Overcoming barriers to coaching success: exploring the developmental networks of elite women coaches
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Despite the rapid emerge of professional women's sport over the last decade, the number of women in coaching positions remains low.The underrepresentation of women in leadership and coaching roles has impacted the amount of available women role models, decreasing opportunities for younger, aspiring women in the coaching domain.Notably, within the literature, more research has focused on the problems, issues, and barriers that impact women coaches' careers, in comparison to factors that both support and help advance them.The developmental network perspective offers an understanding of how multiple individuals may impact the personal and professional development of others by considering the constellation of their developmental relationships.However, research using the developmental network perspective in women's coaching is scarce.As such, the purpose of this study was to explore the developmental networks of elite women coaches.Participants included five full-time North American professional women coaches, with an average of 14.2 years of coaching experience in three different team sports (both men's and women's).Data were acquired through individual semi-structured interviews with each participant.During the interview, participants were asked to construct a visual representation of their developmental network using a relational map, followed by a series of questions relating to their map guided by the primary researcher.All data was analyzed following reflexive thematic analysis guidelines (Braun et al., 2016(Braun et al., , 2023)).The findings indicated that coaches acquired a core network of developmental relationships (e.g., coaches, family, management, mentors) that collectively contributed to their career growth and development as a coach.Coaches described their networks as a critical part of their professional development, providing them with a foundation of career (e.g., coaching knowledge and development, opportunities, modeling) and psychosocial support (e.g., confidence, autonomy, trust).More specifically, coaches highlighted the value in the diversity of their networks, describing the distinct contribution each member made in their overall development.Taken together, the women coaches' networks helped to alleviate many of the challenges they faced in the industry and guided them in their path to becoming a professional coach.Results from this study demonstrate how women were able to attain top leadership positions in sport, illustrating the potential for women coaches to serve as visible and influential role models who can inspire and pave the way for other women in the industry.Importantly, these findings enhance our understanding of the career experiences and development of women coaches through the developmental network perspective, providing a unique theoretical approach to coach learning and progression. To my supervisor, Dr. Gordon Bloom.
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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 | 0.003 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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".