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V. Popovsky and S. Stoll (USA, Moscow, University of Idaho)

Winning honorably in sport means a commitment to excellence. It’s about having—and acting based on—internal moral standards and values such as being fair, honest, and responsible and being committed to not harming others, but rather about doing good things for them. It is the belief of these authors that winning honorably is a goal that can be reached through character education that teaches athletes respect for others and for sport as they compete [1].

We are convinced that in modern society character development is an unfairly forgotten, powerful, pedagogical remedy for unleashing athletes' potential for winning in sport and life. To bring a character education program to life is a fairly complex problem requiring specific competencies, the same as teaching any sports-related skills. To do this successfully requires taking a whole systems approach to athletic development (including character education), anticipating obstacles to incorporating character education in such a program, and arming coaches with tools to help sustain them as leaders during development and implementation.

This paper will emphasize the 7-Step Cognitive Character Development Model to encourage coaches to design their athletic programs with character education in mind.

Taking a Whole-Systems Approach

The following list provides requirements for developing a character education program and should be treated as a whole system, not as a hierarchy.

1.)	Any athletic activities such as competition, practice, selection, rehabilitation, and others have to include planning and solving three objectives: forming specific motor skills, gaining health and fitness-related skills, and the development of moral character.
2.)	Developing an athlete’s moral character has to be considered as the foundation for honorably winning in any sport because it establishes high internal, personal standards that inspire and stimulate personal authenticity, which will unleash an athlete’s potential from the inside out.
3.)	Planning objectives of character development always must be connected with forming specific technical and fitness related skills.
4.)	To be successful, coaches must establish and perform a comprehensive assessment of an athlete’s moral character disposition.
5.)	The implementation objectives of character development requires sustained and robust long term efforts to align vision, history traditions and conditions of an athletic program.

Learning to win honorably combines both informal and formal processes of character education. The informal process occurs through the influence of values, traditions and history surrounding us in our social institutions—like family, school, work, the media, sports—as well as through modeling the behavior of important people in our lives—parents, teachers, coaches, peers, entertainers. A formal process is possible through the direct pedagogical and coaching influence on a developing athlete’s moral character. [2, 3]

Why Winning Honorably Doesn’t Get Addressed by Coaches

"Why is winning honorably not addressed in coaching, if it is so important?"[4] Sports educators often ignore the formal process. We think there are a variety of reasons:

1.)	Nobody measures a coach by the quality of his/her winning, but by the quantity. Based on the quantity of wins, a coach gets recognition, gets paid and, in some instances, keeps his/her job.
2.)	Developing character requires time and mutual effort between coach and athlete. At the same time, the athletic career and seasons are comparatively short.
3.)	Correcting character flaws could bring conflict between coach and athletes, or the coach and administrators. Such conflicts could lower a coach’s win record and jeopardize a coach’s career.
4.)	Athletic administrators very often would rather that coaches choose gifted athletes with moral character problems than less talented athletes with high moral standards.
5.)	A corollary, athletic administrations also would rather have successful coaches with good win-loss records, rather than coaches with high moral standards.
6.)	Finally, the main problem is that the majority of coaches, coming from sport as former athletes, often don’t know how to develop moral character in others, even if they understand its importance, because few institutions provide the necessary assistance for developing such coaching skills.

Thus coaches look upon education solely as a way to train athletes in specific sport skills. They may understand and value the role of character education for athletes, but at the same time they complain that they do not have enough time for training athletes in the specific motor skills they need. Besides, some coaches do not see any connection between matching the philosophy of sportsmanship with the goal of athletes to win.

Helping the Coach to Sustain Character Education Implementation

From the previous discussion, setting up a character education program presents many challenges that a coach must be prepared to face and over come. To assist the coach in successfully implementing a character education program, we offer the following 7 Step Cognitive Model [5]. It is based on the concept of self-efficacy [6, 7] and provides the coach with a tool to help him/her sustain their efforts when faced with obstacles to developing and implementing a character education program.

7 Step Cognitive Character Development Model

1. Assume an optimistic and positive attitude.
People can be born short or tall and you can’t do much about it, but character can be learned, taught and measured. As a coach or sport educator you have to know that you can make important and dramatic contributions to society by teaching athletes to make moral and ethical decisions in sport and life. You can master this pedagogical process in a highly efficient way.

2. Be accountable.
This means guiding your athletic program with your personal values, inspiring and developing a higher level of character development in your students, who will eventually guide business, family and others by their personal values, making this world a better place. It is about being prepared to make hard choices.

3. Adopt a higher point of view.
A character education program has to be built on a strong theoretical foundation. This will allow you, the coach, to see far and holistically, predict obstacles and fallacies, and apply ethical practices consistently. For example, an understanding of the hierarchy of beliefs, values, principles, rules and actions allows the trained educator to properly guide students.

4. Design an Authentic Character Education Program.
Any program has to be tailored to the personal dispositions of athletes as well as the social and educational environment where the character-forming activities will take place. For each program, real-life dilemmas and moral issues will be unique and unrepeatable. For example, depending on the program, issues can range from intimidation, sportsmanship, propensity to violence, racial and gender equity, ergonomic aids for performance, technology, sport science, etc. Mastering the skill to set and solve ethical issues to these pedagogical objectives is the key to the authenticity of any character education program.

5. Build an Efficient Support Group.

To become a character development specialist requires support from highly professional institutions that teach character education. To bring a character education program to life, besides committed professionals, it demands involvement of all participants in the educational environment—especially its leadership.

6. Develop Resilience to Your Failures.

Character development methodologies can be highly dangerous, and negatively impactful on students’ thinking, in the hands of an unprepared educator. Because of this, S.K. Stoll highly recommends a four-year program with a credible organization in order to adequately prepare the educator. To become an expert in character development is not a one-class training commitment.

7. Permanently Empower and Motivate Yourself.

As we mentioned above, character development is a very labor intensive and demanding educational process. To be constantly empowered and self-motivated, an educator must follow the methodology for character education, precisely. In this case, a coach will always be rewarded by their students’ successful, repeatable progress. What could be more rewarding, empowering and motivational?

Conclusion

We are convinced that in modern society character development is an unfairly forgotten powerful pedagogical remedy for unleashing athletes' potential for winning in sport and life.

We hope this paper will inspire coaches to gain competence in creating athletic programs that include character education and to sustain their efforts in the face of implementation difficulties. The results will be athletes who know how to win honorably for the sake of sports, their personal growth and to make the world around us better.

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[1] Lumpkin, A., Stoll, S.K., Beller, J.M. (2003). Sport ethics: applications for fair play. New York: McGraw-Hill.

[3]"Character education at the Center for Ethics." University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho.

[4] Why character development doesn't get addressed in coaching (S.K.Stoll, personal communication February 11, 2003).

[5] Popovsky, V.M. (1998). Applying the TPI curriculum to physical culture. The letter: The Pacific Institute, Inc., 1, 4.

[6] Bandura, A. (1994). Self -efficacy. In V.S. Ramachaudran (Ed.), Encyclopedia of human behavior (Vol. 4, pp. 71-81). New York: Academic Press. (Reprinted in H. Friedman {Ed.], Encyclopedia of mental health. San Diego: Academic Press, 1998).

[7] Tice, Lou. (1997). Personal Coaching for Results. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________