ABSTRACT
The above exchange happened between my older brother and me (Brian) a few years ago. Pause for a moment to think about what is produced from research … knowledge and suggestions for practice, or in the case of this book sport coaching. “Doing” research to create knowledge is pretty cool because it opens up, for us as individuals, a new understanding of ourselves, others, our social world and our behaviors in it. Learning how knowledge is created should help you, the reader, to think or theorize a tentative answer to the question “Why is this the way things are?” and to challenge taken-for-granted norms and practices. Problems such as these are often the rationale for doing research. We can then create research about the social, political, economic, cultural and psychological forces that shape individuals. As coach education researchers, we create research for effective and ethical ends – to help coaches become more knowledgeable and to make sport a positive experience for coaches and athletes. In preparing students and coaches to become connoisseurs of research, and perhaps researchers themselves, we believe they should understand how to make informed, theoretically grounded arguments.
