ABSTRACT
What learning is valued in coaching? While crucial, the answer is contested and laden with covert and overt agendas. In attempting to explore this vexing issue further, we make use of the notion of becoming. Rather than having a specific endpoint, becoming allows us to view a coach's learning journey as an iterative, idiosyncratic, and ever-changing phenomenon. This is useful as we seek to explore the opportunities and challenges, as well as some of the personal, organisational, and cultural factors that impact the becoming of coaches. We do this through a consideration of three major ways in which people have typically sought to become coaches – athletic experience, coach certification, and tertiary study. Of course, these three ways are not the only ways in which coaches may engage in an ongoing process of becoming. Nor are they necessarily the most impactful. They are, however, extremely prominent, often contentious regarding their perceived value, and are likely to remain features of the coach development landscape in the foreseeable future. We advocate for a balanced assessment of what different learning situations may contribute to coaches’ becoming.
