A Behavioral Approach to Youth Sports Coaching: Developing Skillfulness and Fair Play in Sports

A Behavioral Approach to Youth Sports Coaching: Developing Skillfulness and Fair Play in Sports offers sport coaches key pedagogical strategies that will help the development of technical and tactical aspects of game play and strengthen players’ understanding of game play in action (also referred to as “game sense”) while giving a strong emphasis on the pedagogical dimensions of sport coaching as well as how to develop fair play.

Employing a well-established and evidence-based behavioral framework that can be used across sports and competition levels, A Behavioral Approach to Youth Sports Coaching includes strategies aimed at supporting players’ fair play behavior, seen as an essential responsibility of coaches, especially given the ever-increasing industrialization of sport.

This new text is vital for students in the areas of coaching education, sport coaching, physical education, and coaching pedagogy.

Hans van der Mars (PhD, The Ohio State University, 1984) is Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University, where he oversaw the undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral degree programs in Physical Education Teacher Education/Sport Pedagogy. He is widely published, authoring or coauthoring over 170 published research papers, professional papers, book chapters, proceedings papers, and three textbooks. He frequently presents at international, national, regional, and state-level conferences. He has provided over 85 continuing professional development/outreach workshops. He is a Research Fellow in the Society of Physical and Health Educators of America (2005), the American Academy of Kinesiology and Physical Education (2006), the North American Society of Health, Physical Education, Recreation, Sport, and Dance Professionals (2009), the International Association for Physical Education in Higher Education (AIESEP, 2019), and the National Association of Kinesiology in Higher Education (NAKHE, 2021).

Peter Iserbyt (PhD, KU Leuven, 2011) is a Professor at KU Leuven in Belgium, where he is the program director of the Movement and Sport Sciences Program as well as the Master’s in Teaching Physical Education program. Besides a master’s degree in Movement Sciences (KU Leuven, 2005) and physical education teacher certification (KU Leuven, 2006), he also holds a master’s degree in Applied Behavior Analysis/Special Education from Arizona State University (2025). He has published over 100 research articles and authored or coauthored multiple practitioner books for physical education teachers and sport coaches. He has been an invited speaker in different countries and is a frequent presenter at national and international conferences on physical activity, sport pedagogy, and coaching. In 2011, he received the Young Scholar Award from the International Association of Physical Education in Higher Education (AIESEP), and in 2022, he became a Fellow of AIESEP. He currently serves as a board member for the Journal of Teaching in Physical Education and the International Journal of Kinesiology in Higher Education.