Throughout the sport and exercise psychology literature, one topic that has been given increased attention is the leadership of athletes. Prior work has focused on the coach as a primary source of leadership for athletes and how that leadership can affect various student-athlete outcomes (Coleman, 1961; Gould, Chung Smith, & White, 2006; Smoll & Smith, 1989, 2006). These investigations have provided a wealth of information regarding coaches' influence over athletes in a number of different domains, such as motivation (Eccles,1996; Jowett, 2008; MacLean, 2012; Mageau & Vallerand, 2003), persistence (Calvo et al., 2010; Ryan & Deci, 2000), and performance (Gearity & Murray, 2011; Gillet, Vallerand, Amoura, & Baldes, 2010). Lacking the same depth of examination is the relationship between coaches and other educational leaders in an athlete's life that would provide much needed insight into their performance in an academic setting.More specifically, there is almost no research examining the relationships between coaches and teachers as they "co-lead" student-athletes. Given that teachers have been identified as one of the prime drivers of student achievement (Darling-Hammond, 1997) and coaches have been identified as one of the critical influences on student behavior (Smith, Smoll & Cummings, 2009) the lack of empirical evidence for the leadership dyad of teacher-coach on student-athlete outcomes is unfortunate. Seizing the opportunity to advance our understanding of the relationship dynamics and ecology of leaders in the inner-city high schools (Khalifa, 2012) will provide a more nuanced and comprehensive picture of the environment being established for Minority student-athletes.If educators (teachers and coaches) are similarly connected by the common goal of producing a successful student-athlete, a careful examination of their relationships is clearly in order. In other words, if we can begin to understand what the leaders think about each other-which is undoubtedly related to the way they treat each other-then we start to gain further insight into the relational ecology within which the minority student-athlete flourishes or flounders (Khalifa, Dunbar, & Douglas, 2013). Therefore, the overarching goal of my dissertation work is to address this gap in the literature by investigating the mutual perceptions of and behaviors between teachers and coaches as a precursor to understanding minority student-athlete outcomes in inner-city environments.
Read
