Professional Practice in Sports Coaching MSc

What is Professional Practice in Sports Coaching MSc?

The course is designed to help you build on your existing experience to refine your coaching. You’ll develop a deeper appreciation of theory and research related to sports coaching and will consider how best to apply this in practice.

You’ll explore a range of contemporary issues and practices – using modern methods and approaches in developing expertise, pedagogy, reflective practice, mentoring, sport psychology and talent identification. An emphasis is placed on the relationship between practice and theory, with students supported to develop reflective, analytical and critical thinking skills in order to develop their professional practice.

Study style

Given the expectation that students are working in a relevant professional role alongside their studies, the professional practice nature of this course has led us to run it as a part-time Master’s that typically takes 33 months.

This course benefits from a blended delivery, with a mix of face to face teaching on campus and online delivery, involving both synchronous and asynchronous content. In this way we balance the imperative for collaboration, social learning and networking, with the practicalities of studying whilst remaining active in the workplace.

You’ll study in a collaborative environment alongside fellow professional practitioners and aspirant level 4 coaches from National Governing Bodies, who in many cases are operating as full-time professional coaches. You’ll learn from teaching staff with excellent professional experience and research profiles in their respective fields.

Assessments, including written assignments, research projects, presentations and reflective writing, are designed to allow you to relate theory to your own practice and the context in which you coach – and for practice to inform theory and the interpretation of academic sources. You’ll be encouraged to engage in research within your own context to promote higher levels of evidence-based practice.

Possible careers

There’s a range of employment markets for graduates, including professional sports clubs, coach education and policy, commercial and social enterprises, community sports programmes and national governing bodies (NGBs).

Graduates from this course can go on to work as:

• Academy Coach
• Specialist Technical Coach
• Coach Educator
• Coach Manager
• Lecturer or Researcher, eg PhD.