated with democratic forms of education, which are achieved through dialogue (Freire 2018). The focus on giving coaches opportunities to express their perspectives could be viewed by them as the researchers' attempts to demonstrate care and fit with their ideas of what good education is, as acknowledged in this reflection:

The respect and appreciation the coaches showed towards me was not something I had experienced in any educational setting in my country. Instead of feeling a need to prove myself as a legitimate educator, it was as if the coaches were trying to prove their legitimacy to me. (First author reflection)

Conclusion

The purpose of this study was to investigate the utility of democratic education principles, to inform the design and delivery of an online educational programme to a group of Saudi Arabian coaches working in participation and/or development contexts. The departure of this study away from other research using such democratic approaches in sport coaching was (a) the coaches who took part in this study did not operate in a performance context, (b) there was no existing relationship between the coach and research team, and (c) the educational programme was delivered online. Our reflections from this study have led us to believe certain conditions must exist if democratic forms of education are to reach their conceptual potential.

The fact that the research team was unfamiliar with the coaches and their practices prior to the study did not seem problematic. Through the observations and reflective conversations, we were able to identify relevant coaches’ issues (although these could have been better understood) that were then discussed as part of the online educational programme. All of this suggests democratic education has the potential to be employed even if an existing relationship between researcher and coach does not exist. From our perspective, the value of undertaking observational work to inform the educational programme suggests NGBs, who offer coaches in situ support as part of their coach development support should seek to do this before rather than after the educational programme, as is often the case. Also, and where possible, engaging in discussion with coaches that explores their views on coaching and where these have come from would also serve as an important step in better-connecting learners with the to-be-learned content. Both steps would provide learning designers and coach developers with richer insights into coaches’ practices in ways that will support a closer alignment between the intended educational curriculum and the realities of coaches’ practices (Kavanagh, Conrad, and Dagogo-Jack, 2020).

Undertaking this study with Saudi Arabian coaches had some clear cultural connotations that we had not experienced in Western Culture. The respect and trust shown in who we were as educators led to the uncritical acceptance that our ideas were right and should be employed in their practice. So, while coaches asked challenging, and at times, sophisticated questions related to how they employ certain ideas in their practice, the ideas themselves were never challenged. We want to promote educational discourse where the challenging of ideas between and to coach educators is central. Regardless of the context, our learning from this experience was that understanding what learners consider good education and good educators need to be discussed and challenged early in the educational experience.

On the point of the educational programme being delivered online, this seemed to have no real bearing on how coaches received the programme and was not something discussed by them. This might have been because this was the only means by which this programme could have been delivered and so was not raised by coaches as an issue. Moreover, Cushion and Townsend (2019) argue that the pedagogy surrounding the use of technology rather than the medium itself is crucial. We know there is general acceptance of online education within coach development with the volume of online learning only growing. We see no reason why this mode of learning cannot effectively support coaches’ learning and development so long as the pedagogy behind its use is understood. The content is relatable to coaches and their practice, and either opportunities are provided for discussion and dialogue, or a stimulus is provided for this to happen and followed up on shortly afterwards.

Our overriding learnings from this study support the growing body of work celebrating a collaborative approach to working with coaches. Future work should look to work to investigate how collaboration between researchers/coach developers and coaches can lead to long-term and sustained changes to coaches’ pedagogical practice. Work that also better enables an understanding of the conditions required for democratic education to impact coach beliefs, assumptions and eventual practice would be a worthwhile endeavour. Finally, the reporting of the realities faced in employing such types of coach development programmes seems necessary in identifying how forms of coach development could be suitably scaled.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by the Prince Faisal bin Fahad Award for Sports Research, administered by the Leaders Development Institute under the Ministry of Sport in Saudi Arabia. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Leaders Development or the Ministry of Sport in Saudi Arabia.