Formalised mentoring as a professional learning strategy for volunteer sports coaches

The aim of this study was to examine formalised mentoring as a learning strategy for volunteer sports coaches. Despite the popular use of mentoring as a learning and support strategy across many professional domains, there has been comparatively little research on structured mentoring programmes in sports coaching, and there is a distinct lack of empirical evidence to support claims for its efficacy in supporting and enhancing coach professional learning Moreover, despite the significantly high numbers of voluntary coaches that support sports coaching in the UK, there is a lack of research that addresses the professional needs of this population data are reported from a 12 month longitudinal study of 7 coach mentors and 18 mentees that were organized into formal mentor partnerships in one region of the UK Methods included semi-structured interviews, questionnaires and focus groups with all participants Data analysis was undertaken usmg a constructivist revision of the Grounded Theory Method (Charmaz, 2006), recognizing that themes and categories are constructed from data and are mutually negotiated 'Core' conceptual categories were identified, depicting actions that embody mentoring processes....