Am I becoming better? A life-long and life-wide analysis of sport coaches’ ecological realities and (mal)adaptation in the workplace

Sport coaches’ occupational adaptation is a continuous learning process (re)shaped through interactions with their biography and context. Although existing studies have established solid grounds for coaches’ workplace learning beyond the dualistic view of it as either cognitive acquisition or social participation, (a) the nested structures of coaching workplace ecology and (b) agents’ maladaptive experiences remain under-explored. Since comprehending these aspects could provide a more holistic picture of dialectical agency–structure interactions around workplace learning, this study delves into coaches’ (mal)adaptation as a process of becoming—where individuals’ biographies are (re)constructed in response to the multi-layered ecology of their workplaces. Using Bronfenbrenner’s bio-ecological theory, we addressed two research questions: (a) What on-the-job realities do coaches encounter in the multi-layered ecology of their workplace? and (b) How do coaches adapt to each ecosystem? Data were collected through a method-bricolage of Back and Bourque’s draw-a-graph and Seidman’s series of in-depth interviews with three head coaches in Korean workplaces aimed at long-term-athlete development. Our abductive analysis revealed two key findings. First, the workplaces’ micro-, meso-, exo-, and macro-systems demand participants to become versatile in handling manifold issues. Yet, the conjunction of individuals’ early-specialisation-path-tailored biographies (chrono-system) and institutions’ organisational flaws yielded diverse on-the-job difficulties across ecosystems. Second, coaches could learn from some difficulties by contextually transforming their biographies, but most remained unmanageable (dysfunction), which stagnated their development-in-context. The findings imply the need for institutions’ regular assessments/adjustments of working ecosystems and problem-based support to enrich coaches’ biographies, enabling them to better cope with multi-faceted environmental challenges.