Dr. Hab., Corresponding member of RAE A.N. Bleer
Ph.D., Professor A.G. Batalov
Ph.D., Associate Professor A.V. Skotnikova
Ph.D., Associate Professor I.P. Kosmina
Russian State University of Physical Culture, Sport, Youth and Tourism (GTSOLIFK), Moscow

Keywords: professional standard, coach’s responsibilities, educational standard, professional competence

Introduction

It was the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of the RF Order #193n dated April 07, 2014 that endorsed a regulatory document entitled “Professional Standard: Coach” that sets forth requirements to certified coaches with classification by stages of the sport training process and the relevant labour responsibilities of the coaches. It is expected that the regulatory document will be very soon put into effect with its provisions being implemented by the relevant coach employment institutions under control of the government executive agencies responsible for physical culture and sport.

Since the above employers are governed by regulatory professional standards in their staffing policies; HR management process; personnel training and assessment policies; job instructions drafting process; labour remuneration system design etc., ensuring good correspondence of the relevant professional and educational standards is now rated among the top priority problems of the system.

One of the key goals of our study was to consider and assess the structure and content of the valid educational standards being applied in the national higher education system as compared to the newly designed professional standards for the physical culture and sports sector [1, 2, 3, 4]. It is a matter of common recognition that valid qualification criteria of the national professional standards must be considered a basis for the relevant educational standards and professional competences determined by the latter and mastered in the education process by a professional coach.

The purpose of the study was to determine the degree of correspondence of the valid qualification criteria of the Professional Standard “Coach” and the actual coach education standards and practices of the higher professional education system of Russia.

Materials and methods. We have studied the content and qualification criteria of the new Professional Standard “Coach” and made our expert comparative analysis to assess compliance of the professional competences (PC) formed based on the educational standards applied to the Physical Culture and Sport disciplines to the labour responsibilities of a coach acting in every stage of the sport training process, including: sport mastery excellence stage; elite sport mastery stage; first provincial sport team training stage to defend colours of the RF area/ province in the specific sport sector/ discipline.

Subject to the comparative analysis were the three general and nine specific labour responsibilities as provided by the Professional Standard “Coach” for the Qualification Level 6 of the coach’s competence (Figure 1 and Table 1 hereunder) and the professional competences as provided by the Federal State Higher Education Standard for sector 49.03.01 “Physical Culture” (FSHES “PC” for the Academic Bachelor curriculum) [4] and the Draft Federal State Higher Education Standard for the sector 49.03.04 “Sport” (FSHES “Sport” for the Academic Bachelor and Application Bachelor curricula) (Table 2 hereunder) [2].

Results of the study

The regulatory document Professional Standard “Coach” subject to the study defines the subject professional activity as the “athletes’ training” process with its main objective being defined as the “athletes’ training activity and competitive activity management focused on the sport accomplishments”.

Specific aspects of the coaching activity are determined by the coach’s labour responsibilities under the Standard. Presented in the following diagram (Figure 1) is the functional map of the professional coaching activity as specified by the 16 highlighted General Labour Responsibilities (GLR), each of the latter being broken down into more specific Labour Functions (LF).

GLR is the specification of the coach’s qualification level with the relevant potential occupations, requirements to the educational background, practical experience and the work authorization conditions (Table 1). The regulatory document spells out the coaching labour specifications for the five Qualification Levels from Level 5 to Level 9 [1].

Figure 1. Functional map of professional coaching activity

Table 1. Professional Standard “Coach” structure and provisions

There were subject to the study at this stage the regulatory requirements of the Qualification Level 6 under the Professional Standard, in application to the Bachelor curriculum, with the following certified coaching activity stages: sport mastery excellence; elite sport mastery; and the first provincial team training stage to defend colours of the RF area/ province in the specific sport sector/ discipline.

As things now stand in the higher professional education system, a coach is being trained as provided by the Federal State Higher Education Standard for the sector 49.03.01 “Physical Culture” (FSHES “PC”), and is certified upon completion of the standard course as a “Bachelor of Physical Culture”, with the certificate giving a short list of professional competences of the coach acquired through the relevant core education curriculum for the relevant speciality within the “Sport Coaching in the Subject Sport Sector” category.

Striving to make the professional coaching activity structure and contents more specific and consistent,  the academic team of the Russian State University of Physical Culture, Sport, Youth and Tourism (RSUPCST under GTSOLIFK, Moscow) have put together the Draft Federal State Higher Education Standard for the sector 49.03.04 “Sport” (FSHES “Sport” for the Academic Bachelor and Application Bachelor curricula) that spells out a wide range of the coaching responsibilities and functions versus the relevant professional competences required for them. This Draft Higher Education Standard has been developed in the period of 2009-11 by the task team of highly qualified specialists including authorized representatives of the relevant Russian physical culture universities on the initiative of the Education-and-methodological Association for the Physical Culture and Sport Mastering; and later on the Draft was updated by the task team of RSUPCST experts to meet the needs of the Core Education Curriculum (CEC) for the Application Bachelor course (with its publication on http://www.sportedu.ru/).

Given in Table 2 hereunder is the comparative analysis of the two sets of competences as provided by the valid FSHES “PC” versus the Draft FSHES “Sport” (endorsed for implementation).

The comparative analysis of the two sets of competences in terms of their structures and contents (as provided by the valid FSHES “PC” versus the endorsed-for-implementation Draft FSHES “Sport” designed for the Academic Bachelor and the Academic Bachelor plus Application Bachelor curricula, respectively), with the relevant sets of general labour responsibilities of the coach and teacher-coach  classified by the relevant professional activity stages (as set forth by Professional Standard “Coach”) has yielded the following results (Tables 2 to 5 hereunder):

Table 2. Labour responsibilities of coach as provided by the Professional Standard “Coach” for Qualification Level 6, with the relevant competences as set forth by the educational standards for the Physical Culture and Sport Education Sector

As one may see from the above, the sets of competences as provided by the regulatory qualification criteria of the Professional Standard “Coach” in terms of the labour responsibilities of the coach at the sport mastery excellence stage are found to match only for the responsibility to “Recruit athletes to the sport excellence groups and teams in the relevant sport sectors and disciplines”.

At the elite sport mastery stage, no matching can be found considering the labour responsibilities of the coach, chief coach, teacher-coach and senior teacher-coach and the professional competences as provided by the standard set of coaching competences under the FSHES “PC”.

The comparative analysis of the professional competences of the FSHES “PC” versus the FSHES “Sport” shows that the labour responsibilities of the coach certified to train the first provincial teams defending the colours of the RF province/ area in the specific sport sector/ discipline are specified only by the FSHES “Sport”.

Therefore, it may be stated with confidence, based on the above study findings, that the structure and content of the Draft Federal State Higher Education Standard for the sector 49.03.04 “Sport” (FSHES “Sport” for the Academic Bachelor and Application Bachelor curricula (in terms of the standard professional competences) are designed in full compliance with the professional quality criteria that make the specialist eligible for the relevant labour responsibilities set forth by the Professional Standard “Coach”.

Conclusions.

The valid Federal State Higher Education Standard for the sector 49.03.01 “Physical Culture” (FSHES “PC”) in effect in the physical culture and sport sector of the national higher professional education system is found incompliant with the Qualification Level 6 requirements of the Professional Standard “Coach”.

To correct the disagreements in the standards, the Bachelor curriculum needs to be introduced in the relevant national higher professional education sector as provided by the FSHES 49.03.04 “Sport” since the relevant qualification criteria for the Bachelor degree are fully compliant with the regulatory requirements of Qualification Level 6 of the Professional Standard “Coach”. The FSHES “Sport” gives the means to develop a set of individual professional competences necessary for the graduate to be successful in his/her coaching career in every of the following stages:

 - Sport mastery excellence stage;

- Elite sport mastery stage; and

- First provincial team training stage to defend colours of the RF province/ area in the relevant sport sector/ discipline.

References

1. Proekt Federal'nogo gosudarstvennogo obrazovatel'nogo standarta vysshego obrazovaniya po napravleniyu podgotovki 034500.62 Sport (uroven' bakalavriata) (Draft Federal state educational standard of higher education in the field of training 034500.62 Sport (undergraduate level) [electronic resource]. – Available at: http://umo.sportedu.ru/ (as of March 23, 2015).
2. Professional'ny standart «Trener» (utv. prikazom Ministerstva truda i sotsial'noy zashchity RF. April 7 2014 g. № 193n) (Professional standard "Trainer" (app. by order of the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the Russian Federation, April 7, 2014 № 193n)) [electronic resource]. – Available at: http://www.garant.ru/products/ipo/prime/doc/70595556/ (as of March 23, 2015).
3. Federal'nye standarty sportivnoy podgotovki (Federal standards of sports training) [electronic resource]. – Available at: http://www.minsport.gov.ru/sport/podgotovka/82/5502/ (as of March 16, 2015).
4. Federal'ny gosudarstvenny obrazovatel'ny standart vysshego obrazovaniya po napravleniyu podgotovki 49.03.01 Fizicheskaya kul'tura (uroven' bakalavriata) (utv. prikazom Minobrnauki Rossii ot 07.08.2014 N 935, Zaregistrirovano v Minyuste Rossii 25.08.2014 № 33796) (Federal state educational standard of higher education in the field of training 49.03.01 Physical education (undergraduate level) (approved by order of the Russian Ministry of Education and Science,  07.08.2014 N 935, registered in the Ministry of Justice of Russia 25.08.2014 № 33796) [electronic resource]. – Available at: http://umu.sportedu.ru/sites/umu.sportedu.ru/files/49.03.01_fizicheskaya... (as of March 23, 2015).

Corresponding author: box9999@list.ru; askotnikova@mail.ru; alex-batalov@yandex.ru; irina_kosmina@mail.ru.