Abstract
The purpose of this chapter is to explore how to coach life skills through sport. A life skill is a commonly used term with sport psychology literature. However, there is a conceptual ambiguity that surrounds what life skills are and consequently which positive outcomes are labeled as life skills. Rather than listing potential life skills (e.g., communication skills), there is a need to define what life skills are based upon shared characteristics. Thus, the first part of this chapter will focus on what constitutes a life skill to enable coaches to understand what it is that they are aiming to develop. Life skills are defined as skills that are acquired through practice to help an individual to display competence in socially valuable tasks that predicts similarly useful tasks within or across life domains. The consequence(s) of the process of learning a life skill is a change in assumptions about oneself and the world and therefore, requires corresponding changes in behavior and relationships. The next focus of the chapter will be on discussing the salient features of practical life skills coaching. This section will emphasize the environmental features of useful life skills programs by analyzing literature from the broader field of positive youth development. Moreover, this section on features of practical life skills programs will highlight the role of the coach to show how coaches’ personal qualities and beliefs are central to the development of life skills. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how to move life skills research and practice forward by providing areas for critical consideration and future research directions.
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Jones, M.I. (2020). Coaching Life Skills in Sports People. In: Resende, R., Gomes, A.R. (eds) Coaching for Human Development and Performance in Sports. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63912-9_15
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