A juridical-psychological perspective: Teacher sport-coaches' perceptions of emotional abuse in school sport coaching

Abstract

This qualitative study explored and described teacher sport-coaches' perceptions of emotional abuse in school sport coaching. The aims of the study were to: (i) explore and describe emotional abuse in school sport coaching from teacher sport-coaches' perceptions; (ii) determine which legal determinants regulate and prohibit emotional abuse in school sport coaching; (iii) explore and describe which psychological dynamics, in the child or coach, may result in emotional abuse in school sport coaching; (iv) determine coaches' perceptions of emotional abuse on learners in school sport; and (v) to provide strategies that can be put in place for teacher sport-coaches in order to curb emotional abuse in school sport from a juridical-psychological perspective. A qualitative design situated in a social constructivist paradigm was chosen in order to achieve the aims of this study. A purposeful sampling strategy was utilised to select the teacher sport-coaches who were all coaching sport at secondary schools in the North-West province. Permission to conduct the study was obtained from the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Education of the North-West University. Written permission to conduct research was further granted by the North West Department of Basic Education, the school principals, the SGBs, and participating teacher sport-coaches. Furthermore, participants' interests were safeguarded by guaranteeing their anonymity and obtaining their informed consent in writing before the data-generation process commenced. The data-generation process comprised of semi-structured interviews. Data saturation occurred after 12 semi-structured interviews. The data were analysed by means of qualitative content analysis. Six main themes emerged from the data. Theme 1 included views of emotional abuse. Theme 2 discussed different forms of emotional abuse. Theme 3 described the causes of emotional abuse. Theme 4 discussed the effects of emotional abuse. Theme 5 examined knowledge of legal regulation. Lastly, Theme 6 described participating teacher sport-coaches' suggested strategies to curb emotional abuse. In the last chapter, suggestions were made as to how emotional abuse in school sport coaching can be curbed. Recommendations for further research were also made. Findings of the study indicated that both peers and teacher sport-coaches are responsible for emotional abuse. Teacher sport-coaches also stated that the effects of emotional abuse are both psychological and personal. The juridical-psychological perspective was suitable for this study: the juridical perspective assisted in establishing what legal determinants regulate and prohibit emotional abuse in school sport coaching, while the psychological perspective explained the psychological dynamics of emotional abuse in this context. Teacher sport-coaches should be cognisant of the findings of the study as failure to do so would potentially lead to emotionally abusive coaching practices.