Strategies to evaluate the intentional teaching of values and life skills in sports

Physical education and sports (PES) are conducive platforms to inculcate sport skills, values, and life skills among students and athletes. However, not every programme aiming to instil values and life skills through PES has been successful, as practitioners were found to lack training and experience in incorporating them into their lessons. Past studies have suggested that explicit planning and teaching of values and sport skills are important in facilitating effective learning and transfer beyond the learning context. Researchers have also used various methods to evaluate the effectiveness of the programme outcomes, such as questionnaires and interviews. However, there are limitations to using these evaluation methods, which include recall bias and a lack of consideration of the coach’s behaviours exhibited during coaching sessions and their impact on their athletes. This chapter explores some existing tools that can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of intentional coaching of a sport skills, values, and life skills programme. We also introduced a free mobile application – Coaching Observation Tool (COT) that was developed based on the Arizona State University Observation Instrument. This application can be used to quantify the planned and actual coaching behaviours during PES sessions. Findings from the observational data suggest that the COT mobile application is a useful tool to evaluate the effectiveness of a coaching lesson by comparing the planned and actual percentage of time allocated to sport skills, values, and life skills development. Sport practitioners can make use of the objective data for self-reflection and explore ways to seek assistance to enhance future coaching practices to benefit their athletes. Considering these findings, implications are offered.