Expected Qualifications for External Coaches in School-Based Extracurricular Sports Activities

Abstract

This study aimed to examine the importance of expected qualifications for external coaches and their differences between junior high and high schools. The participants were 253 teachers at public junior high and public high schools. A cross-sectional self-administrated questionnaire survey was conducted. The questionnaire was developed based on a previous interview study among teachers. Percentages of applicable response were calculated to evaluate the requirements for each qualification. Chi-square tests and Fisher’s exact test were used for analysis. As results, “humanity,” “ability,” “cooperativeness,” and “trust” were highly expected. Conversely, expertise in areas other than technical coaching, age, and occupation were not highly perceived as expected qualifications. Further, there were no considerable differences between junior high and high schools. It is necessary to develop guidelines for recruiting external coaches that reflect the highly expected qualifications found in this study. It would also be useful to conduct workshops to convey strongly expected qualifications to external coaches. However, expertise for areas other than technical coaching, age, occupation, and differences between junior high and high schools have low priority in the recruitment strategy for external coaches. This study adds a quantitative evaluation to the expected qualifications identified in a previous report. Investigating these expected qualifications using a quantitative method would be valuable toward improving the recruitment system for external coaches.

DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2015.v5n3p53