The Finnish Coaches Association has created a Toolkit for Coaches as part of the Erasmus co-funded project called Fair Coaching. The Toolkit is a comprehensive education material which includes a guide for the educator. The Toolkit will be tested by project partners by the end of the year 2021.
The Toolkit for Coaches is the Intellectual output number 3 of the Fair Coaching project. It was tested in Finland before its final completion with two From Athlete to Coach education training courses at the Varala Sport Institute. A total of 25 participants took part in the testing.
The Fair Coaching education training sessions utilized the Coach Self-Assessment Form of Module1 at the start of the training to anonymously investigate actual experiences with the Fair Coaching topics of sexual harassment, racism, bullying, inappropriate behaviour and discrimination. This led to a short general discussion on the topic as well as to the sharing of some real-life examples by the participants.
Following the project introduction Module2: What is Fair Coaching? was selected to dive deeper into the topic with the participants. Using the Padlet-online tool the participants discussed questions around behaviour and rules or actions in sports and whether culture plays a role within the sport environment allowing or permitting certain behaviours within sports which would not be tolerated in other areas of life.
Then the participants created concise definitions of Fair Coaching in small groups which was followed by a discussion on fair coaching and a creation of one definition of fair coaching for the whole group.
Modules 3-5 of the Toolkit introduces participants to how safe sport for all can be accomplished and how to intervene when observing inappropriate behavior.
After finalization of the toolkit an online course was executed to educate Fair Coaching workshop educators of all the project member institutions.
The Fair Coaching Toolkit for Coaches will now be introduced and tested in the nations of the project partners, and for this purpose the project partners are translating the toolkit into their own languages and are selecting news stories, pictures and cases relevant to the Fair Coaching topics from within their own countries.