Bulding a coaching method for teenage girls

In sports coaching, it is very hard to find female coaches. Indeed, gender stereotypes are present at all levels of society, in sport in general and in basketball. Our project consists in questioning the representations that coaches have concerning the motivations and identity issues of sport among their female basketball players, in order to better understand their interventions. Indeed, the players do not always communicate with their coach because of the hierarchical position of the coach, which can be detrimental for sport practice. This project aims to set up a system of questionnaires allowing the players to elaborate on these issues and guaranteeing the anonymity of their answers, collected by a psychologist who here acts as a third party not involved in their sports performances. At the same time, these questions will also be addressed from the coaches' point of view. The psychologist gives her point of view on the questions themes which are adressed during the questionnaires to collect information from the players (relational style of the coach, type of communication of the coach, pedagogy, etc.) and she informs the coaches on the cognitive and social development of the teenage girls in order to support the coaches' methodological proposals. In our project, the collaboration of coaches from different cultures, experiences and genders allows us to develop a coaching method that will be tested for a full season with young basketball players between 12 and 18 years old, taking into account the psychological and physical characteristics of the players in this age group.