The European Coaching Children Curriculum

The European Coaching Children Curriculum (ECCC) aims to provide guidance for those developing coach education opportunities for children and youth sport coaches. It highlights the key functional areas and tasks of the children and youth coach (CYC), the relevant competences required to fulfil the role, and signposts coach developers to the most up-to-date knowledge basis and underpinning theories.

In line with the general education trend in Europe, the ECCC adopts an output-based approach and is built around the notion of learning outcomes, units of learning and credits. This will facilitate the adoption and adaptation of the curriculum by Vocational Education and Training institutions (VETIs) and National Governing Bodies of sport (NGBs). It will also contribute to the potential use as translation device to support the transfer of credits between institutions and across sports and countries.

However, the ECCC is not a one size fits all. It presents only the basis for customisation to different needs, context and cultures. It is highly recommended that those organisation or individuals using the ECCC spend considerable time analysing their context and the needs of their athletes, participants and coaches before deciding how to use it.

The ECC also serves the purpose of providing the ICOACHKIDS (ICK) project group with a menu of content options for development of the MOOCs (massive open online courses) that have been created.

The ECCC outlines the functional tasks required to fulfil the generic role of a CYCs and signposts the associated knowledge basis required. A draft consultation document was shared with the wider European coaching children community and presented at the 1st ICOACHKIDS Conference held in Budapest in November 2017. This gave all stakeholders a chance to offer their feedback and suggestions and thus ensured that the ECCC represents an accurate description of the professional profile of the children’s coach in their different roles.

After this consultation period, this final version of the ECCC was developed. It includes the relevant knowledge, skills and competences required to fulfil the professional profile at the various levels as understood in the European Qualifications Framework for Lifelong Learning (European Commission, 2008). It also offers guidance in relation to how this curriculum can be organised into learning outcomes, learning units, and the potential delivery formats to maximise student learning and development.