iCoachKids: All you ever wanted to know about coaching children, but were too afraid to ask…
iCoachKids has published the eagerly awaited Coaching Children Literature Review. The review is a central piece of iCK. It aims to provide the necessary evidence to aid the development of a European Coaching Children Curriculum (ECCC) to guide those developing training opportunities for coaches of children and young people in the European Union and beyond. The review has also provided the foundations for The iCoachKids Pledge
Millions of children and young people take part in sport and physical activity across Europe every day. However, the majority of their coaches are either not qualified or hold lower level generic qualifications that do not prepare them specifically to work with this age-group. iCoachKids (iCK) is an international, collaborative, multi-agency, Erasmus+ co-funded project led by Leeds Beckett University aiming to support the development of a Specialist Children and Youth Coaching Workforce across the EU to ensure all youth sport participants have a positive experience led by suitably trained coaches.
The newly released literature review is a central piece of iCK. It aims to provide the necessary evidence to aid the development of a European Coaching Children Curriculum (ECCC) to guide those developing training opportunities for coaches of children and young people in the European Union and beyond. In the context of iCK, the literature review and the ECCC will inform the development of the three Massive Open Online Courses that will be the final outputs of the project.
The review was conducted by the consortium expert group comprised of Professor Nicolette van Veldhoven and Marieke Fix (Netherlands), Sergio Lara-Bercial, Dr Julian North, and Dr A.J. Rankin-Wright (United Kingdom), Declan O’Leary and Sheelagh Queen (Ireland), Kris Van der Haegen and Manuel Dupois (Belgium), Dr Rafael Navarro and Dr Sonia García (Spain), Lolita Dudeniene and Dr Birute Statkeviciene (Lithuanias), and Dr Ladislav Petrovic and Judith Balogh (Hungary). All the above experts have contributed to various sections of this review.
In light of the findings of the review, the iCK expert group have also developed The iCoachKids Pledge which includes 10 Golden Rules for Coaching Children that coaches and sport clubs should adhere to in order to guarantee positive experiences.
