The challenge in the education of sport coaches to promote better understanding of the pragmatic constraints of coaching contexts, generally has been an issue in coaching research   (Cushion, Armour and Jones, 2006; Cassidy, Jones and Potrac, 2009; Taylor and Garratt, 2010, Jones, Morgan and Harris, 2012). Focusing a range of key issues and theoretical perspectives in sport coaching professionalization and practice globally, Lyle and Cushion (2010: 251-252) conclude that ‘this academic field is beginning to look beyond cultural differences to a point where ‘findings are beginning to be aggregated within a set of conceptual understandings that suggests a more cohesive field’.

To underpin choices made in the coaching process conscious and intentional rather than based on ‘tradition and uncritical inertia’ illuminated by research, Cushion et al (2006)  drawing upon Cassidy et al (2004) suggest that the coach education should be less concerned with generic guidelines and mimicking the practice of observed others. More attention should be paid to developing a model of critical thinking which would allow coaches to develop their own processual expert tool box to professionally meet the dynamic, social, interpersonal and situational nature of the coaching process.

My paper emphasizes that sport coaching research during a decade (Jones, Armour and Potrac, 2004, Jones, 2007) reminds us that the coach, as a central actor in the sport milieu, has responsibilities that reach beyond the purely technical and tactical into the moral. Further, Hardman, Jones and Jones (2010:345) emphasise that ‘that coaching is to be recognised and conducted as a moral enterprise.’ In this context coaching holistically and viewing coaching as interdisciplinary, where different knowledge meet, interconnect and dissect, has increasingly gained recognition (Morgan, Jones, Gilbourne and Llewellyn, 2013).

In this context of a moral enterprise and more cohersive conceptual understandings in the coaching professionalization and practice globally, my paper looks more closely into how sports coaching education pedagogies, regarded as a significant ideological element in the education of sport coaches, are affected. However, pointed at by Tinning (2010:72) ‘pedagogy and its role in coaching is addressed only marginally..’ According to Tinning’s analysis of coaching literature ‘the bulk of research in the field of sport pedagogy has been oriented by psychological research methods and thinking’ (p.79) mainly underpinning performance discourses and  formal courses in coaching ‘tend to devote limited attention to pedagogies’ (p.82).

The recent sport coaching programs in Norway, organized by the Norwegian Federations of Sports the Olympic Committee, acknowledge the importance of meeting the significant  challenges addressed in the sport coaching research pointed at above, including the importance of supporting and implementing the standards embedded in the international coaching education framework. Parallel to the sports coaching education provided within the sport organizations, during the last decade an increasing number of institutions in higher education have started to provide sports coaching education courses and bachelor degrees. Being part of a Norwegian case study my paper asks how the alternative pedagogies of sports coaching are conceptualized in the sport coaching education programs, and in this context what kind of sport pedagogies underpin knowledge, education values and notions of professionalism that fill up the future sport coaches’ expert tool boxes.

The paper focus upon

-          the ways in which critical thinking is configured in the performance and participation discourses in different programs of sports coaching, and

-          the configurations of ethics, moral as sports coaching pedagogies as knowledge in the national sports coaching education curricula (NIF, 2009), and in local programs of coaching framed within the field of sport and physical education degrees provided by institutions in the national higher education marketplace.

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