The Social Work Sport Coach: New Possibilities for a Contemporary Coaching Pedagogy

Coaching Pedagogy

Drawing from constructivist learning theories, pedagogy is often defined as the intersection of teaching, learners, and knowledge (Kirk & Haerens, 2014) and holds the purpose of promoting holistic development (Barry, 2017). As such, the conceptualization and application of pedagogy is vast and considers the context, type of learner, and nature of learning goals. Pedagogy and pedagogical principles guide coaching practice by prescribing both what athletes should learn and how coaches should teach (Armour, 2011). To foster a socially-just youth sport space, this dual focus of learning and teaching must be used to leverage the relationship between youth and coaches, as well as to reimagine the roles and responsibilities of coaches and athletes.

Within youth sport literature, Newman, Lee, (2024) advocated for the utilization of experiential learning theory and, specifically, adventure pedagogy to understand both the process of learning and the coach's role within that dynamic process. To this end, Newman, Black, et al., (2023), Newman, Jefka, et al. (2023) forwarded the notion of facilitated experiential learning and facilitative coaching practices, which, respectively, describe the dynamic exchanges between the facilitator and learner and the intentional interactions of the facilitator (e.g., coach) to facilitate the learning and development of the learner (e.g., athlete). Facilitative coaching practices are often referred to as being either indirect or direct (Gould & Carson, 2008) or implicit and explicit (Bean et al., 2018). A recent scoping review (i.e., Newman et al., 2021) organized implicit strategies to include developing a youth-centric coaching philosophy, using a strengths-based approach, establishing a prosocial team culture, fostering positive relationships, and supporting youth autonomy; whereas, explicit practices are recognized as discussing and teaching life skills, creating opportunities to practice life skills in sport, supplying direct feedback related to using life skills, debriefing sport experiences to enhance life skill transfer, and providing opportunities to transfer outside of sport.

However, even given such recent advancements in coaching pedagogy, research clearly and consistently illustrates that coaches still resort to coach-centric pedagogies as ways to impose control on athletes (Denison et al., 2015). Therefore, reflecting upon knowledge from other disciplines and professions, particularly those of which that are grounded in serving the health and wellbeing of everyone throughout society may open doors to reimagine youth sport coaching. Ultimately, youth-centric coaching is a needed approach for youth to experience and develop in and through sport in a socially-just manner.

Sport Social Work and the Eductrainer

As established by the NASW (2021), the mission of the profession is to “enhance human wellbeing and help meet the basic human needs of all people, with particular attention to the needs and empowerment of people who are vulnerable, oppressed, and living in poverty” (para. 3) and holds a dual focus of supporting individual wellbeing and the wellbeing of society. Accredited social work education focuses on generalist practice skills (e.g., client assessment, case management, and progress monitoring) at the bachelor's level and advanced concentrations and/or specializations (e.g., clinical interventions, community organizing, policy-level advocacy) at the master's level (Council on Social Work Education [CSWE], 2025). Dating back to the Hull House (see Reynolds, 2017), sport social work is recognized as an emerging specialization (Moore & Gummelt, 2018). In fact, Newman et al. (2022) forwarded that sport social work—in its current state of development as a specialization—encompasses three distinct areas of practice: (a) social workers who use sport as a social intervention to promote healthy development (e.g., afterschool and community-based programs; Anderson-Butcher, 2019); (b) social workers who work within sport systems/settings to provide behavioral and mental health services (e.g., licensed mental health professionals; Beasley et al., 2021); and (c) social workers who embody a dual role within the context of sport (e.g., social work sport coaches; Tarr et al., 2023).

Research has provided support for the effectiveness of sport social work, particularly when used as a social intervention and when providing health services. For instance, Anderson-Butcher and colleagues (1999, 2010, 2019) examined the impact of social workers implementing school recess interventions, afterschool physical activity, and community-based sport programs and found them to be effective at enhancing youth social skills, school connectedness, and physical health, respectively. Additionally, Hanna (1993), Dean and Rownan (2014), and Beasley et al. (2021) each explored how licensed clinical social workers are uniquely equipped to provide behavioral and mental health services within competitive and elite sport settings. However, even with the emergence of sport social work, research has clearly indicated that there is a lack of educational learning opportunities (Magier et al., 2023), a particular area of importance for sport social workers interested in serving in such a dual capacity, thereby needing to embody multiple professional identities (i.e., social worker, sport coach).

Although this area of sport social work practice and research is in its infancy, Moreau et al. (2018) and Parlavecchio et al. (2021) proposed a similar concept of an eductrainer within the DesÉquilibres Program. The program seeks to empower youth (recognized as being socially vulnerable) through sport-based activities and social engagement experiences. Within this social intervention program, the role of the eductrainer involves the integration of knowledge and skills necessary for both educators (e.g., social worker, psychoeducator) and coaches (i.e., trainers). Like a youth sport coach, the eductrainer must be able to create, plan, and implement challenging sport activities; whereas, like an educator, the eductrainer must foster an environment that supports youth as they confront psychosocial challenges designed to promote learning and growth. Ultimately, as a pedagogical approach, the eductrainer uses sport as an intentional metaphor for daily life and seeks to facilitate the transfer of learning beyond the playing field.

Purpose of the Current Study

There have been calls for youth sport and youth sport coaching to be reimagined in a way that centers the lived realities and amplifies the voices of youth (e.g., Camiré et al., 2022, 2023). Similarly, youth sport scholars (e.g., Anderson-Butcher et al., 2024; Bates et al., 2024; Newman, Santos, Collins, et al., 2024) have advocated for the inclusion of life skills development and transfer, social justice promotion, and mental health literacy to be included in contemporary coach education. Researchers have also stressed the importance of adopting youth-centric, strengths-based coaching pedagogy and the value of embracing a holistic, biopsychosocial and person-in-environment perspective to youth development (Holt, 2025; Vella et al., 2025). In fact, Camiré (2022) proposed the need for youth sport coaches to embrace transformative coaching, which emphasizes that the skills and lessons learned from sport must be linked to social change, rather than normative coaching that focuses on individual knowledge and skills.

Research showcasing transformative coaching has been promising. For example, through further analysis of the US National Coach Survey, Anderson-Butcher et al. (2024) found that coaches with prior training in developing sport skills and tactics, life skills development, and mental health had higher sense of satisfaction and success as a coach. Bishop et al. (2023), through a national Canadian coach survey, also found that coaches who had a greater awareness of their white privilege in society—particularly women coaches—also had more favorable attitudes toward social justice and emphasized the importance of climate change issues, greater awareness of prejudicial attitudes against the LGBT community, and had a higher propensity to engage in antiracist behaviors. Such awareness of one's white privilege is particularly important within youth sport coaching as the vast majority of coaches in North America identity are white, cisgender, heteronormative, older men (see Bates et al., 2024; Bishop et al., 2023; Newman et al., 2021). Taken together, when youth sport coaches participate in coach education and training designed to support the holistic development of athletes, both coach and athlete(s) benefit.

The reality remains, however, that many coaches may not be adequately prepared to address the variety of complex considerations that arise when working with youth athletes (Bates et al., 2024; Bishop et al., 2023; Newman et al., 2021). The strengths-based social work profession—which strives to promote social justice and supports both individual and societal wellbeing—may be uniquely positioned to help reimagine youth development, youth sport, and youth sport coaching. Moreover, sport social workers and eductrainers—because of their dual professional roles within sport—may be able to provide unique and novel insights that can be used to reimagine a contemporary youth sport coaching pedagogy. The current study, therefore, explores the values, approaches, and skills used by social work sport coaches who embody a dual role within competitive youth sport.

Paradigmatic Positioning and Positionality

The research process of the current study is described as a dynamic intersection of a relative-constructivist onto-epistemology (Guba & Lincoln, 1994). From a relativist paradigm, the study acknowledges that social reality is dependent upon the interaction of variable contexts (e.g., spacetime, circumstance, relationship, culture) and is, thus, diverse in nature. Social constructivism, similarly, recognizes that “realities are apprehendable in the form of multiple, intangible mental constructions, socially- and experientially-based, local and specific in nature, and are dependent for their form and content on the individual personals or groups holding the constructions” (Guba & Lincoln, 1994, p. 110). Ultimately, through the interpretive process of research, the current study sought to provide a holistic, yet in-depth understanding of a shared worldview of social work sport coaches.

Given the onto-epistemology worldview, the researcher is recognized as an integral—and overtly influential—component of the research process (Brodsky, 2008). Together, the research team was comprised of coach-scholars representative of four distinct academic disciplines (i.e., social work, psychoeducation, kinesiology, physical education) and four unique geopolitical locations of origin (i.e., United States, Canada, Portugal, Spain). The research team also embodied a range of experiences and backgrounds, which provided unique lenses to position youth sport coaching and sport social work.

Procedures

All study procedures received ethics approval from a university institutional review board prior to the beginning of the study. To take part in the study, social work sport coach participants had to be at least 18 years of age, have earned a bachelor's or master's level social work degree (or the equivalent) from an accredited program, and served as a competitive (i.e., performance-based club, high school, college) youth sport (i.e., ages 14–24 years old) coach in an official capacity within the last 2 years. Participants were recruited via email using the Alliance of Social Workers in Sport (ASWIS) email listserv, which included approximately 150 members at the time of the study. The ASWIS is a member-operated 501(c)(3) organization that serves as the primary professional organization for sport social work.

Participants

A total of 10 social work sport coaches participated in the current study, six of whom self-identified as white, two as Asian, and one as Black (one participant elected not to disclose this information). Participants were, on average, 35.3 years of age, with six self-identifying as a woman and four as a man. All participants had earned at least a Master of Social Work degree, with six participants having earned their clinical licensure. On average, participants had 8.8 years of social work experience and 11.4 years of coaching experience. Each of the 10 participants coached a different sport (e.g., baseball, gymnastics, soccer), and half of participants served as the head coach for their respective team at the time of the study. Finally, six participants served as a high school coach and four coached co-ed teams (e.g., track and field, swimming).

Interview Guide

A semi-structured interview series was facilitated by the same member of the research team, with each participant engaging in two interviews approximately 1 week apart. The time between interviews was provided as an opportunity for participants to reflect upon their first interview, which may help to elicit deeper reflections during the follow-up interview (Robinson et al., 2023). The interview guides were constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed by drawing from theoretical advances in youth sport (e.g., Camiré et al., 2023; Kochanek & Erickson, 2020), recent sport social work scholarship (e.g., Anderson-Butcher, 2019; Beasley et al., 2021), as well as the research team's diversity of lived experiences. The first interview was designed to discuss social work values, approaches, and skills that are transferable to youth sport coaching. The second interview explored how social work knowledge influenced their conceptualization of youth sport and their role as a coach. The first interview was an average of 36 min in length and included questions such as, “How has being a social workers influenced your work as a sport coach?” The second interview lasted approximately 44 min and included questions such as, “How has being a social worker influenced your coaching philosophy?”

Data Analysis

Each interview was transcribed verbatim by a professional service, and the resultant transcripts were managed in NVivo 12 software. The researcher leading the analytical process (and conducted the interviews) facilitated a six-step reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2021). Throughout the analysis, a senior member of the research team provided reflective methodological guidance and peer debriefing throughout the research process. Although the six steps of the analytical process are described in a linear and distinctive fashion, the reflexive research process among the research team did not occur in a fixed and rigid manner.

First, these two researchers familiarized themselves with the data over several weeks by reading, reviewing, and verifying the accuracy of all transcripts while listening to the audio recordings. Second, the initial codes from the data were inductively constructed through a line-by-line, open-source approach across all interviews (i.e., individuals’ interviews and the interview series). These initial codes, which were reviewed by, and with, additional members of the research team, were attached to segments of text and were representative of the initial meaning making process. Third, initial codes then were inductively organized into broad categories and potential themes. The researcher team engaged in conversations about the initial coding schema, upon which codes were sorted and collated into broad categories and themes of shared meaning. Fourth, categories and themes were reviewed, challenged, and revised through an iterative and dynamic process, which helped to produce external heterogeneity (i.e., coding differences between themes) and internal homogeneity (i.e., similarity of codes within a theme).

Fifth, to capture the essence of the findings, themes were further refined, which resulted in the assignment of unique names and distinct descriptions for each. Sixth, to further underscore the nature of each theme, representative and vivid quotes from participants were identified. To further ensure think descriptions were constructed, the findings were reviewed and finalized through a collaborative process among the research team.

Based on a relativist approach (Sparkes & Smith, 2009), several methods were used as an attempt to enhance the quality of the findings. For example, bracketing interviews were used among the research team to, critically and reflexively, consider the influence of researcher positionality throughout the research process and the effect of unique lived experiences when interpreting the data (Tufford & Newman, 2012). Further, in addition to consistent mentorship throughout the research process, the co-authors served as critical friends at each stage of the analytical process (Smith & McGannon, 2018). Fieldnotes were also kept during the data collection process, and an audit trail was maintained throughout the analytical process, particularly related to decision-making processes.

Social Work Values

Social Work Approaches

Social Work Skills

Limitations of the Study

Implications notwithstanding, several paradigmatic realities and limitations are recognized. For instance, the study sample (i.e., social work sport coaches) represents an extremely unique position and highly specialized role within youth sport and the broader social work profession. Indeed, such novel perspectives provide valuable insights that may otherwise be overlooked. Yet, future research should also seek to learn from other unique perspectives (e.g., licensed clinical social workers with Certified Mental Performance Consultant credentials) and within other sport systems (e.g., community programs, collegiate athletics). Additionally, there are limitations to be considered related to the line of inquiry and prompts used during the semi-structured interview series. Although knowledge regarding social work values, approaches, and skills was gleaned, future research should more pointedly investigate contemporary youth sport issues (e.g., mental health literacy, social justice promotion) and perspectives related to the contemporary sociopolitical climate. The exploration of such topics, particularly from sport social workers, may yield novel understandings about the diverse needs of youth athletes within the context of their environment and broader lived realities.