International Focus - China and the ICCE

China has joined the ICCE and has twice attended conferences at the highest level of international coach education. These conferences highlighted the modern trend of rapid and continuous development in sport, mirroring modern developments in economics, science, technology and other fields of endeavour.

Recent trends have seen the numbers of sports participants and the number of countries competing internationally increase dramatically. As we approach the 21^st Century, big business and the media are important stakeholders in sport and this means that international competition will increase and intensify.

Meeting these challenges will require more coaches and higher quality coaching, so coach education is becoming more and more important if countries are to keep pace with this rapid development. The education of coaches will also enhance the status of coaching as a profession. This is a big challenge to coach educators for the next century and the ICCE is helping many countries to prepare for the challenge.

In China, coaches are recognised as a valuable resource and the status of coaching is not a problem. However the quality and status of China’s coaches must continue to improve, to keep pace with developments in other countries. The Coach Education Division of the All China Sports Federation has led the training and development of coaches in competitive sport and runs the Chinese Coach Education Programme (CEP) (See Figure 1).

The Coach Education Programme is underpinned by a certification programme at post secondary level. This provides a theoretical basis, common knowledge and basic techniques of coaching in general sports theory. Coaches are expected to supplement certificate training with post cultivation training appropriate to their classification and specific sport. This sport specific work includes many short training courses and an information service. Post cultivation training attaches more importance to developing the competitive ability of coaches and the professional ethics of those entering the profession. Considerable emphasis is placed on the integration of theory with practice and the cultivation of coaching and management skills.

The CEP embodies the following characteristics:

• It creates the condition for lifelong education of coaches at various formations and levels
• It combines organisation and management systems with training and application systems to make coaches more effective in their work.
• It is implemented according to different classifications and different sports
• It integrates scientific theory with sports training practice and foundation with application

In all these ways, Chinese coach education is in accord with the trends in international coach education. However we aim to improve our scale of training and our evaluation of the impact of training by drawing on foreign experience.

The ICCE is a professional organisation, established to develop professional training to improve the quality of coaches and sport. It organises a lot of activities such as the training of international coaches, selecting and dispatching coach educators, providing information (including through the internet) and organising international seminars.

Communicating internationally with other organisations and individuals in the same profession will help us improve the quality and status of coaching in China. Through membership of the ICCE, China has made many friends and gained much information and this has helped us to develop our coach education programmes. For example, post cultivation training courses have been developed by approximately 40 sports organisations in China in the last two years. More than 90 of these courses have been held, reaching about 4000 coaches. 13 syllabuses for post cultivation training courses have been published including track and field, swimming, football, table tennis, badminton, weightlifting, wrestling, wushu, shooting, diving, speed skating, rowing, and management, together with teaching materials for training courses for badminton and football. This year, five more will be published.

The Chinese coach education programme is steadily developing, as are our relationships with America, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Israel, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong and others. Because of our efforts and co-operation from these countries, the quality of coaching in China will improve.

In the information society of the 21^st Century, the ICCE will become recognised by more and more nations, will develop rapidly and will contribute enormously to the development of coaching and coach education world-wide.