Join our PCOE scholar community to learn about faculty and students' work in 25-minute conference talks, 55-minute interactive workshops, or 45-minute roundtable sessions. This forum meets on select Fridays during the academic year.

Dr. Stephen Harvey

Title: An Investigation of U.S. Soccer Coaches’ Interpretation and Enactment of a Game-Based Approach: Play–Practice–Play

Details: Play–Practice–Play (P-P-P) is a game-based coaching approach developed and adopted by the U.S. Soccer Federation as a central component of its coach education. This presentation traces a research program examining how U.S. soccer coaches perceive, interpret, and enact P-P-P across diverse coaching contexts. Findings from survey, interview, and focus-group studies illustrate the perceived benefits and challenges of P-P-P and demonstrate how coach expertise, coaching beliefs and philosophy, coach education, and contextual conditions shape its enactment in practice. The presentation concludes with an emerging conceptual model explaining how these factors interact and considers the broader implications for coach education and the implementation of game-based approaches.