The Study
This study by Leapetswe Malete, who at the time was a doctoral candidate in kinesiology, and Deborah Feltz, chairperson of the Department of Kinesiology at MSU, focuses on the impact of coaching education on coaches' self efficacy -- or the extent to which they believe they have the capacity to affect the learning and performance of their athletes. Forty-six Michigan high school coaches and 14 coaching preparation students participated in the study. Thirty-six took part in a coaching education program and 24 made up the control group of coaches and students who had not attended any formal coaching education.

The Findings
The 36 coaches and students completed the Program for Athletic Coaches Education (PACE). As part of the study, Malete and Feltz asked participants to respond to pretest and posttest questionnaires that examined how confident they were in influencing the learning and performance of their athletes in four dimensions of coaching: character building, motivation, strategy, and technique. What Malete and Feltz found was that there was a significant relationship between exposure to the PACE program and an increase in perceived coaching efficacy. Even with a short-term program like PACE (12 hours of instruction), coaches still showed significant improvements in their coaching efficacy. The researchers also discovered, however, that attending PACE did not improve coaching efficacy equally effectively across the four dimensions. Game strategy and technique efficacy showed the strongest effects while character building and motivation lagged behind. Malete and Feltz believe the reason for this might be because of the program's content and duration. "Although differences occurred between PACE and control coaches, a longer program could have greater effects," the researchers wrote. Malete and Feltz conclude that coaching education programs using "approaches that help increase one's confidence in coaching (e.g., mastery experiences, challenging and reachable goals, observational learning) should produce higher confident coaches. Active learning components, where coaches have the opportunity to try out new behaviors in simulated environments, could be an excellent way to improve a coach's confidence."

What It Means To You
It is sometimes easy to overlook the benefits of coaching education but, as this study shows, opportunities for learning can lead to increased confidence in coaches to improve the performance of their athletes. In this study, the trained coaches showed the most self-efficacy gains in the realms of games strategy, or their abilities to coach during competition, and technique, or the belief they have in their instructional/diagnostic skills. Do coaches in your district take advantage of coaching education programs? Do those programs emphasize active learning, mastering skills, etc.?

For More Information
Malete, L. & Feltz, D. (2000). The effects of a coaching education program on coaching efficacy. The Sport Psychologist, 14(3).