ABSTRACT
In creating the role of The FA Youth Coach Educator (FAYCE) in 2011 The Football Association (The FA) were getting well ahead of the game when it came to coach education. The role was created to work in partnership with youth academies of professional football clubs to support the professional development and practice of youth team coaches. This support, delivered through formal FA courses and one-to-one coach support during coaching sessions, progressed coach education from a remote, decontextualised process to an embedded, meaningful one. In short, the role deliberately blurred the lines between crucial formal coach education and often preferred an informal approach to self-development (Abraham et al., 2010; Mallett et al., 2009; Nelson et al., 2006) of previous approaches. The success of the FAYCE role is dependent on an interaction of key factors; a high-quality formal and informal educational programme and a coach educator capable of delivering it. While The FA were comfortable that they had been able to employ the latter to deliver the former, there was a recognition of a need to be seen to be practising what they were preaching. That is, while the FAYCEs were delivering thought-through programmes of professional development for coaches, there is relatively little known about what makes a coach educator effective. Indeed, there is a paucity of research examining the work of coach developers with only relatively weak descriptions within papers examining the experience of coaches in coach education courses (e.g. Piggott, 2012; Reid & Harvey, 2014). Furthermore, there is also little known as to what the professional development needs of a coach educator (i.e. FAYCE) are. As such this formed the basis for the project reported here. The aims of this project therefore were:
to examine the role of a coach educator in the field;
to develop an informed view on the knowledge and skills required to perform the role of a coach educator;
to identify the detailed requirements and methods of professional development for those engaged as a coach educator (FAYCE).
