Abstract des Autors

There are many bodies across the United States that provide credentials/certification in sport. The basic premise behind these organizations is to educate America's coaches, from the youth sports level to the high school level. However, these credentialing bodies that have programs or systems to certify or educate potential coaches have different ideas about how to best educate the potential coach. This is where the problem of standards comes into effect. With so many credentialing bodies already existing, it is hard to understand who is certified and what these individuals are certified for. It has been 20 years since coaching standards first emerged as an issue in secondary education, but there is still no nationalised, centrally administered credentialing of any coaches, interscholastic or otherwise (Cohen, 1992). The purposes of this review are to objectively examine the information that currently exists concerning three areas. One, existing certification and education programs. Two, explaining the rationale for the need to use national standards as a means for certification of coaches on all levels of sport. Three, compare the National Standards in use today, by the United States, with standards used by other countries around the world.