Coaches as sport workers: professional agency within the employment context of elite European basketball

Increased activity of multiple stakeholders (e.g. agents and owners) have created new challenges for some coaches working in professional sports clubs. The purpose of this project was to draw attention to the normative or accepted practices inherent in sport work, some of the day-to-day realities of some coaches working in this context, and to understand how coaches' perceptions of other stakeholders come to bear on their individual circumstances, career expectations/objectives and professional agency. Data were generated from semi-structured interviews with seven professional basketball coaches who worked in top-level European clubs. The analysis reveals the coach's relationships between some owners and agents differed with respect to exercising professional agency, and, coach's decisions and actions were tied to their professional ideals as well as understandings of what they need to undertake their work effectively and negotiation and/or adjustment strategies. Occasionally coach's work practices could be viewed as antithetical to employment security, however, the presence of insecurity was at times embraced and used strategically to affect workers' career decisions. Amid contemporary regional geo-political shifts, this work aids examinations of global sport settings, structures and issues that may contour sporting professionals' live

The role of adolescent athletes' task value patterns in their educational and athletic career aspirations

The present study examined the stability and change in task value patterns that Finnish student-athletes (n = 391) show during their first two years in upper secondary sport school and the extent to which these patterns, and changes in them, are associated with students' future educational and athletic career aspirations. By using latent profile analysis, three different and highly stable motivational patterns were identified among adolescents: (1) a dual motivated pattern, characterized by high value placed on both school and sport; (2) a low academically motivated pattern, characterized by a high value placed on sport but a low value on school; and (3) a relatively low sport motivated pattern characterized by a lower value placed on sport than was typical for the sample. The results further showed that the task value patterns and the changes in them over the two year study period were related to the students' educational and athletic career aspirations even after controlling for the impacts of their grade point average, gender, type of sport, and level of sport competition. Compared to the other students, those showing a dual motivated pattern were more likely planning to continue their studies at university after upper secondary school than might be expected by chance. The students who showed a low academically motivated pattern, in turn, were less likely than the others to aim for university and were more likely to plan to have a professional career in sport. Those who showed a relatively low sport motivated pattern were under-represented among those who planned to make sport their professional career.peerReviewe