ABSTRACT
In considering the conceptual framework, we are minded that any given coaching context can be made up of, for example, the club, the coaches, the athletes, the sport’s governing body and the league, all of whom have an influence on the coaching process and coaching practice. The coaching process will, then, be a social process involving the interactions, interdependence and interests of these stakeholders. Indeed, conceptualised in this way the coaching process and coaches’ practice will refract wider social forces from a range of interested parties, in addition to the obvious coach and athlete, including producers of knowledge, the wider economy and society. Thus, a number of issues fall out of such a perspective, which this chapter will address:
■ coaching as a ‘social process’; ■ coaching’s relationship in constructing and being constructed by its context and
wider social forces; ■ the value of sociology theory to conceptualising and analysing coaching; and ■ how different theoretical lenses from sociology provide layers that develop more
nuanced understanding and can inform conceptual development.
