Sociocultural Competencies for Sport Coaches: A Proposal for Coaches and Coach Education

Abstract

As social and cultural diversity increases in the United States, coaches frequently interact with athletes from a wide range of backgrounds. Therefore, it would be useful if coaches had established guidelines for best practices to support their socially and ethically responsible work with athletes. However, coaching organizations have not published best practice standards specifically for coaches’ work with socially and culturally diverse athletes. This article proposes Sociocultural Competencies for Sport Coaches (SCSC) to support positive coach-athlete relationships. Specifically, the paper (a) reviews standards for social and cultural competencies used in similar professions, (b) introduces SCSC to the field of coaching education, and (c) presents competencies, standards, and benchmarks to guide the implementation of SCSC with diverse athletes.

Unveiling Ineffectiveness: Exploring Indicators of Failed Coaching Education Systems

“…Cultural Sensitivity and Inclusivity. A comprehensive framework recognizes the diverse coaching contexts and cultural nuances (Burden & Lambie, 2011;Stewart, 2013). It emphasizes the importance of cultural sensitivity, inclusion, and adapting coaching practices to suit the needs of athletes from various backgrounds.…”

“…The limitation of an education system to address these variations and complexities can hinder coaches from forming meaningful relationships with their athletes and understanding the unique challenges they face (Falcão et al, 2020). Without the necessary cultural competence, coaches might unintentionally perpetuate cultural misunderstandings or biases that hinder effective coaching relationships and athlete growth (Burden & Lambie, 2011). To address this concern, CE programs should incorporate cultural competency training that helps coaches understand and appreciate the cultural backgrounds of their athletes to establish rapport and create inclusive and supportive sport environments (Burden & Lambie, 2011).…”

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“…Once every two weeks students attended real-time online class sessions using Blackboard Collaborate. The book used for this class was titled Fair play: The ethics of sport (Simon et al 2014) with additional readings from scholarly journals such as Ethics & Behavior (Van Der Hoeven et al 2020), philosophies (Laukyte 2020), and the Journal of Coaching Education (Burden and Lambie 2011) as well as popular press sources including U.S. and World Report, Women's Sport Foundation, and Harvard Business Review. Specific topics that were discussed 1) your values and principles, 2) application and strategy 3) competition and violence 4) performance-enhancing drugs and sport 5) racial and gender equity in sport 6) sports in collegiate settings 7) commercialization of sport and, 8) match-fixing and cheating in sport.…”

It depends coaching – The most fundamental, simple and complex principle or a mere copout?

“…Effective planning and thinking will take account of factors such as competitive schedules and the demands of the sport, that have already been identified in the literature (Lyle, 2002). The concept of nestedness also emphasises the recognition of the socio-political dynamics of the coaching situation (Burden & Lambie, 2011;Collins, 2019). In essence, the coach needs to acknowledge and cater for the politics and culture of their coaching context.…”