Sport Coaching MSc

Coaching is a vital element for success in sport at all levels. Here you’ll build on your understanding to develop advanced knowledge of key concepts that support sport coaching research and practice. Looking at current reviews in areas like coaching behaviour, learning, educational professional development, coaching contexts and micropolitics, you will be encouraged to discuss and critically assess them, making connections with the possible implications for research and/or practice. You’ll also be introduced to the design and planning of ethical research and applied projects to address these issues and differences.

Discover the wider issues currently affecting researchers and practitioners in sport. Professionals working in the sporting landscape need to communicate complex, sometimes contentious issues to a variety of specialist and non-specialist audiences from athletes to parents, National Governing Bodies (NGBs) to stakeholders and decision makers, as well as the public. Being able to understand and effectively communicate potential problems or issues faced by sport science and coaching practitioners in the modern sporting environment will help you to be proactive in managing and dealing with problematic issues in a professional manner. In an environment where ‘knowledge’ is questionable in quality and readily available to non-specialists, you’ll learn about different sources of information and communication, and how these can feed into problem solving and practice in the real world. Looking at these contemporary issues in the wider sporting industry as well as completing a skills audit and action plan will help you to map your journey in to the sport and exercise profession, and identify your longer-term career aspirations.

The module provides a theoretical framework of research methods for postgraduate students. It will encourage you to develop an increasingly autonomous and critical approach to research. You will be challenged to develop your research philosophy, consider the impact research can have on society and effectively analyse data using a range of advanced techniques relevant in sport and exercise sciences and psychology research. The module content will develop your critical understanding of the principles of data collection and analysis using various higher-level methods. You'll become critical researchers, be able to draw conclusions using multiple sets of data, effectively compare and contrast data and use literature to support ideas and/or theories. The module will be driven using real-world research questions, with example datasets provided to facilitate understanding of statistics and qualitative analysis. The module will be delivered through a combination of lectures, practical sessions and online tasks. It will equip you with a wide range of highly useful and transferable research and analytical skills (eg, numerical skills, use of research software, experimental design, presentations), which are highly relevant in the research and employment environment.

Investigate and answer real-world problems using interdisciplinary team work. This module aims at progressing your knowledge and understanding of integrated working across the broad area of sport, including exercise, health and wellbeing, and business sectors. You’ll gain an insight of how different professional disciplines or agencies work in an integrated manner to solve a variety of issues as well as the management of diverse teams, consideration of professional boundaries, individual vs team roles, cultural tradition and overlapping of skills. You’ll be required to work in diverse discipline groups to create a proposal on how you could solve a problem based in the area of sport, health, and exercise. You’ll then work to achieve this by transferring knowledge between disciplines and defend your choices of recommendations to a panel of academics, businesses and industry partners. Explore the benefits and challenges through lectures with guest speakers from a variety of sectors, providing an insight into their work. This module is invaluable learning if you want to develop an understanding of working in the applied field of sport and exercise science, and coaching.

Choose your field of study, develop your research strategy and present your final results in a thesis prepared to the highest scientific and/or professional standard. Draw on the knowledge you have gained from your studies to follow your thesis through, based on a topic taken from a series of themes related to the interests of the Cambridge Centre for Sport and Exercise Sciences team. You’ll be assigned a supervisor or, if appropriate, a supervisory team, who you’ll need to make regular reports to on the state and progress of your work.

You can opt to complete your final module whilst you work. We understand that the work environment provides a rich setting for exploration and discovery of a range of knowledge, skills and understanding. You’ll have the opportunity to develop your practice based learning and experience, relate theory to practice, to develop skills and experiences linked to employability. With the approval of your supervisor, you’ll research, secure, engage and undertake your work-based project based in a relevant industry or company in the broad area of Sport Coaching. You’ll be expected to demonstrate an awareness of current professional practice, legal, ethical and cultural issues relevant to your practice and studies. You’ll have a number of face-to-face sessions on preparing for and evaluating work experience, researching career opportunities, and on the development of interpersonal skills. You’ll need to reflect on this work experience critically, linking to theoretical concepts covered in your specific course, as well as reflect on the week to week experiences in the work place. You’ll be expected to be able to demonstrate information gathering and descriptive skills and also higher order critical evaluative or analytical skills.