Mentoring as a Formalized Learning Strategy with Community Sports Volunteers

Abstract

The aim of our study was to examine formalized mentoring as a learning strategy for volunteer sports coaches and to consider implications for other volunteer groups in the community. Despite the increasingly popular use of mentoring as a learning and support strategy across professional domains, and the sheer scale of volunteer sports coach activity in many communities, there has been comparatively little research on structured mentoring programmes in such settings. Data are reported from a 12-month longitudinal study of 6 mentors and 18 volunteer coaches who were organized into formal mentor partnerships in one region of the United Kingdom. Findings from our study revealed that mentoring was the result of continuous interaction between coach and context, and that context must be understood in both spatial and temporal terms. The implications for mentoring in other community based volunteer groups are explored.