Interpreting and Implementing the Long Term Athlete Development Model: English Swimming Coaches’ Views on the (Swimming) LTAD in Practice

The LTAD (Long Term Athlete Development) model has come to represent a sports-wide set of principles that significantly influences national sports policy in England. However, little is known about its impact ‘on the ground.’ This study is concerned with how national sporting bodies have adapted the model to their specific requirements and how local interpretation and implementation of this is operationalized and delivered. Interpretation and implementation of the LTAD model used in English swimming was investigated through interviews with six elite and five non-elite swimming coaches in the north of England. While there were concerns with aspects of the Amateur Swimming Association (ASA) regulations governing competition for age-group swimmers, the major concern expressed by participants was with over-emphasizing volumes of training, leading to the neglect of technique

IZVANKURIKULARNE SPORTSKE AKTIVNOSTI DJECE PREDŠKOLSKE DOBI: UTJECAJ NA MOTORIČKA POSTIGNUĆA I TJELESNU PISMENOST

The aim of the research was to determine the influence of an extracurricular sports program on motor abilities and physical literacy of preschool children aged from 4 to 6 years. For this purpose, the battery of six motor tests of known metric characteristics was used to measure the following motor abilities: coordination, strength, flexibility and balance. The data were calculated by descriptive statistics. The differences in motor abilities between two time points (initial and final), as well as the interactional effect of a single variable on the global results of motor abilities in repeated measurement with regard to the point of measurement and gender, were calculated by multivariate analysis of variance. The obtained results have confirmed the previous findings describing the benefits of continuous physical activity for the development of preschool children motor abilities and physical literacy. The results are also consistent with the previous research showing that boys have better achievements in explosive strength and coordination, whereas girls have better achievements in dynamic strength, flexibility and balance.Istraživanje je provedeno u svrhu utvrđivanja utjecaja izvankurikularnog sportskog programa na motorička postignuća i tjelesnu pismenost djece u dobi od 4 do 6 godina. U tu svrhu primjenjena je baterija od šest motoričkih testova poznatih metrijskih karakteristika namijenjenih procjeni koordinacije, tjelesne snage, gibljivosti i ravnoteže. Na rezultatima su izračunati parametri osnovne deskriptivne statistike, multivarijatnom analizom varijance izračunate su promjene u motoričkim sposobnostima između dva mjerenja (početno i završno) te interakcijski efekt pojedine varijable u ponovljenom mjerenju na globalne rezultate motoričkih sposobnosti u odnosu na točku mjerenja i u odnosu na spol. Rezultati su potvrdili dosadašnje spoznaje koje se odnose na pozitivan utjecaj redovitog tjelesnog vježbanja na razvoj motoričkih sposobnosti i međupovezno tjelesne pismenosti predškolaca. Osim toga sukladno rezultatima prethodnih istraživanja utvrđene su statistički značajne razlike u motoričkim postignućima između djevojčica i dječaka, dominacija dječaka u rezultatima motoričkih testova namijenjenih procjeni eksplozivne snage i koordinacije, a djevojčica u testovima dinamičke snage, gibljivosti i ravnoteže

What makes young people tick? A qualitative analysis of the beliefs and perceptions of school aged children towards PE and healthy living in ‘the sickest area of Europe’

Scottish children are reported to be among the least active in the world, additionally Scotland has previously been labelled ‘the sick man of Europe’ on account of its poor health record. In response, the Scottish Government has implemented a range of policies with a strong focus on increasing physical activity (PA), Physical Education (PE) and the integration of health and wellbeing (HWB) with the aim of promoting and sustaining PA throughout life. To date, limited qualitative research exploring pupil perspective of PE lessons and HWB exists. To address this deficit, within this study, focus groups were conducted with 39 secondary school pupils (S1-S2). The findings indicated that delivery of traditional PE lessons, prioritizing sporting ability, can act as a participation barrier to pupils who consider themselves ‘non-sporty’. Accordingly, a shift towards pedagogical models, rather than simply blocks of sports-related activities should be the priority of educators

Back to the Future – In support of a renewed emphasis on generic agility training within sports-specific developmental pathways

Perhaps as a consequence of increased specialism in training and support, the focus on engendering and maintaining agility as a generic quality has diminished within many contemporary sports performance programmes. Reflecting this, we outline a rationale suggesting that such a decreased focus represents an oversight which may be detrimental to maximising the potential of performers. We present an evidence-based argument that both generic and specific elements of agility performance should be consistently emphasised within long-term performance-training programmes. We contend that prematurely early specialisation in athlete development models can diminish focus on generic movement skill development with a subsequent detriment in adult performance. Especially when this is coupled with poor primary physical education and limited movement experiences. More speculatively, we propose that generic agility can play a role in operationalising movement development through facilitating skill transfer: thereby enabling the learning of new skills, reduce incidence of injury and facilitating re-learning of old skills during rehabilitation and Return-to-Play processes

Knowing in primary physical education in the UK: negotiating movement culture

This paper aims to understand how pupils and teachers actions-in-context constitute being-a-pupil and being-a-teacher within a primary school physical education (PE) movement culture. Dewey and Bentley's theory of transaction, which views organism-in-environment-as-a-whole, enables the researcher to explore how actions-in-ongoing activities constitute and negotiate PE movement culture. Video footage from seven primary school PE lessons from a school in the West Midlands in the UK was analysed by focusing upon the ends-in-view of actions as they appeared through the educational content (what) and pedagogy (how) of the recorded PE experiences. Findings indicated that the movement culture within the school was a monoculture of looks-like-sport characterised by the privileging of the functional coordination of cooperative action. Three themes of pupils' and teachers' negotiation of the movement culture emerged U-turning, Knowing the game and Moving into and out of games. This movement culture required teachers to ensure pupils looked busy and reproduced cooperative looks-like-sport actions. In fulfilling this role, they struggled to negotiate between their knowledge of sport-for-real and directing pupils towards educational ends-in-view within games activities. Simply being good at sports was not a prerequisite for pupils' success in this movement culture. In order to re-actualise their knowledge of sport, pupils were required to negotiate the teacher's ‘how’ and ‘what’ by exploring what constituted cooperative actions within the spatial and social dimensions of the activities they were set. These findings suggest that if PE is to be more than just the reproduction of codified sport, careful adjustment and consideration of ends-in-view is of great importance. Without regard for the latter there is potential to create significant complexity for both teachers and pupils beyond that required by learning and performing sport

Primary physical education:A complex learning journey for children and teachers

Primary physical education (PPE) is increasingly being recognised for the role it can potentially play in setting a foundation for lifelong engagement in physical activity. However, the majority of the literature continues to focus on the negative features of the subject within the primary context. Whilst acknowledging the existence of these barriers, this paper sets out to take a proactive approach by presenting a conceptual framework for PPE that seeks to support a renewed and positive vision for the future. Based on ideas from complexity thinking, the framework represents a move beyond the more positivist and linearapproaches that have long been reported to dominate practices in PPE and recognises learners as active agents engaged in a learning process that is collaborative, non-linear and uncertain. While acknowledging the contested nature of the complexity field, the paper explores how key principles, including self-organisation, emergence, similarity, diversity, connectedness, nestedness, ambiguous bounding, recursive elaboration and edge of chaos, offer a lens that views PPE as a complex system. With the children’s learning positioned as the focus of PPE in the educational setting, the paper discusses how complexity principles interweave with the ecological components to help us better understand and more creatively engage with the complex nature of PPE developments. Specifically, these components are identified as PPE learning experiences and their associated pedagogy, teachers and their PPE professional learning and key environmental factors that include the physical environment and key stakeholders who influence developments across the different levels of the education system. The paper concludes by suggesting that this complexity-informed PPE framework represents an open invitation for the all those involved in PPE to engage in a collective process of exploration and negotiation to positively influence developments in PPE

Effective talent development environments: bridging the theory-practice gap within a UK context

Performance sport has become a high priority for many Nations. For example, the UK distributes approximately £25 million per year through their World Class Performance programmes in order to aid effective identification, development and performance of our best athletes. Not surprisingly, in line with a more professional and scientific approach, the standards of sporting performance at an elite level are constantly improving. In order to remain competitive on the international stage, the processes and support mechanisms within our talent development environments (TDEs) must be effective in order to maintain a consistent stream of talent, capable of success at the highest level.Unfortunately, the structure and evidence base for talent development (TD) processes within the UK is weak and lacking in evidence -based guidance for those working `on the ground'. This is compounded by an apparent procedural bias towards the identification of talent as opposed to its development, a focus which is contrary to much of the research in this area. Against this backdrop, the objectives of this thesis are as follows:1) To identify the `needs' within current TD practice and provide clear direction and methodological guidance for the required programme of research,2) To identify guidelines through a triangulation of evidence that enables the application of effective TD procedures,3) To develop a tool to help bridge the theory -practice divide and enable practitioners and researchers to examine TDEs within applied settings, and4) To provide preliminary validation of the tool to assess the extent to which it has discriminant function

Curriculum innovation from a complex ecological perspective: a developmental physical education case study

With recent developments in Scottish education characterised by less prescriptive curriculum guidance, educators, and teachers in particular, are being presented with the opportunity to become more active participants in the curriculum innovation process (Scottish Executive, 2004). This thesis argues, however, that a more participatory curriculum innovation approach contrasts with the centrally-driven top-down curriculum projects that have held currency over the last 30 years; as such, the experiences of most teachers, and their managers, have not helped build the capacity to cope with and influence the curriculum innovation process. Following on, it is suggested there is an urgent need to develop curriculum innovation approaches that specifically set out to help educators construct these innovation-related capacities. The thesis proposes that a more participatory curriculum innovation approach may be achieved by extending concepts from current educational ‘change knowledge’ (Fullan, 1993) to include key principles from complexity-oriented theories (Biesta, 2010; Morrison, 2010). A complex ecological approach (CEA) is presented in which curriculum innovation efforts are portrayed as complex, self organising, emergent, non-linear and ambiguously bounded phenomena influenced by the ongoing interaction of contextual factors and personal capacities. The applicability of this complex ecological approach is explored by means of a case study focused on my personal curriculum innovation efforts in primary physical education (PE) over a twenty-four year period from 1987-2011 in two countries: England and Scotland. I provide a detailed retrospective analysis of the ‘Developmental Physical Education Project’ (DPEP) to explore the extent to which the macro, meso and micro contexts in which I worked and my personal capacities have influenced my curriculum innovation efforts over this twenty-four year period. In particular, the nature of my developmental PE innovation efforts, characterised as complex, self-organising, emergent, non-linear and ambiguously bounded is explored. Analysis reveals the important influence of different contextual factors on the nature of these innovation efforts, particularly the prevailing policy-making and policy-dissemination processes and the support of micro-level management. However, the most significant finding is the central role played by my personal capacities in shaping innovation efforts that, over time, are self-organising, emergent, ambiguously bounded and non-linear. In particular, the analysis highlights how six key capacities; reflection, inquiry, emotions, vision, knowledge and relationships, all played a key role in helping me cope with and influence the innovation process. Given these findings, the thesis concludes by proposing ways in which the CEA may help educators, and teachers in particular, better understand, negotiate and influence future curriculum innovation agendas

The assessment of stressors and resilience in secondary school physical education

PE lessons are a unique context to address the declining levels of physical activity in the UK, offering the opportunity for students to achieve age appropriate physical activity recommendations. Therefore, it is imperative that researchers and practitioners understand variables that underpin students motivational processes in PE lessons. Psychological resilience refers to the idea that some individuals are able to positively adapt to the stressors they encounter. Conceptual theorisers of resilience propose that the concept comprises three constructs: stressors, positive adaptation, and protective factors. The purpose of the thesis is to focus on the first construct of stressors: which may be major life events, or the minor and cumulative demands of everyday life. Specifically, the current thesis aims to develop a measure of stressors in the context of PE lessons within the wider framework of resilience. The thesis is split into five chapters. The first chapter overviews the importance of facilitating motivation and engagement in PE lessons, and introduces the concept of resilience to stressors. Chapter two is split into three parts and comprises three reviews: the first provides an overview of the definitions, concepts, and theoretical models of academic resilience; the second is a systematic review of the approaches to measuring academic resilience and; the third presents a narrative review of daily stressors experienced by adolescents. Chapter three presents the first two studies of this programme of research. Study one is a qualitative exploration of the common stressors experienced by secondary school students during their PE lessons. Underpinned by the concept of resilience, study two explores the protective factors students utilise to facilitate their positive adaptation to these everyday stressors. Drawing on the reviews presented in chapter two, and the qualitative exploration of stressors in PE, chapter four presents a series of studies describing the development of the PE Experiences Questionnaire (PEEQ). Specifically, study three explores the content validity of a pool of items designed to reflect common stressors in PE lessons. Study four examines the factorial structure of the PEEQ using exploratory factor analysis, and study five tests the factorial structure of the PEEQ using confirmatory factor analysis. Study six tests the factorial structure on an independent sample, examines whether it is invariant across gender, and tests the relationship between the PEEQ and related educational constructs. Overall, the current programme of research has advanced the field of educational psychology by providing greater understanding of the potential stressors experienced during PE lessons, and the dynamic processes by which students respond

The Role of Deliberate Practice in Developing Adolescent Golfing Excellence

The acquisition of expert performance has been studied for decades across a range of human performance domains. Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Römer (1993) proposed a theoretical framework termed the theory of deliberate practice to account for the characteristics and developmental experiences of individuals who acquire exceptional levels of performance in any discipline. This theory proposes that acquiring expertise across any domain is the result of undertaking an extensive acquisition period of approximately ten years involving the accumulation of thousands of hours of physically and mentally demanding practice regimes whilst overcoming effort, motivational and resource constraints that serve as barriers to the attainment of elite performance. Therefore, this thesis aimed to contribute to the under researched area of golf development systems by examining the applicability of deliberate practice theory in acquiring elite male adolescent golfer status. The first study, of four, utilised self-report diary logs to reveal the durations, types and intensities of golf activities undertaken by nine aspiring elite adolescent golfers over a nine month period and compared actual and retrospective accounts. In total, 62 percent of all golf activities were classified as either golf competitions or competitive practice rounds undertaken with high amounts of physical and mental effort and fun. This approach to development was beneficial for lowering the golf handicaps of several participants. Results reveal the performance improvements which aspiring elite adolescent golfers experienced whilst engaging with regular golf competitions and practice rounds instead of deliberate practice specific activities. However, such improvements did plateau once performers reached a handicap approaching two. Retrospective recall was also revealed as an accurate method to determine volumes and conditions of golf activities undertaken over a nine month period. Non-significant differences were revealed between actual and recalled data (training volumes p = 0.94, physical effort p = 0.83, mental effort p = 0.44, and fun p = 0.13) and effect sizes were small ranging (d = 0.03 – 0.31) The second study retrospectively examined the sports participation and practice trends of current elite adolescent male English golfers. It was found how these individuals tended not to participate within golf specific deliberate practice regimes until the mid-teenage years and instead encountered a diversified introduction to several sports, which included golf, within a playful, fun, non-competitive environment that resembled key tenets of deliberate play theory (Côté, 1999). A change in emphasis towards on-going golf development occurred around the age of 16 when exposure with golf specific deliberate practice became more evident once participants had gained selection for county and English Golf Union representative golf teams. The third study used interpretative phenomenological analysis to explore the experiences of golfers who had all successfully travelled the path from novice to elite adolescent golfer status. Four super-ordinate themes emerged from participants accounts which revealed how elite adolescent golfers experienced supportive parents and a diversified enjoyable introduction to a range of sports. This was followed by a self-determined commitment to golf in the mid teenage years and a strategic approach to developing excellence which recognised the important role that psychology may play post 16 years of age. The forth study aimed to discover if the introduction of a golf specific deliberate practice intervention would improve putting performance and influence future practice behaviours of five aspiring elite adolescent golfers who had no prior experience of specialised golf training protocols. Participants completed a 13 week AB single-subject multiple-baseline design, social validation measures and five month follow up interviews. Mean putting performance was significantly higher (t4 = 6.94, p = .002, d = 3.12) in the intervention phase (M = 6.20, SD = 0.51) than the baseline phase (M = 4.64, SD = 0.57). All participants enjoyed undertaking deliberate practice, experienced a range of psychological and technical improvements, adapted current training schedules to mirror deliberate practice and committed long term to activities of this nature. In conclusion, the findings of the four empirical studies within this thesis suggest long term deliberate practice is not a pre-requisite throughout childhood and the early teenage years for securing selection within international adolescent golf squads. However, engagement in deliberate practice post 16 years of age was found to be an important training strategy for the continued performance development of emerging and elite level adolescent golfers. The pathway to elite adolescent status more closely resembled Côté’s (1999) deliberate play theory with sampling during early childhood, specialising during early teenage years, and investment in later teenage years. The collective findings of this thesis may provide players, coaches, applied sport psychologists and policy makers involved within golf talent development systems with clearer insights into conditions of participation and practice that appear optimal for achieving adolescent golfing excellence