Caring coaching: developing social competence of primary school children through a school cricket program

After a critical incident (Hanton, Cropley, Neil, Mellalieu & Miles 2007) during a school cricket coaching session, the issue of a coaches’ philosophy of coaching emerged. The realisation that as a coach I had allowed myself to become a purveyor of information without an understanding of the background of those being coached led to the development of a caring coaching philosophy. An examination of the literature highlights the long held belief that involvement in sport inherently develops positive behaviours, yet there is little evidence to support this belief. However, where the behaviours to be developed are explicitly targeted there is evidence to support their development (Hellison 2003, Wright and Burton 2008, Galvan 2010, Riley 2012. Based upon this, the approach to develop social and emotional skills and behaviours in children in areas of high indices of multiple deprivation (IMD) was developed. Using a behaviour matrix based upon the work of Cothram and Kulinna (2007), the school’s behaviour policy and the UK Government behaviour and discipline policy (www.education.gov.uk), Year 3 pupils were exposed to a school based cricket coaching program. Time was taken prior to the coaching program to get to know the participants through the medium of photoelicitation, individual and group interviews and focus groups. A 12-week coaching program was then commenced with the first 4 weeks being a traditional schools approach then, using the spirit of cricket as a vehicle an 8-stage caring coaching approach was adopted. During the 12 week coaching programme the class teacher made extensive notes about the observed behaviour of the children and the coach kept a reflective diary as part of an autoethnography. Using Straussian Grounded Theory as a basis of analysis four key themes emerged as the principles of caring coaching – awareness of the perceptions of the participants, understanding the lives as lived by the participants, the development of positive relationships and the development of social competence. The latter was through a process of 6 E’s – exposure, explanation, examples, engagement, expansion and enhancement. A one-year follow up with the children identified that they were still aware of the explicit concepts developed, and could give examples from their own lives both in school and out of school, demonstrating transference. The development of caring coaching has the potential to revolutionise the delivery of sports coaching within a school setting, offering more than simple technical and tactical instruction, developing the child as a whole by developing social competence.