The Influence of Experiential Pedagogy on Undergraduate Sport Coaching Students’ ‘Real World’ Practice

Abstract

There is a body of research on the challenges that coaches face when trying to implement athlete-centred coaching, but very little attention has been paid to the influence that the growing number of sport coaching degrees has on coaches’ beliefs and practice in regard to athlete-centred coaching. While studies have been conducted on sport coaches’ use of game-based approaches (GBA) to coaching, undergraduate sport coaching students’ interpretation of this coaching innovation has been largely overlooked. This article takes a step toward redressing this oversight by reporting on a study that inquired into the influence of the experiential pedagogy used in a course on athlete-centred coaching on students’ beliefs about coaching and their practice. The scholarship of teaching study adopted a constructivist grounded theory methodology to focus on five undergraduates in a sport coaching program with data generated through a series of three interviews with each participant. This study concludes that the experience-based course design was effective in influencing undergraduate students’ beliefs about coaching and their practice outside university.