The final version of the European Coaching Children Curriculum has just been released. It aims to support the development of a specialist youth sport coaching workforce across the European Union.
After a broad stakeholder consultation during the 1st iCoachKids Conference in Budapest in November 2017, the European Coaching Children Curriculum (ECCC) has now been finalised by the project expert group.
The ECCC is informed by the European Sport Coaching Framework (Lara-Bercial et al., 2017, Project CoachLearn) and aims to provide guidance for those developing coach education opportunities for children and youth sport coaches. It highlights the key functional areas and tasks of the children and youth coach and the relevant competences required to fulfil the role. It also signposts coach developers to the most up-to-date knowledge basis and underpinning theories.
In line with the general education trend in Europe, the ECCC adopts an output-based approach and is built around the notion of learning outcomes, units of learning and credits. This will facilitate the adoption and adaptation of the curriculum by Higher and Vocational Education and Training institutions as well as National Governing Bodies of sport. It will also contribute to the potential use as translation device to support the transfer of credits between institutions and across sports and countries.
However, the ECCC is not a one size fits all. It presents only the basis for customisation to different needs, context and cultures. It is highly recommended that those organisation or individuals using the ECCC spend considerable time analysing their context and the needs of their athletes, participants and coaches before deciding how to use it.
The ECC also serves the purpose of providing the iCoachKids (iCK) project group with a menu of content options for the development of the three MOOCs (massive open online courses) that are already under construction to be launched during 2018 and 2019.
iCoachKids is co-funded by an Erasmus+ grant and led by Leeds Beckett University (LBU) and the International Council for Coaching Excellence (ICCE). It brings together another six world-class organisations with a common desire to support children and youth coaches and a proven track record of doing so. These include Sport Ireland Coaching, the Hungarian Coaches Association, the Netherlands Olympic Committee, the European University of Madrid, Lithuanian Sport University, and the Royal Belgian Football Association.
