In February Hockey Australia asked those of you coaching hockey in Australia to complete our short survey, to help them understand how coaches like to learn and what coaches need from Hockey Australia.
Go Hockey News considers this to be a great initiative of Hockey Australia as it is critical at all levels of hockey coaching that knowledge and processes are accountable to undertake a coaching position. It is also a position of great responsibility to be a coach, particularly at the grass roots level as the attrition of players as long term hockey participants depends heavily on their hockey experiences acquired at this stage of hockey development. Consequently Hockey administrators need to encourage and support people who have voluntarily or some case involuntarily decided to become hockey coaches.
In all, almost 900 coaches responded which is a good survey sample from which a good data analysis can be used to help shape the direction of hockey coaching in Australia. Rather than just list the survey results found in Hockey Australia News Go Hockey News has responded to the findings ( red text) as a means to be agreed with or refuted or most importantly to continue the dialogue which should flow from such findings.
Responses were received from coaches in every state and territory of Australia with women making up just over 40% of respondents.
A summary of the findings with review
- 75% of you are currently actively involved in hockey coaching.
- The vast majority, almost 90%, coach club hockey. Almost 30% coach hockey at schools, and a fifth (20%) of you are involved in some way with coaching state representative teams.
- Most respondents are involved in coaching juniors in the 12-18 age bracket. Half are coaching adults while one third coach juniors under the age of 12.
- While 58% of you hold a Hockey Australia coaching qualification, 28% do not. The remainder were unsure.
- Despite the prevalence of social media in our lives as a communication tool, very few respondents reported using Facebook (8%), Twitter (2%) or Instagram (<1%) as avenues to source coaching resources and information.
- Peer-to-peer learning from other hockey coaches was the most common source of information for coaches with 80% reporting this as one way they assist their own development. More than a third also said they consult coaches in other sports.
- Just 20% of respondents said they used aussiehockey.com, Hockey Australia’s skills coaching video website, however, almost half of all respondents said YouTube was a resource they used. The videos on aussiehockey.com are hosted on YouTube – the responses highlight an opportunity to better promote the resource.
- The vast majority (65%) of respondents do not belong to a coaching network of any sort. Just 6% are part of a formal network while 29% consider themselves part of an informal coaches network.
It would be interesting to know from these statistics what % in each category has coaching qualifications and also what % are male and female coaches.
Interesting that 14% are unsure and 28% do not. These are concerning statistics. It would be good to pursue as to why 42% are not qualified. Also of the 58% holding Hockey Australia qualifications are men and women.
I am not sure if these social media forms are the most ideal tools to develop hockey coaching education and discussion forums. Specialised hockey Linkedin coaching groups and forums may be more ideal. Linking all coaching development under the one website face makes sound sense, e.g., aussiehockey.com.au As such the website would need to cater for all levels of hockey coaching, resource needs and discussion boards. A small annual joining fee would help fund its development. There could be open free access areas and paid access areas.
This information supports the development of a mentoring coaching program that could be implemented at the different levels of hockey playing, i.e., beginner to elite. Such a program would need to embrace the full notion of what mentoring is. This is now recognised in education circles as critical to the teaching learning process with the introduction of master teachers to help teachers in the classroom improve. In a similar way at association and club levels experienced coaches could be identified to become mentoring coaches.
It is a shame more respondents are not using aussiehockey.com.au as a resource. The hockey coaching information within it is worthy of reading and viewing. Hockey Australia has taken a proactive approach in the development of resources which is commendable.
The establishment of a professional coaching body, e.g., Australia hockey coaches association would be a monumental step in the right direction. Such a move would be a positive inclusion in seeing hockey move closer towards a professional sport category.
Excellent in-depth feedback was received across a whole range of topics relating to coaching. We’re continuing to assess that to identify opportunities to improve our support of hockey coaches in Australia but it is clear that we need to connect more directly with coaches.
It would be rewarding to see more information found as a result of this survey and certainly equally rewarding in knowing what future planning will occur as a result of the findings.
Source: Hockey Australia News, author: Lawrence West
