The impact of organized youth sport on youth development depends on various conditions in the pedagogical climate, such as how sport is delivered by youth sport coaches. While this is broadly acknowledged and provides a basis to improve youth sport and its developmental outcomes, little is known about the pedagogical perspectives of youth coaches on their practice. This study uses semi-structured interviews with 32 youth sport coaches in diverse youth sport contexts in the Netherlands. Reflexive data analysis is employed to garner insights into coaches’ role perceptions, coaching goals, and underlying values. The findings show that while youth coaches focus on sport-centered activities, many foreground non-sport dimensions such as life mentoring and working towards social inclusion as critical elements of their work, reflected in five pedagogically-oriented goals: discipline, autonomy, resilience, social abilities, and aspirations. Underlying these goals are pedagogical values such as building and maintaining caring relationships with participants. These goals and values echo scientific literature on pedagogical sport climate conditions (e.g. positive youth development), and challenge notions of youth sport as a performance-oriented and uncaring setting. The results contribute to existing knowledge about youth coaches’ pedagogical orientations, and inform the development of strategies to stimulate positive sport practices and developmental outcomes for participants.
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Just what and how eight experienced teachers in four coaching dyads learned during a 1-year reciprocal peer coaching trajectory was examined in the present study. The learning processes were mapped by providing a detailed description of reported learning activities, reported learning outcomes, and the relations between these two. The sequences of learning activities associated with a particular type of learning outcome were next selected, coded, and analyzed using a variety of quantitative methods. The different activity sequences undertaken by the teachers during a reciprocal peer coaching trajectory were found to trigger different aspects of their professional development.
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Background: Around 13% of the world’s population suffers from obesity. More than 40% of people with obesity display emotional eating behaviour (eating in response to negative emotions or distress). It is an alternate to moreeffective coping strategies for negative emotions. Our study explored the opportunities for helping adults with emotional overeating using a virtual coach, aiming to identify preferences for tailored coaching strategies applicable in a personal virtual coach environment. Three different coaching strategies were tested: a validating, a focus-on-change, and a dialectical one – the latter being a synthesis of the first two strategies. Methods: A qualitative study used vignettes reflecting the two most relevant situations for people with emotional eating: 1. experiencing negative emotions, with ensuing food cravings; and 2. after losing control to emotional eating, with ensuing feelings of low self-esteem. Applied design: 2 situations × 3 coaching strategies. Participants: 71 adult women (Mage 44.4/years, range 19–70, SD = 12.86) with high scores on the DEBQ-emotional eating scale (Memo 3.65, range 1.69–4.92, SD = .69) with mean BMI 30.1 (range 18–46, SD = 6.53). They were recruited via dieticians’ practices, were randomly assigned to the conditions and asked how they would face and react to thepresented coaching strategies. Data were transcribed and a thematic analysis was conducted. Results: Qualitative results showed that participants valued both the validating coaching strategy and the focus-onchange strategy, but indicated that a combination of validation and focus-on-change provides both mental supportand practical advice. Data showed that participants differed in their level of awareness of the role that emotions play in their overeating and the need for emotion-regulation skills. Conclusion: The design of the virtual coach should be based on dialectical coaching strategies as preferred by participants with emotional eating behaviour. It should be tailored to the different stages of awareness of their emotions and individual emotion-regulation skills.
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