Beyond one-size-fits-all: Professional development needs of Chinese elite coaches across strength-power, endurance, and team sports
Dongting Jiang, Yue Tang, Ningyi Zhang, Jianhao Zhou, Yuming Zhong, Anthony Weldon, Yongming LiPurpose
This exploratory cross-sectional questionnaire study compared Chinese elite coaches’ professional-development perceptions and needs across strength-power, endurance, and team sports, focusing on coaching attributes, learning topics, learning sources, and education programme design.
Methods
A total of 151 eligible elite coaches (50 strength-power, 48 endurance, and 53 team-sport coaches) completed a structured questionnaire covering four professional-development dimensions rated on 5-point Likert scales for perceived importance or preference. Between-group differences were tested with Kruskal-Wallis H and Dunn's post hoc tests, with effect sizes reported.
Results
All groups valued practical experience and athletic background over educational qualifications and certifications, favoured discussions with peers and mentors and reflective practice, and preferred practicums, workshops, and face-to-face delivery over lectures and fully online formats. Group differences centred on learning content: tactics and strategy received the highest preference ratings from team-sport coaches, intermediate ratings from endurance coaches, and the lowest ratings from strength-power coaches (
Conclusion
Chinese elite coaches in this exploratory sample shared a common developmental foundation while differing mainly in content priorities corresponding to each sport's performance demands. Elite coach education could retain a practice-based, context-grounded common core while differentiating content by sport.