Study examines role conflict for Queensland teacher/coaches

Some teacher/coaches face conflict when their inclusive coaching ideals clash with the elitist goals of the schools for which they work, according to a UQ study.

Dr Angela O'Connor's human movement studies PhD research focused on how health and physical education (HPE) teachers in Queensland high schools balanced their teaching and coaching responsibilities.

"In some non-government schools you find very elitist notions of sport performance and excellence - success in terms of winning is very important. This can create tension for the teachers; they want to be inclusive in teaching physical education but the school takes an elitist approach to sport that says let's just cut the kids. Often the teachers have a really big problem with that," she said.

Dr O'Connor's research included a survey of 389 teachers in three regions of Queensland and detailed case studies of five teacher/coaches. While she found the problem was not as widespread in Queensland as in North America, some teachers in non-government schools did face the same pressures.

An HPE teacher for 12 years, Dr O'Connor said she had seen the stresses faced by some of her colleagues. "I used to look at my friends who were teaching at non-government schools and see the pressure on them to put in large numbers of hours to coach, and to really coach the kids as if winning was all-important," she said. "It is up to teachers to negotiate and balance their dual identities (as HPE teacher and sporting coach) so that they come out feeling okay with what they've done."

Dr O'Connor said she was also drawn to investigate the area because North American literature referred to role conflict for teacher/coaches in terms of time and energy devoted to each part of their work. "They found there was a lot of stress for those teachers trying to teach and coach because they tended to put much more time into coaching and that was taking away from the preparation for teaching," she said.

She recommended that HPE teachers' training should include coaching practicums to prepare them for the realities of coaching. It should also encourage exploration of their values, to help teachers avoid conflict with school philosophies later in their careers.

"Instead of focusing only on subject matter, content knowledge and how to teach, these programs need to get teachers to reflect on whether winning is very important to them, whether they think winning is very important to kids, what are the repercussions of high level performance and specialisation for kids at that age," she said. "And we need coaching practicums to improve coaching skills, to increase subject matter knowledge, and to teach teacher/coaches how to deal with parents."

For more information, contact Dr Angela O'Connor (telephone 3278 4052 or email angela@hms.uq.edu.au).