The role of the teacher/Coach

The role of the teacher/coach emerged early last century, when the emphasis changed from physical education for the purpose of student health to the idea of "athletics are educational" (Figone, 1994). Teacher/coaches replaced doctors in running the programs, and the effort was advanced by the popular varsity athletics programs. The problems of dual role teacher/coaches is compounded because teacher/coaches have not organized to bring about change, and schools and colleges do not see the roles as incompatible.

Of the 750,000 school coaches today, less than 8 percent have undergone specific coaching education (Coaching, 2005). There is little interest in formal coaching education for collegiate coaches. Even at the Olympic level, coaching education is mixed, and coaching is not considered a profession in that there are no specific criteria for becoming a coach. There is no specialized knowledge needed, or taught in any organized fashion. Coaches often learn by simply "doing it." There is the feeling that if you can teach, you can coach, and if you actually played the sport, even better. This leads to uneven levels of coaching, and also leaves many teacher/coaches unprepared for what they have to cope with in these positions, which causes unnecessary stress, leading to teacher/coach burnout.

One problem in American schools is that physical education teachers are often expected to be coaches, for which they are paid a meager stipend above t

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equips them to make these assessments. At the collegiate level, the same factors come into play to cause stress and burnout among coaches as are found as reasons for dismissal of high school coaches (Kelley, 1994, 48-58). Burnout among coaches has been proposed to be caused by interpersonal interaction within occupational responsibilities, such as coaching, while stress can be affected by many situational variables such as win/loss record, social support, etc. A study was carried out which assessed coaches on several personal inventories. The study compared 131 male and 118 female collegiate head baseball and softball coaches. This study confirmed the results of previous studies in finding gender differences for coaching issues, perceived stress and emotional exhaustion, and also found that females reported higher levels of stress, emotional depletion, frustration, fatigue and being at the end of their rope. This may be due to the fact that female coaches are expected to take on a more nurturing role towards their athletes than male coaches (Kelley, 1994). Coaching issues and burnout became more of a problem as the season progressed, but one factor to be considered here is that the baseball/softball season falls towards

Category: Psychology - T