Community sport coaches as policy actors

This chapter directs attention to the changing and complex landscape of community sport in Australia and internationally, in exploring what shifting patterns of participation and provision mean for sport coaching and coaches. After explaining the significant participation trends and associated developments in community sport, the chapter outlines the varied forms that community coaching takes and the different participation contexts in which it is located, including community clubs, local government settings, programmes arising from sport, community or commercial organisations, and schools. The concepts of policy enactment, policy actors, and policy contexts are introduced as a framework for critically examining and re-visioning the contemporary roles, positioning, and responsibilities of individuals who are formally or informally identified as community sport coaches. Sub-sections that each focus on contrasting community sport coaching contexts pursue the different nature of coaches’ policy work, the expectations and requirements for them to engage with policy, the challenge coaches face to navigate policy hierarchies and tensions, and the opportunities and constraints that they may experience as policy actors. Community sport coaching understood as policy enactment and action, is thus established as political and social, as well as pedagogical. The chapter concludes by problematising the changing landscape of community sport and the policy actor perspective for community sport coaching, community sport stakeholders, and for future research in the field.