ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some of the ways of knowing about coaching practice; how people might examine what is known; what knowledge might assist in thinking about how coaching researchers engage in the research process. It shows how different underpinning philosophical beliefs impact on views about coaching and the investigation of coaching practice. For researchers who position their work in the critical paradigm their issues of concern are those related to social justice and equity. This work is avowedly political in the sense that it sets out to make a difference to people's lives by exposing and challenging inequities and power relations. The chapter includes topics on gender, sexuality, power, ability, social class, and/or ethnicity. Critical-oriented research most often, but certainly not exclusively, uses qualitative data. There are many theoretical tools used in critical-oriented research including: critical theory, post-structural theory, feminist theory, postcolonial theory, critical race theory, and critical ethnography.
