Implementing a game sense approach in youth sport coaching: Challenges, change and resistance

Abstract

Despite the potential that Game Sense offers to re-energize and reconstruct youth sport coaching, it has yet to make a significant impact on youth sport coaching in Australia or New Zealand. While research has examined the challenges that teachers face in implementing such innovation in school physical education, little attention has been paid to the identification and examination of factors restraining the development of understanding approaches by coaches in youth sport. Given the importance of community based sport in countries such as Australia and New Zealand this represents a significant oversight in the literature. In setting out to redress this oversight this paper draws on a series of interviews conducted with Australian coaches over 2002 and 2003 to explore the challenges of putting a Game Sense approach to coaching into practice in youth sport settings. It identifies sport coaching as a complex social practice in which social interaction and a dominant culture of coaching provide significant challenges for coaches wishing to develop a Game Sense approach.