Perceptions of effective coaching in Australian professional team sports

Effective coaching is a multifarious term described in many ways over time. While research into effective coaching was conducted intermittently throughout the 1960s it was not until the late 1970s that research in this area began to flourish (see Chelladurai and Carron, 1978; Smith et al., 1977). The topic of effective coaching has featured in leadership research (Chelladurat, 1984), systemattc observation of coach behaviour (Smith et al., 1983) and more recently qualitative research with expert coaches (see Cote et al., 1995; Cote and Sedgwick, 2003). Despite the broad strategies employed by previous researchers to investigate effective coaching, the term 'effective coaching' remains problematic.