Reviewing the sports coach mentoring literature: a look back to take a step forward

Abstract

This article takes a look back, in order to take a step forward, for sports coach mentorship within both academia and practice. Consequently, this article aims to review the contemporary trends within the sports coach mentoring literature and beyond to build upon earlier foundations.Throughout, four areas of significance are identified: (1) A sociocultural analysis of sports coach mentorship; (2) multiple-mentors and developmental networks; (3) developing sports coach mentors; and (4) gender and role models. The existing literature within each area is introduced, analysed, and critiqued, before an innovative future research agenda is established. Whilst mentorship is regularly utilised within sports coaching, the practice remains undertheorised and conceptually vague.Therefore, this literature review attempts to reconstruct sports coach mentorship by highlighting gaps in our knowledge and instigating innovative research agendas to produce contextually and culturally bound empirical evidence. Thus, this article advances our understanding of mentoring practice within sports coaching.

Bridging the Gap Between Science and Application: The Use of Cocreation Educational Workshops in Professional Youth Soccer

“…Based on our experience (Low et al, 2013), it might be that coaches opted to use small-sided games as opposed to bespoke active decision-making drills as there was more scope, or it was easier, to change/modify these types of games from their own coaching repertoire. A method that could be implemented to increase the number and soccer specificity of active decision-making drills is to upskill and support coaches (and perhaps players) by developing mentorship programmes (Cushion, 2015;Dawson, 2014;Jones, Harris, & Miles, 2009) that target specific aspects of coaching practice, and/or at particular stages [e.g., a youth development coach has very different needs ('technical detail') to an elite ('micro-politics') coach] of a coach's career (Leeder & Sawiuk, 2020). For example, junior Australian soccer coaches significantly changed the delivery type of practice sessions employed in youth coaching (i.e., increased use of playing form), and coach behaviours (i.e., increase in positive coaching behaviours related to verbal feedback), following a 15-week multi-approach intervention that contained face-to-face workshops, ongoing mentoring, modelled training sessions, peer assessments, and group discussions (Eather et al, 2020).…”

Effects of a Mentor Program for Coaches on the Coach-Athlete Relationship

“…Our findings lead us to question whether the mentors challenged the coaches sufficiently through the use of influencing skills in the development process. Other research has critiqued and challenged the conception of mentorship as always being beneficial for sports coaching [ 16 , 68 ]. This has underlined the need for explorations of the wider nuances of mentorship (e.g., how mentee coaches perceive, interpret and act on feedback from their mentors [ 12 , 69 ].…”

“…This has underlined the need for explorations of the wider nuances of mentorship (e.g., how mentee coaches perceive, interpret and act on feedback from their mentors [ 12 , 69 ]. In a wider perspective, the literature seems to struggle to reconstruct and imagine what transformative mentoring practice for coaches entails and there is little evidence that connects mentoring to IB; a change in coaching practice [ 16 , 67 ]. Our results support these claims and have proposed suggestions for further research.…”

“…Based on this, mentoring has been advocated as a method for facilitating coach learning through guidance, observation and reflective practice that enables coaches to acquire and deal with the complexity of sports coaching [ 14 , 15 ]. However, a systematic review that aimed to highlight gaps in the knowledge and research agenda by Leeder and Sawiuk [ 16 ] to update the work of Jones et al [ 12 ], found little evidence of associations between mentoring and changes in coaching practice. Their review of contemporary trends within the sports coach mentoring literature concludes that “the impact and evaluation of formal mentoring programmes are worthy of increased consideration” [ 16 ].…”

“…However, a systematic review that aimed to highlight gaps in the knowledge and research agenda by Leeder and Sawiuk [ 16 ] to update the work of Jones et al [ 12 ], found little evidence of associations between mentoring and changes in coaching practice. Their review of contemporary trends within the sports coach mentoring literature concludes that “the impact and evaluation of formal mentoring programmes are worthy of increased consideration” [ 16 ]. More specifically, and in line with Bloom [ 17 ], they argue there is a lack of evaluation-based research with indicators of effectiveness.…”