ABSTRACT
How coaches typically learn to coach—coaching's curriculum—has been shown to be a highly technocratic and mechanistic (read scientific) process. While such an orientation can be productive, at the same time it can lead to a culture of understanding and practice where athletes are viewed in instrumental ways. As a result, coaching can easily become a docile-inducing act. For us this is hugely problematic given that excellence in sport demands that athletes are highly engaged and aware not apathetic and disengaged…not docile. Accordingly, in our work as Foucauldian-informed coach developers it has been our aim to help coaches learn how to problematize what they normally think, say and do in an effort to learn how to coach in a less disciplinary or docile-making way. And in this chapter, we discuss how we have used Foucault's specific analysis of power as our overarching theoretical/conceptual premise to transform—to change—coaching from a technocratic and mechanistic process into a highly complex, contextual, social and political process. For as we will argue, it is only with a sophisticated, theory-driven understanding of power that coaches will be able to practice more effectively and ethically, and truly ‘make a difference’ both to sport and to society through the work they do with their athletes.
