Scaffolding student–coaches’ instructional leadership toward student-centred peer interactions: a yearlong action-research intervention in sport education

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to provide a year-long examination of the scaffolding processes used by a teacher in order to support student coaches in their instructional leadership responsibilities during seasons of Sport Education. The intervention sought to enable coaches to conduct problem-solving activities and instructional interactions that would actively involve teammates in the discovery of knowledge and construction of their own learning experiences. Method: Twenty-six seventh grade students participated in four consecutive seasons of Sport Education (Basketball, Handball, Soccer, and Volleyball). The research involved four action-research iterative cycles of planning, acting, monitoring, and fact-finding. Data collection included semi-structured interviews with teams as well as exclusively with the coaches, lesson observations, and a field diary kept by the first author who assumed the role of practitioner-researcher. Results: The findings showed it was necessary to explicitly teach the coaches specific instructional strategies for constructivist peer interactions to emerge. However as coaches became increasingly self-assisted, they were able to promote activities more relevant to the learning needs of teammates. Further, the involvement of the students in taking responsibility for peer-teaching emerged late in the school year. The scaffolding process was found to be a non-linear process contingently adjusted in reference to aspects such as coaches’ mastery of processes, the complexity of the domain-specific content, and nature of the sport. Conclusions: This study gives credence to the advocacy that specific training is necessary if students are to develop the ability to engage teammates actively in learning interactions.