In my master's thesis, I focus on researching the approaches of Slovenian cheerleading coaches when working with young people in cheerleading training. In the introduction, I first briefly present the topic of my undergraduate thesis and relate it to the reasons that led me to research in the master's thesis. In the theoretical part, I then explore the concepts of working with young people. In doing so, I first turn to the description of the three forms of approach, as listed by Milko Poštrak (2015), namely the autocratic, democratic and permissive approach. The author distinguishes the latter according to the components of the relationship, ie communication, definition of roles of participants, type of authority, question of responsibility, goal and form of action, which I also present in the theoretical part. I also connect the knowledge of other authors to Poštrak's theory. I most often refer to the work entitled Raising a responsible child: how to prepare your child for today’s complex world, by Don Dinkmeyer and Gary D. McKay (1996), as within the chapters they constantly touch on all the components of the relationship mentioned. As well I rely on Albert Mrgole (2003), who, among other things, perfectly presents the image of a youth worker, or in my case a cheerleading coach. My work is constantly based on the theory of Gabi Čačinovič Vogrinčič, especially on the co-creative working relationship concept (2002). The theoretical part is followed by a description of the methodology of the research, in which 37 Slovenian cheerleading coaches participated. I used a survey questionnaire for the research. From the answers of the coaches, I found that when working with groups of young cheerleaders, the majority resort to a democratic approach and are aware of the inadequacy of the autocratic approach. However, they lack knowledge of the language of acceptance, which has led to some ambiguities and dilemmas. As a consequence, I also understand the large number of uncertain responses and the results that indicated a commanding approach. Using Pearson’s concept of correlation, I compared this kind of data and showed that this is not the case. According to the discussion and conclusions at the end of the thesis, I also write down suggestions for improving the knowledge of coaches in the field of establishing relationships and concepts of working with young people. My wish is to raise the level of quality of work of cheerleading coaches in Slovenia.
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