Engaging in Paradigmatic Dialogue: A Bibliometric Analysis of Coaching Scholarship From 1970 to 2020

Coaching scholarship (CS) sits at the intersection of multiple paradigms and disciplines. Despite eclectic nature field, most scholars operate only within their preferred paradigm, which limits how coaching is conceptualized practiced. To address this limitation, we used dialectic stance to analyze bibliometric records CS produced between 1970 2020 from both an interpretivist poststructuralist perspective. Using Web Science , identified 2,522 articles organized data into a time-ordered matrix representing five decades CS: (a) number publications per year, (b) country origin, (c) institution, (d) journal, (e) author, (f) cited articles. Two research groups analyzed concurrently independently using respective paradigm. Next, two came together engage in dialogue discover areas convergence divergence. Through paradigmatic dialogue, group realized they were operating postpositivist Nevertheless, determined was heavily influenced by Western societies, sport psychology, topic motivation. The postpositivists highlighted evolutionary trends CS, while poststructuralists elucidated relations power, understudied problems, consequences dominant knowledge produced.