CALLING ALL YOUTH COACHES AND COACH DEVELOPERS – ICOACHKIDS HAS RELEASED THE DRAFT EUROPEAN COACHING CHILDREN CURRICULUM AND WE NEED YOUR FEEDBACK TOWARDS THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE COMPLETE AND FINAL VERSION TO BE LAUNCHED AT THE FIRST ICOACHKIDS CONFERENCE IN BUDAPEST 3RD NOVEMBER 2017
The European Coaching Children Curriculum (ECCC) aims to provide guidance for those developing coach education opportunities for children and youth sport coaches (download the ECCC here). It highlights the key functional areas and tasks of the children and youth coach (CYC), the relevant competences required to fulfil the role, and signposts coach developers to the most up-to-date knowledge basis and underpinning theories.
In line with the general education trend in Europe, and the principles proposed in the European Sport Coaching Framework (CoachLearn, 2017), once it is fully developed, the ECCC will use an output-based approach and be built around the notion of learning outcomes, units of learning and credits. This will facilitate the adoption and adaptation of the curriculum by Vocational Education and Training institutions (VETIs) and National Governing Bodies of sport (NGBs). It will also contribute to the potential use and transfer 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 options for the three MOOCs (massive open online courses) that will be developed during the second and third years of the project. These MOOCs, however, will not be able to cover everything that is included in the curriculum. Thus, the iCK team will analyse the ECCC, and based on their own experience and the results of the Coaching Children Workforce Report (Rankin-Wright et al., 2017) produced as part of iCK, and further consultation with coaching organisations, coach developers and coaches, decide the syllabus for each of the MOOCs.
Please send your feedback to s.lara-bercial@leedsbeckett.ac.uk
iCoachKids is led by Leeds Beckett University (LBU) and the International Council for Coaching Excellence (ICCE) and brings together another six world-class organisations with a common desire to support youth coaches and a proven track record of doing so. These include Sport Ireland Coaching, the Hungarian Coaches Association, the Netherlands Olympic Committee, European University of Madrid, Lithuanian Sport University, and the Royal Belgian Football Association.
