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‘It’s an experiential thing’: the discursive construction of learning in high-performance coach education
journal contribution
posted on 2023-08-30, 18:30 authored by Christopher J. Cushion, Anna Stodter, Nicola J. ClarkeThe design and delivery of formal coach education and learning opportunities appear to be permeated by taken-for-granted discourses. These discourses exercise a systemised influence on the social construction of coaches’ professional knowledge, with potentially problematic consequences. Adopting a discursive methodology using discourse analysis, this study explored the ways in which facilitators and coaches in a high-performance coach education programme constructed coach learning. Data were collected over a two-year period using on-course participant observation (10 days), interviews with coaches and course facilitators (n = 29), and document analysis. Findings indicated a dominant discourse of ‘learning’ as a linear, mechanistic and unproblematic process occurring independently of context, and of coaches as experiential learners, which positioned participants as anti-intellectual and uncritical adopters of ‘what works’. These discourses functioned to reproduce relations of power between the facilitators (the holders of knowledge) and the participants (the recipients of knowledge). The impact of these discursive resources on programme design and delivery are discussed, alongside implications for elite coaches’ subjectivity and practice, in order to confront dominant and legitimate ‘truths’ in coach education.
History
Refereed
- Yes
Volume
0Issue number
0Page range
0Publication title
Sport, Education and SocietyISSN
1470-1243External DOI
Publisher
Taylor & FrancisFile version
- Accepted version
Language
- eng