Background: Coaching holistically and viewing coaching as interdisciplinary, where different knowledges meet, interconnect and dissect, has increasingly gained recognition. In an effort to engage more effectively with this agenda and to educate coaches to meet the integrated, fluid nature of their work, Jones and Turner advocated a problem-based…

Background: Despite criticism of its positive claims being largely unfounded and ill-clarified, the concept of mentoring has come into common use within sports coaching. Purpose: In an attempt to address these concerns, the purpose of this paper is to take better account of the researched evidence on mentoring in general before providing some…

Background: Recent research into coaching has been critical of much previous work, particularly in terms of the tendency to paint a rather unproblematic portrayal of the activity. The criticism has focussed on the erroneous supposition that method can be substituted for individuals, thus giving a synthetic account of a most messy of jobs.…

Background: Despite an increasing recognition of the existence of a process of coaching, and a resulting increase in research activity, there remains a lack of a clear conceptual base for sports coaching. This situation has left coaching without a clear set of concepts and principles that reflect coaching practice. Purpose: The aim of this paper…

Background: Coaching, as related to improving others' sporting experience and/or performance, at any level is unquestionably a complex business. General agreement exists that the dynamic and intricate nature of the work in teaching, guiding and managing others in this regard precludes any paint-by-number plans that practitioners can easily follow.…