About the project
Traditionally, coaches tended to begin their careers as physical education teachers, with formal training in skill acquisition. Nowadays, coaches more commonly enter the profession as former athletes. While coaches from an athlete pathway tend to have a good understanding of training methodology, sport science and tactics, they may have limited understanding of skill acquisition principles and this can limit their ability to optimise athlete techniques and performance.
This knowledge gap is typically not addressed by National Sporting Organisation’s coaching courses, as they generally focus on what to coach rather than address the fundamentals of learning design and how to coach.
This project seeks to gain a greater understanding of modern coaching methods and develop skill acquisition resources that support coaches in the Australian sporting system
You will be situated in the ARENA research centre, UniSA’s flagship centre for exercise and sport science research. You will be based at the new UniSA SASI Campus at Mile End, benefiting from world-class facilities and resources, including access to the brand new ‘SASI Movement Studio’, which aims to optimise athlete skill acquisition using a range of cutting-edge technology and is staffed by world-leading practitioners.
Collaborating with SASI will provide you with a wealth of real-world experience and knowledge and help you establish a strong professional and industry network in elite sport.
This unique opportunity may also provide you with an opportunity to undertake on-the-job training and employment (up to 0.2FTE) during the PhD candidature as a SASI Movement Studio (skill acquisition) practitioner
What you’ll do
In this project-based research degree, through a combination of literature and current practice reviews, co-designing and pilot testing, you will establish what constitutes coaching “best practice” in an elite sport setting.
You will also determine if the identified aspects of effective coaching are being implemented within the coach development process within national sporting organisations. With support, you will then design and evaluate modules on how to coach (e.g. skill acquisition principles) that can be slotted into national sporting organisations’ existing courses.
