Exploring the learning and mentoring experiences of paralympic coaches
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Participation in Paralympic sport has grown exponentially since the inaugural games in 1960. Despite this rapid increase in participation, the same growth and development of research has not occurred, especially relating to coaches in disability sport (Robbins & Houston, 2010). Moreover, advancing disability sport requires empirical research specific to the selection and training of coaches, the effectiveness of training programs, and coaches' backgrounds (DePauw & Gavron, 2005; Reid & Prupas, 1998). Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore Paralympic coaches' perceptions of their learning and educational experiences, and specifically to examine formal and informal learning and mentoring opportunities. Semi-structured, open-ended interviews were conducted with six male Paralympic head coaches who were identified by a panel of experts as being among the best in eastern Canada. Results revealed that Paralympic coaches followed unconventional careers paths which included several challenges to acquiring disability specific coaching knowledge and skills. These barriers led the participants to utilize an array of informal learning situations in order to overcome these barriers. Most notably, the participants actively sought out mentoring relationships to acquire disability sport coaching knowledge when they first entered the field. When they became expert coaches themselves, they created formalized mentoring opportunities for aspiring coaches. The results of the current study address the educational needs of Paralympic coaches and can inform educational governing bodies (i.e., National Coach Certification Program in Canada, Canadian Paralympic Committee) on how best to educate aspiring Paralympic coaches. One example is developing a formalized mentoring program as a structured source of information specific to Paralympic sport. It is hoped that the results of this research will continue to increase the growth of Paralympic sport and worldwide.
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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 | 0.004 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| 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".