Examining and Extending Research in Coach Development

TLDR

Existing research on coaching expertise relies on behavioral assessment or knowledge‑base evaluation, yet cognitive psychology shows experts possess organized declarative and procedural knowledge that enables superior problem solving. The study argues that current assessment methods are inadequate and seeks to identify what knowledge should be taught, how best to teach it, and how to assess learning to improve coach development. Applying these cognitive insights can guide future research to answer the key questions about knowledge content, teaching methods, and assessment for coach development.

Abstract

Research to date provides two approaches to assessing coaching expertise. The first is behavioral assessment and the second is to assess coaches' knowledge base. However, we contend that both approaches are flawed due to their inability to adequately improve coach development by failing to answer three fundamental questions: What knowledge should be taught to novice coaches? What is the optimal method for teaching this knowledge? And how should we assess to encourage learning? Cognitive psychology has demonstrated that someone with expert cognitive skill is characterized as having expert declarative and procedural knowledge. Experts are further characterized by having greater organization of this knowledge. Thus the expert is able to apply expert knowledge in a more expert manner to solve complex problems in a specific domain. Properly exploiting ideas such as these can help direct future research to provide answers to the questions posed above.