Journal Article


Caught between a rock and a hard place : the liminality of the sport coaching ‘pracademic’

Abstract

The emergence of “pracademics” in the field of sport coaching, individuals who blend practical coaching expertise with scientific enquiry, has garnered increasing attention. Positioned to bridge the gap between academia and practice, pracademics are expected to bring practical wisdom and contextual knowledge into scholarly activities. However, we pose the need to critically examine the concept of the pracademic, and their service to both industry and academia while sounding a note of caution in an increasingly commercialised sector. We do so by exploring the retrospective reflections of an early career researcher (the lead author) in navigating the role of pracademic in an increasingly neoliberal space. We contend that caution is needed in the blind pursual towards the role of the pracademic, calling on greater collaborative efforts to protect early career academics, challenge neoliberal structures and for the continued engagement with thoughtful and critical research and knowledge exchange in sport coaching.

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Authors

Franks, Benjamin
Phelan, Simon
Fiander, Matthew

Oxford Brookes departments

Department of Sport, Health Sciences and Social Work

Dates

Year of publication: 2024
Date of RADAR deposit: 2024-03-01


Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License


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