Putting social theory to work: Developing agents-for-change in sport coaching

In recent years, the world of sport has become an increasingly valuable platform to expose and develop awareness in relation to issues of social injustice in society (MacIntosh, et al., 2020). However, while such efforts are commendable, there has been a growing concern that related media campaigns fail to amount to anything more than mere gesture. That is, social justice exists as a supplementary outcome rather than being infused within educational curricula that can create change (Newman et al., 2022). As individuals positioned at the heart of sports teams and organisations, sport coaches are prime candidates to become agents-for-change (Bishop et al., 2023). Against this backdrop, in this chapter, we discuss and reflect upon the design and delivery of an undergraduate work-based learning module, which seeks to embrace such a challenge. Through a synthesis of social theoretical perspectives, the Module aims to develop student-coaches’ ability to i) critically explore their contexts of work, in terms of challenging problematic norms/practices, with a particular focus on forms of social (in)justice and subsequently, ii) foster opportunities to act in informed ways, by developing inclusive and more morally astute forms of interaction. In terms of structure, the chapter begins by describing the module’s design, including its pedagogic approach, the range of social-theoretical content explored, and how these components combine to encourage critical explorations of practice. This section is followed by a series of tutor reflections, which seek to capture some of the challenges and successes of working with student-coaches in their efforts to become change-agents.