Dr.Hab., Professor V.V. Fedorov¹
Dr.Hab., Professor L.V. Blinov^2
1Far Eastern State Academy of Physical Culture, Khabarovsk
²Pacific State University, Khabarovsk

Keywords: educational standard, coach, integration of competences.

Background. For the last few years the coaching personnel training problems in the national academic education system have been further complicated by the notable wane in the national competitive accomplishments on the global arenas, doping related scandals and disqualifications of some of the Russian national team members. The human resource building and supply problems are particularly acute in professional sports with their priorities much different from the amateur sport ones and other athletic training system specifics, with the professional competency building process being largely and directly dependent on the financial motivations dominated by athletes' individual financial interests; and with the head-hunting and sales system often perceived as humiliating for the traditional moral and ethical standards of human relationship, national images; with many other contradictory aspects of the modern elite sports. The sport commercialisation process has resulted in the outflow of many promising and gifted athletes and coaches to other countries on the one hand; and the increasing and very expensive contracting of foreign athletes and coaches to the national teams on the other hand. 

The professional sport ideology is designed to make maximal profits often as sacrifice of the years-long athletic training process logics and technologies. We believe, forced underage and teenage athletic trainings for premature top sport accomplishments may be detrimental for longevity of the athletes’ sport careers, their health and motivations for success. The contradictions of the professional and amateur sports systems, however, are still productive for the competitive progress in the sport coaching community i.e. for the professional and personality self-development processes; and for the sport coaches’ three-level training concept (including the bachelor's, master' degree and postgraduate program modules) of the existing academic physical education system.

Latest achievements in the modern sport theory and practices, accomplishments of the modern information technologies and accumulated national theoretical and practical resources have generally expanded the professional development field for a creative coaching specialist focused on success in the self-development process; albeit the inconsistencies of the valid professional and federal educational standards in this domain need to be corrected as soon as possible.

Objective of the study was to analyse and summarise the sport coaches’ professional competences integration process specifics in the academic education process versus the qualification requirements of the valid professional and federal sport education standards.

Study results and discussion

Sport coaches’ professional competences integration process is interpreted herein as the systemic combination of different competences to secure professional responsibilities of a sport coach being duly fulfilled as required by the relevant progress stage in the individual career. For a coach’s professional career to be consistent and successful, it should be driven by due self-identification, self-control and self-fulfilment in the vocational sport domain in the roles of athlete, researcher, educator, psychologist and coach in a variety of age- and skill-specific career domains. Each of these elements implies the relevant effects on the future sport coaches’ professional competences integration process specifics in the academic education process.

It should be mentioned that every stage of a coaching specialist professional progress may be characterised by its own logics, purposes, specific competences, special missions and ways to competitive success. Responsibilities of a children’s coach are much different from those of an adult picked team coach, and the differences may be classified into process tactics, controls, psychological, management aspects etc. Therefore, the sport coaches’ professional competences integration process design needs to be specific for the bachelor's, master's degree and postgraduate program stages with an eye to the staged career growths in the primary training groups, advanced education and training groups and sport excellence groups etc., as required by the relevant Federal Sport Training Standards (FSTS) [3].

The need for the coach’s competences to be integrated in the academic education process is dictated by the succession principles and logics of the education process stages that, when duly taken into account, make it possible to achieve new goals in the professional self-development process in the context of individual predispositions and priorities of the trainees in specific coaching service fields.

As demonstrated by the practical experience, many successful children’s coaches tend to have problems when they provide coaching services to skilled adult athletes and, vice versa, coaches of adult high-ranking teams often face problems when come back to the primary-level groups. Different competences, job responsibilities and personal qualities of coaches and athletes may be viewed as the key constituents of their competitive accomplishments in elite sports – conditional on the students being totally committed in their vocational sport identification (self-identification) component, duly motivated and determined in the learning process to acquire the necessary knowledge, skills and coaching experience so as to attain the individual self-development process goals.

As found by a few questionnaire surveys conducted for the last three years in application to senior bachelor's degree program students majoring in the academic Vocational Sport Theory and Practice and Professional Athletic Development disciplines (FSES 49.03.01), on average 65% of the subject students are still unclear about their further athletic and coaching careers; 72% are still in doubt on whether or not the future coaching career is respectful, well payable and potentially successful enough. In our opinion, these doubts may be due to the present shortage of highly-skilled and knowledgeable coaching specialists in the national academic sports and the lost succession in the national coaching expertise, particularly in martial arts. This situation is not unusual for many national physical culture universities, and it needs to be addressed by due actions to encourage successful coaching specialists to return in the academic sports system.

The study data and analyses showed that the academic educational, managerial and communicative competences building process in the bachelor's degree program still need to be prioritised for the coaching services to the primary and advanced junior athletic training and education groups. Bachelors majoring in martial arts, for instance, often combine their athletic careers with coaching services to adult (17-21 year-old) sport excellence groups that help them build up their competences in the training process methods and practices for this age group. We believe that the bachelor's degree programs are to be designed as required by the relevant Federal Sport Training Standards [3] to help build the necessary competences and skills under the Qualification Class 5 and 6 [1] regulating the coaching service qualifications for the underage and teenage sports, with an emphasis on the children to be duly motivated for sport career, competitive accomplishments and long-term training processes.

In the master's degree (49.04.01) and postgraduate (49.06.01) programs, the already formed professional competences of the Children’s and Youth Sport Schools (CYSS) and Children’s and Youth Olympic Reserve Sport (CYORSS) School coaches are supplemented with further competences and practical research and analytical experience of the coaching services to highly-skilled athletes. This academic training course for coaches is designed to train Qualification Class 7-8 coaches; and the course is commonly acknowledged to be more productive when the trainees have a high sport rank, practical coaching experience and coach-assisted careers in picked/ national teams, plus (desirably) high individual competitive accomplishments in top ranking events (the self-fulfilment component).

According to a questionnaire survey of the students majoring in the academic Elite Athletic Training in Vocational Sports discipline, 67% of masters having high sport ranks are still in need of basic physical education, research, analytical, theoretical and practical training and experience in their sport fields. Such deficiencies of the competences in the CYSS coaches may be offset only by modern theoretical knowledge and practical education task solving skills, plus high motivations for professional self-development; albeit it should be acknowledged that the commonly poor practical experience in this age-specific training field may be of hampering effect on further professional career.

This is one of the contradictions between the job responsibilities provided by the professional standard [1] and the Federal State Education Standards 49.04.01 and 49.06.01; and, hence, the highly-skilled coaching specialist academic education needs to be made more specific for a few categories including consulting coach, senior coach of a picked team reserve, senior coach of a women's/ men's picked team etc.

A special priority in this process stage should be given to the psychological support services to highly-skilled athletes aimed to facilitate interpersonal relations of the leading coaches with coaching analysts and researchers. A sport specialists’ questionnaire survey has found that the existing elite athletic training systems are still closed enough and overburdened by the too high personal responsibilities of chief coaches and their assistants. Practical experiences of top professional coaching specialists are still dominated by personal track records of trials and errors in the coaching careers, albeit these valuable track records are still understudied and underemployed by young coaching specialists despite the fact that such analyses could be indispensable for their educational backgrounds.

We suggest this training component being designed on a modular basis, with each module giving the means to assess a practical progress by the relevant purposefulness-, motivations-, behaviour- and accomplishments-rating sets of criteria applicable to the master's and postgraduate education stages.

A special emphasis at these education stages needs to be made on the managerial competences of the trainees, psychological climate and individualised training of highly-skilled athletes. Success of a professional coaching career and individual accomplishments are determined not only by a modern knowledgebase, modern technologies and due financial and technical opportunities, but also by the determined and continuous personality-building and professional self-development process, plus due individual motivations of the coaches, their enthusiasm and readiness to sacrifice for competitive success of their trainees.

Conclusions                                            

• The professional competences of a sport coach are to comply with the qualification requirements of the valid Professional Coach Standard and the relevant sport-discipline-specific FSHES so as the education processes in special education establishments were duly differentiated in terms of the education stage missions and activity-specific structures.
• The professional competences are duly integrated only when supported by the conscientious self-identification and self-fulfilment efforts of the trainees; their strong motivations for success in professional careers; and determined efforts to accumulate the values-driven, management and communicative experiences in the professional education process.
• Individual progress in the management, technological and psychological support domains of the long-term athletic training process is to be driven by the persistent sport coach’s personality and professional self-improvement process.
• The sport coach’s professional competences integration process in this context needs to be associated with the relevant values and semantics to ensure high success and recognition in the individual professional coaching career.

References

1. Professionalny standart «Trener» (prikaz Ministerstva truda i sotsialnoy zashchity RF ot 7.04.2014 g. #193n) [Professional standard "Coach" (Order of the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of the Russian Federation 7.04.2014 №193n)].
2. Federalnye gosudarstvennye obrazovatelnye standarty vysshego obrazovaniya po napravleniyu podgotovki 49.03.01 (uroven bakalavriata) i 49.04.01 (uroven magistratury) [Federal state educational standards for higher education in the field of study 49.03.01 (bachelor's level) and 49.04.01 (master's level)].
3. Federalnye standarty sportivnoy podgotovki po vidam sporta [Federal training standards for specific sports]. Available at: http/www.minsport.gov.ru/sport/podgotovka/82/5502/ (16.03.2015).
4. Fedorov V.V. Pedagogicheskoe obespechenie lichnostno-telesnogo samorazvitiya studentov kak faktor gumanizatsii vysshego obrazovaniya [Pedagogical support of personality-corporal self-development of students as a factor of humanization of higher education]. Khabarovsk: FESTU publ., 2003,164 p.

Corresponding author: dobrovolsky@list.ru

Abstract      

Subject to the study was the sport coach’s professional competences integration in the higher physical education system. The study primarily addressed some contradictions of the modern amateur and professional elite sports with a special emphasis on the job responsibilities as provided by the Professional Coach Standard and the relevant professional competences under the Federal State Higher Education Standards (FSHES) for the academic Physical Education discipline. The authors recommend the valid professional and educational standards to be duly harmonized with the sport coaches’ training programs with the relevant revisions made to the existing three-tier higher physical education system.

The authors came to conclusion that the professional competences of a sport coach need to be harmonized with the qualification requirements of the valid Professional Coach Standard and the relevant sport-discipline-specific FSHES so as the education processes in special education establishments are duly differentiated in terms of the education stage missions and activity-specific structures. The professional competences may be duly integrated only when supported by the conscientious self-identification and self-fulfilment efforts of the trainees; their high motivations for success in professional career; and determined efforts to accumulate the values-driven, management and communicative experiences in the professional education process. Individual progress in the management, technological and psychological support domains of the long-term athletic training process must be driven by the persistent sport coach’s personality building and professional self-improvement process.