A conceptual framework for developing communities of practice for clean sport education

. Communities of practice have been suggested to provide an ideal teaching structure that can promote knowledge and skill development. Existing evidence on clean sport education indicates that several educational interventions against doping have been developed so far. However, stakeholders and researchers are not always informed about them. This results in poor coordination of anti-doping efforts made by organizations and stakeholders. The present paper proposes and implements an alternative approach to clean sport education by enabling synergies between academic experts and coaches interested in being informed about clean sport education. More specifically, this paper describes for the first time a face-to-face Community of Practice for Clean Sport Education. The aim of the implemented community of practice was to assist coaches to be better educated about anti-doping. The implementation of a Community of Practice for Clean Sport Education confirmed the ability of this teaching approach to effectively engage coaches in anti-doping education. Participants in the community of practice showed an increased interest in learning more about anti-doping education and set specific learning goals, were helped to better identify what they would prefer to learn, received resources that they were not aware of, were committed to learning about anti-doping and developed a network of people interested in anti-doping. Overall, the community of practice was effective in mobilising people to engage in awareness-raising activities and increase their knowledge about clean sport education.