CoachEd6 is an Erasmus+ Education co-funded project that has been launched between Monday 28th September and Friday 2nd October, 2020.
The project, which will end in November 2022, and which is aimed at developing four sports coaching units at degree level and then pilot them with a number of learners in each participating country, is led by the Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology (MCAST) and has the University of Southern Denmark, Reykjavik University in Iceland, Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University in Turkey and the ICCE as main partners. While these higher education institutions will bring in the academic expertise about sports coaching, the Malta Olympic Committee, the Danish Sports Confederation, the National Olympic and Sports Association of Iceland and the Sports for all Federation in Turkey are associate partners which will bring in the field expertise.
When asked to express his thoughts about the concept of CoachEd6, Dr Ladislav Petrovic, General Secretary of the International Council for Coaching Excellence said that “planning and delivery of Bachelor degrees is an important step on the road of professionalisation of sport coaching. CoachEd6 project is an exciting and ambitious journey supporting the development of our profession in Europe. As the world-wide cooperative body leading and supporting the development of coaching globally, ICCE welcomes this very positive initiative”.
MCAST kicked off the project with a three-day programme in which all coordinators from all member partners, introduced themselves, discussed the technicalities of the project, the project scope, objectives, impact and dissemination plan. This was followed by a training programme in Quality Assurance and Units design and development on Monday.
The lead coordinator of the project, Dr Renzo Kerr-Cumbo from MCAST expressed his enthusiasm for this innovative project which in his own words “is one of the first coaching education programmes to be bringing together experts from four Higher Educational Institutions, experts from the field through other associate partners and prospective learners, who will have their say in the design of the same units”.
In the second week of the project MCAST has provided training to all participating partners and their experts. The training programme focused on quality assurance and curriculum design. That was intended at preparing the involved partners, the associate partners and the learners participating in this project to be well equipped to start the design of the four units. These units will follow the ICCE Coaching Degree Standards and will be framed within the European Qualification Framework at Level 6.
Daði Rafnsson from Reykjavik University, said that he “was very happy with the input of all partners in the initial stage of the project.” He added to say that he is now looking forward to start coordinating the development of the first intellectual output, which is the first unit out of four, ‘Introduction to Sports Coaching’. This project is co-funded by the Erasmus+ Education programme and will span between September 2020 and November 2022.