Exploring the transformational learning potential of the ‘outside field’ coach mentor: An ethnographic study with four duoethnographies

Abstract

Despite the awareness that sports coaches actively seek advice and support from those they consider to be mentors (including, those mentors who may be positioned as non-sport, or outside the field of sport), there remains a paucity of empirical research, about ‘what happens’ or ‘what goes on’ in the mentoring space, particularly from a learning impact perspective. Indeed, ‘what is spoken about’, ‘what is said and by whom’ and ‘what may be learnt’ by mentoring participants in the mentoring space remains largely unknown. There may be reasons for this, including the fact that coach mentoring episodes are figuratively hidden, often private affairs. By gaining privileged mentor access to three high-performance Futsal coaches’ this study aims to explore the role of an outside field coach mentor, during a period of time when each Futsal coach is preparing national Futsal teams for international competition. Data about what happens in the coach mentoring space is collected through a form of collaborative reflexive dialogue (between the coach mentor and each Futsal coach), leading to the formation of four separate duoethnographies. In order to analyse the dialogue contained in each duoethnography (DE), the work of Jack Mezirow’s Transformation Learning (TL) theory is adopted as a lens to further explore the transformative learning potential of the coach mentor. Participation in this study was entirely voluntary, based on the principle of the informed consent from three high-performance Futsal coaches. Through the writing and analysis of each DE, findings reveal the potential an outside field coach mentor may have in supporting the transformational learning of each Futsal coach and indeed his own. In this way, this current study contributes both to a wider understanding of the role of a coach mentor in the context of high-performance sports coaching and equally the value of DE as an approach for critical reflexive dialogue in sports coach mentoring.