An exploration of how dominant discourses steer U.K. strength and conditioning coach education
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Psychosocial coaching competencies, including psychological, pedagogical, philosophical, and sociocultural aspects, which underpin an athlete-centred coaching approach, have been largely overlooked by the United Kingdom Strength and Conditioning Association (UKSCA) coach education.It is possible to understand why psychosocial competencies have been disregarded by critiquing how stakeholders' perceptions, such as board members, tutors, assessors, who are responsible for coach education, have been shaped by dominant discourses within sport culture.The purpose of this study is to understand and critique UKSCA stakeholders' perceptions of psychosocial coaching practices through the lenses of dominant discourses in Strength and Conditioning (S&C) coaching.Thirty stakeholders took part in one-to-one semi-structured interviews.To prompt discussion for the interviews, they were shown video vignettes depicting psychosocial coaching competencies.The data were analysed in two phases.First, a thematic analysis deduced participants' understandings of the competencies built into each vignette.Second, a poststructural discourse analysis critiqued how a performance-scientific coaching discourse and a discourse of orthodox masculinity impacted stakeholders' perceptions.The results indicate that stakeholders' perceptions of psychological and pedagogical effective coaching approaches focused on athletic performance, which disregarding the well-being and personal development of the athlete.Stakeholders also recognised overt sexist coaching practice, which suggest some appraisal of sociocultural and philosophical competencies.Yet, covert sexist microaggressions towards female coaches were often accepted as banter and female coaches' emotional labour were not recognised.This study advances the literature by showing how the dominant culture of performance-scientific coaching and orthodox masculinity shape what is accepted as effective coaching practice.Such coaching practice deemphasises psychosocial coaching competencies and limits the impact of equity, diversity and inclusivity (EDI) strategies, as well as the holistic development of both athletes and S&C coaches.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.011 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.015 | 0.011 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.010 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.009 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".