Dual career experiences of elite coaches enrolled at university level

Fusco, Andrea (author), Capranica, Laura (author), Palumbo, Federico (author), Mosci, Giuilio (author), Ciaccioni, Simone (author), Doupona, Mojca (author), Cortis, Cristina (author), Guidotti, Flavia (author)

The lifelong education of coaches is one of the priorities of the European Union. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate Italian elite coaches’ motivation to engage in a sport-related academic education, and its demands, barriers, support, and relocation issues in relation to their dual career (DC) path. Sixteen Italian elite coaches (e.g., certified fourth-level national team coaches, senior team coaches) enrolled in a specifically tailored Bachelor’s degree in sports sciences at the University of Rome Foro Italico (Italy) volunteered for this study. A qualitative approach integrating inductive and deductive reasoning, and thematic analysis was applied to participants’ responses to an open-ended item survey. Independently from relocation, student-coaches’ DC perceptions resulted in 15 lower-order themes further organized in 5 high-er-order themes (e.g., Benefit, Challenge, Expectation, Organization, and Support), each related to the contexts (e.g., Personal, Academic, Sport), the DC dimension (e.g., micro, meso, macro, and policy), and the DC push (e.g., facilitating) /pull (e.g., hindering) factors. The elite coaches’ insights emphasize the complexity of the coach lifelong education at university level, and provide valuable information for promoting European and National (e.g., Italian) DC recommendations for elite sportspersons through a cooperation between sport bodies and higher educational institutions.

• Language: English
• Keywords: sports, athletes, dual career, universities, students, elite coaches, human learning, Italian people, careers, schools, sports and exercise medicine, finance
• Work type: Article
• Typology: 1.01 - Original Scientific Article
• Organization: FŠ - Faculty of Sport
• Publication status: Published
• Publication version: Version of Record
• Year: 2023
• Number of pages: 19 str.
• Numbering: Vol. 18, no. 4, art. e0283009
• PID: 20.500.12556/RUL-152340
• UDC: 796.071.2:316.477
• ISSN on article: 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0283009
• COBISS.SI-ID: 152464131
• Publication date in RUL: 21.11.2023

Record is a part of a journal

• Title: PloS one
• Publisher: Public Library of Science
• ISSN: 1932-6203
• COBISS.SI-ID: 2005896

Licences

• License: CC BY 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
• Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Description: This is the standard Creative Commons license that gives others maximum freedom to do what they want with the work as long as they credit the author.

Secondary language

• Language: Slovenian
• Keywords: šport, športniki, dvojna kariera, študentje, univerze, trenerji

Projects

• Funder: EC - European Commission
• Funding programme: Erasmus+, Sport Programme
• Project number: 590400-EPP-1-2017-1-AT-SPO-SCP