To overcome the apparent flaws of formal professional learning and development initiatives within education, mentoring is largely considered to be an effective strategy to support the progression and retention of practitioners. Within the context of physical education and sport coaching, mentoring (whether formal or informal) is often positioned as a panacea due to its ability to facilitate contextualised learning in situ for developing teachers and sport coaches (Griffiths, 2015; Leeder & Sawiuk, 2021). However, the mentoring literature is overtly focused on mentee learning (Langdon, 2014), with the learning and development of mentors themselves, in addition to their dispositions towards practice, somewhat overlooked (Aspfors & Fransson, 2015).

Specifically, within the field of sport coaching, understanding sport coach development has been an area of growing interest over recent years which has resulted in the literature base becoming increasingly ‘coach-centric’ (Cushion et al., 2019), with an overemphasis on investigating issues related to coach learning and coach education. Consequently, research which examines the education and learning of individuals in coach development roles, such as sport coach mentors, is often neglected (Leeder & Sawiuk, 2021), despite many sport governing bodies (SGBs) embracing mentoring as a ‘solution’ to overcome the limited impact of formal coach education. In the case of sport coach mentoring this is problematic, as organisational cultures will structure how the mentoring process is understood and enacted, while dictating the volume of training and support sport coach mentors receive which is likely to impact upon their perceptions towards the role and beliefs regarding what ‘good’ mentoring constitutes (Griffiths, 2015; Leeder et al., 2019).

Currently, the recruitment of sport coach mentors is a loose and haphazard process, with coaching experience and formal qualifications often valorised and uncritically assumed to be the necessary pre-requisites for being an effective sport coach mentor (Chambers, 2015, 2018; Cushion, 2015). Sport coach mentors are often recruited due to simply being available and willing to do the job, possessing significant coaching experience, alongside potentially embodying the ‘right’ dispositions (Chambers, 2015; Cushion, 2015), while professional learning and development opportunities are limited due to the assumption their coaching experience and qualifications are suffice. Within sport coach mentoring, sport-specific knowledge is often seen as the ‘currency’ of mentoring (Griffiths, 2015), reflecting a ‘traditional’ mentoring culture where mentors act as gatekeepers to requisite knowledge as a form of cultural hegemony.

With mentoring being considered a contested professional development practice despite its appeal (Kemmis et al., 2014), greater understanding into the learning and development of mentors seems paramount to provide further insight into the origins of mentors’ practice and beliefs. Consequently, the broad aim of this research was to explore the learning and development of sport coach mentors, with a particular focus on understanding individuals’ dispositions towards what constitutes a ‘good’ mentor within the context of sport coaching. In seeking to understand the nature of mentor learning and development within sport coaching contexts, this research draws upon Pierre Bourdieu’s (1977, 1986, 1990) social praxeology and integrated concepts of habitus, field, and capital to conceptualise mentoring as a contextualised, contested, and embodied process. Indeed, learning to becoming a sport coach mentor through a Bourdieusian lens can be seen as a process of social reproduction and transformation, where perceptions towards mentoring practice is the result of both individual agency and dispositions, alongside objective field structures.

This research is guided by social constructionism which emphasises a relativist ontology alongside a subjectivist epistemological stance (Braun & Clarke, 2013). To align with this paradigmatic position, an instrumental case study design was implemented over a 12-month period, involving multiple qualitative data collection methods. Within instrumental case studies, the ‘case’ itself is of secondary importance and instead helps to facilitate understanding of a broader issue or phenomenon (Stake, 1995). In this instance, a large-scale formalised sport coach mentoring programme designed and delivered by a SGB in the United Kingdom (UK) was chosen as a ‘case’ to understand the wider nature of sport coach mentor learning and development, in addition to perspectives towards ‘good’ mentoring within a sport coaching context. In terms of data collection methods, semi-structured telephone interviews, a focus group, and unstructured observations were used in conjunction with one another to create a pluralistic dataset and allow different insights to become available (Chamberlain et al., 2011). Specifically, ‘current’ sport coach mentors (n=9) employed for a minimum of one year by the SGB were all interviewed once to explore their perceptions of learning to becoming a sport coach mentor and the transition from being a coach to mentoring other coaches. In contrast, ‘new’ sport coach mentors (n=9) were each interviewed twice; at the start of their employment to understand their initial expectations, and once again 9 months later to track how the role was going and the influences on their development. Furthermore, regional mentor officers (n=8) who oversee the recruitment and training of the sport coach mentors, participated in one focus group to discuss the aims of the mentoring programme and how they facilitate mentor learning. Finally, field notes were recorded from unstructured observations of five full day SGB delivered sport coach mentor training events with a focus on the espoused content, knowledge, and practices. A theoretically informed reflexive thematic analysis procedure was adopted to analyse the data (Braun & Clarke, 2019), involving an iterative process of moving back-and-forth between both data (inductive element) and the social praxeology of Pierre Bourdieu (deductive element). Thus, broadly speaking data analysis can be best described as a process of abduction which involves the intertwinement of theory and data, where both are “played off against one another in a developmental and creative process” (Blaikie, 2010, p. 156), with the researcher mediating a reciprocal dialogue between theory and data.

Findings indicated that learning to become a sport coach mentor involves the embodiment of dispositions over time, where perceptions towards 'good' mentoring practice centred on a struggle for capital, with sport coach mentors valorising their varying forms of capital to enhance their field position. Sport coach mentors employed by the same SGB as part of a formalised mentoring programme designed to support the learning of novice coaches had two broad perspectives towards what being a ‘good mentor’ entailed. The first perspective believed being a ‘good’ mentor involved the possession of embodied ‘knowledge of the game’ and coaching experience, alongside the obtainment of formal coach education qualifications as a form of symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1986), which helped these individuals to feel credible in their role and structured their practice and behaviours. These sport coach mentors tried to strengthen their position within the field and discredit other forms of capital. In contrast, an alternative perspective emerged where some sport coach mentors challenged this orthodoxy and considered ‘good’ mentoring to entail being a ‘certain type of person’. Here, sport coach mentors begun to allude to how they believed they possessed embodied skills, traits, and attributes which meant they were ‘naturally’ suited to the mentoring role. Thus, cultural capital in the form of generic dispositions, attitudes, and traits were ‘naturalised’ and legitimised as symbolic capital in a direct response to other recognised forms of capital within the field (i.e., coaching experience and qualifications) they may not possess. These findings have significant implications and considerations when recruiting and training individuals as sport coach mentors, which are transferable across physical education and broader educational domains. It is apparent that organisations wishing to deliver formal mentoring provision need to be clear on the role, expectations, and practices of mentors during training to ensure a consistent approach.

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