Coach Developer Learning And Development Programme Gathering
The 2023 Coach Developer Learning And Development Programme concludes on Saturday, October 21st, with the Coach Developer Gathering at the Racket Hall Country House, Slieve Bloom, Co. Tipperary.
The programme was launched to aid continuous professional development opportunities and help create a community and support network for coach developers.
A Coach or Instructor Developer is a recent term brought in by Sport Ireland Coaching (SIC) to represent an individual that supports the learning and development of coaches or instructors (for the purposes of some riding environments, Cycling Ireland are referring to instructors as leaders).
The support could be through formal tutoring of education courses or informal settings such as workshops, conferences, webinars or with a coach/leader in their own learning environment. A Coach or Leader Developer (CLD) is likely to work with many coaches/leaders in one year; each of these coaches/leaders will probably work with a high number of riders in any one year.
Consequently, a highly effective CLD can influence the sporting experience of a very large number of sports participants at every level of cycling from Cycling Ireland’s participation programmes to the podium at major competitions. The better the CLD, the better the coach/leader, the better the sporting experience of the riders.
The programme aims to provide continuous professional development opportunities and help create a community and support network for coach developers. It kicked off in May with 14 coach developers taking part in an online session.
The Coach Developer Gathering will see participants take part in sessions such as 'Lessons Learnt from Coach Development in Higher Education' with Ian Sherwin, PhD, University of Limerick, and 'What is Skilled Performance? And how as Coaches can we Develop Skill' with Dr Edward Coughlan, Munster Technological University.
The Cycling Ireland Coach Education and Development staff will also deliver session on the TahDah Candidate Management System and a Coach Education update in what will also prove a valuable networking day for our coach developers.
Our Coach and Leader Developers deliver a suite of formal courses including the Ride Leader course, Foundation Course in Cycling Coaching, Cycling Skills course, Trail and Mountain Bike Leader Course, and the Balance Bike course. Find out more here.
You can view upcoming courses on the Cycling Ireland coaching candidate management system here.