ABSTRACT
This chapter is a response to the calls for there to be more focused empirical sports coaching research (Taylor & Garratt, 2010; North, 2013). Sports coaching research provides the impetus for the development of the profession, thus, it is important that the research undertaken addresses the methodological concerns that have restricted the fi eld in the last couple of decades (see Gilbert & Trudel, 2004; Bush et al., 2013). These concerns relate to a methodological fundamentalism that privileges quantitative ways of knowing and a predominance of college/university team sports as the medium for focus. This chapter addresses both of these concerns, locating the work within a qualitative methodological orientation and foregrounding [high performance, disability] swimming as the empirical context. Additionally, despite the increase in sporting events and opportunities for athletes with a disability, there is a paucity of empirical research on coaches of athletes with a disability (Cregan et al., 2007). According to North (2013), layer on layer of theoretical and conceptual developments have been based on limited evidence and what we are witnessing is the emergence of a pervasive and ominous theoretical base for the fi eld of [disability] sports coaching as the empirical evidence strains underneath. Emphasising this pervasive and ominous nature of the theoretical base of [disability] sports coaching is that only a minority of the in excess of the 1000 published sports coaching papers are grounded in empirical evidence, of which some are cited ad mortem (North, 2013). It is also worth emphasising here that the empirical papers on coaching athletes with a disability can be counted on one hand (for example Bush & Silk, 2012; Tawse et al., 2012; Cregan et al., 2007). In addition to being empirically driven and addressing the scarcity of enquiry into coaching athletes with a disability, this chapter also speaks to the call from Rynne et al. (2010) of the need for the coaching ‘workplace’ to be examined, as to date it has been a site that has been largely overlooked.
