What Intercollegiate Athletics Coaches Wish Faculty Knew: Implications for Curriculum and Instruction

Abstract

Collegiate athletics coaches play a vital role in the lives of student-athletes and regularly interact with the members
of their teams more than faculty given the nature of athletics practice schedules compared to academic class
schedules. Although the primary purpose of university attendance at all universities is pursuit of academic degrees,
student-athletes receive broad non-academic, life-skills oriented education from athletics coaches. Typically, teaching
faculty at American colleges and universities hold terminal degrees in their fields, but unlike international
universities, faculty in the U.S. are not required to have any particular training in pedagogy. Due to the enormous
amount of time athletics coaches spend with student-athletes, coaches, by nature must be effective communicators,
effective motivators, effective teachers, and effective ethical models for their student-athletes to a degree not
necessary for faculty members. The purpose of this paper was to gather recommendations from coaches for faculty
members regarding needs of student-athletes, and a comparison of the perception of student-athlete needs between
coaches and faculty members. We employed a mixed methods convergent parallel design. We administered a
questionnaire that included both an open-ended response section to what the respondent wished faculty knew with
respect to student-athlete success, and three Likert scale questions related to confidence in what faculty knew or did
with respect to student-athlete academic needs. Based on the thematic coding of the responses by coaches, and
quantitative analysis of the Likert scale questions, recommendations for faculty regarding curriculum and instruction
are given in the discussion section.