Descending the Mountain: Exploring the Impact of Research on Pedagogy and Practice

Conference Report to the virtual Scientific conference of the International Association for Physical Education in Higher Education (AIESEP) 2021 hosted by the University of Alberta and McGill University (Banff, Canada).

Reviewer acknowledgement 2019 & 2020

Reviewer acknowledgement for the years 2019 and 2020.

The athlete talent development environment in the best ranked football academy in Norwegian football: The case of the U16 team in Stabæk football club

We used the holistic ecological approach to examine the talent development of Stabæk football club. Specifically, the male under-16 team. The environment was categorised as successful based on their history of developing senior elite players and being the highest ranked football academy in Norway. The study design was an explorative, integrative, and qualitative study considering an extreme case. Data collection included interviews, observations, and document analysis. The results showed that the environment shared features with other successful environments and deviated on other features. Our findings were consistent with research highlighting the importance of long-term development focus, supportive training groups, and support from the wider environment. However, we also found that the contrary to former research, success was not underpinned by a coherent organisational culture. Instead, there were several examples of ambiguity (e.g., between espoused values and actual behaviours). There was also a lack of integration of efforts, no support for developing psychosocial skills, lack of diversification, and a lack of proximal role models. Instead the club practiced early recruitment and specialisation, employed failure-focused coaching, and kept youth players away from role models. Our findings show that the club environment could be described as a successful, and yet, success does not necessarily equal all previously suggested successful features.

Response to select comments on the proposed paradigm shifts in running

Background: Six experts in the field of running-related research have critically addressed a proposal to abandon the paradigms of ‘impact force’ and ‘pronation control’ when investigating running shoes, running injury, and running performance. Further, these experts have commented on the suggestion of the new paradigms of ‘muscle tuning’ and the ‘preferred movement path’ that can be used to investigate questions related to running injuries and performance as well running shoe design and comfort. This publication synthesizes and addresses the main criticisms of the experts and describes future directions to further develop the ‘muscle tuning and ‘preferred movement’ paradigms.

What information is being acquired during the period of Quiet Eye? Comment on Vickers

Sports and athletes’ highest performance offer a fascinating scenario to investigate perceptual-motor expertise. The remarkable work of Joan Vickers has captured this opportunity and built a valuable experimental paradigm. Our commentary emphasizes what information is being acquired during the period of Quiet Eye (QE), capable to produce successful performance. First, an extended notion of visual system that includes posture is presented. It is suggested that QE would represent a collective postural effort (resulting from movements of eyes, head, trunk, and whole body) to acquire the relevant information available in the optic flow. Second, the contribution of neural structures and functioning for vision and attention is discussed. Models of neural networks of attention and two visual systems are described with respect to QE and some questions about action parameters and motor programs are raised.

Talent: A contestable, but not contested, concept?

Our target article on ‘Innate talent’ had two objectives, first to acknowledge the 20th anniversary of the seminal contribution by Howe, Davidson and Sloboda (1998) and second, to update this information as it relates to talent in the domain of sport. Many thanks to all the authors that took the time to provide commentaries on our review. Broadly, our target paper focused on 1) whether the concept of innate talent was reasonable and scientifically sound and 2) whether the concept of innate talent had any utility to those working at the coalface of sport science (e.g., coaches, scouts, etc.). All of the commentaries were complimentary to our review, which suggested continued interest in this area (although this was noted as surprising by Hambrick and Burgoyne). We have tried to respond to all of the interesting points raised by the commentaries, but this was not always possible. That said, we grouped our responses under general themes below. Our impression, based on the commentaries, is that innate talent is not a contested concept; in that there appears to be agreement (for the most part) that, ‘this thing exists’. Rather, the concept of innate talent is contestable (Gallie, 1956); that is, there is debate about exactly what it is, the degree of its influence, and how useful the concept of innate talent is.

Quiet Eye: The next generation – comment on Vickers

In this commentary on Joan Vicker’s target article (2016), we first recognize the work she has done in the last 35 years. We then provide examples of differentiations of the Quiet Eye (QE) that might be necessary to fully understand the multifacetedness of the phenomenon. Here we propose, as in our current review (Rienhoff, Tirp, Strauss, Baker, & Schorer, 2016), for the QE a differentiation by the mechanisms behind it. We suggest another categorization in the research on training the QE. Additionally, we provide further areas of research that are interesting for the future, namely the QE across life-span and the (in)dependence of the perceptual-motor processes.

Fitness trend analysis in male Austrian middle and high school students from 1975 to 2010

Considerable changes in the social and built environment contributed to alterations in physical activity, which potentially affect physical fitness. Long-term data on various components of physical fitness with multiple assessments in similar cohorts, however, remains limited. The present study, therefore, examined secular trends in physical fitness between 1975 and 2010 in adolescents living in a rural region in Tyrol, Austria. Data consisted of records from a physical education (PE) teacher that included a total of 2998 cases of male adolescents between 11 and 18 years of age. Fitness assessments included sprint, longjump and an endurance run that were performed annually in 3 to 5 grades during regular PE classes. The results indicated three distinct eras during the observation period. There was an improvement in physical fitness until the mid to late 1980s with a subsequent decline until the mid 1990s and a final period of relatively consistent low physical fitness. Further, it was shown that aerobic fitness started to decline earlier and that the decline was more pronounced than the performance in anaerobic fitness tests. This is of particular concern due to the importance of aerobic fitness for general health and wellbeing. Accordingly, these results along with previous studies highlight the need to promote physical activities that contribute to an improvement of physical fitness in children and adolescents.

Need support, need satisfaction and types of motivation in Physical Education for children aged 8 to 13. Development and preliminary validation of the German SMoPE-instrument

More self-determined motivation of young children in physical education (PE) has been shown to improve physical activity through the lifespan. According to Self-Determination Theory, an educational environment that supports the three basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness is expected to facilitate need satisfaction and, therefore, more self-determined types of motivation. However, thus far there are no appropriate instruments to investigate the psychological need support, need satisfaction, and motivation for younger students simultaneously. The present study aims to develop and preliminarily validate the German SMoPE-instrument (Students’ motivation in Physical Education) for the constructs need support, need satisfaction, and types of motivation for 8-13-year-old children in PE. Therefore, after a cognitive lab study, N = 1,011 students from grade 3 to 6 answered a questionnaire with items that based on research in the field of extracurricular sports with regard to the three constructs. The result is a questionnaire of 33 items including three need-support-subscales, three need-satisfaction-subscales and five subscales regarding the types of motivation. Confirmatory factor analyses with acceptable to excellent fit indices for all scales as well as a satisfactory simplex structure concerning the types of motivation support the suitability of the constructs. In addition, multiple regression analyses show positive relationships between the support of competence and both intrinsic and identified motivation. Consistent with theoretical considerations, both relationships were partially mediated by the satisfaction of competence.

Talent transfer: A systematic review

Background: The effectiveness of traditional talent development (TD) programs can be questioned. Meanwhile, an extra pathway to the top has made its appearance: Talent transfer (TT). The aim of TT is to fast-track talented athletes into the high-performance environment. The first TT initiatives and studies exploring the TT process have been carried out. Objective: This systematic review gives an overview of studies examining TT, by situating TT within the developmental framework, comparing formal and informal TT and investigating the similarities between donor and transfer sports in TT from elite and non-elite level. Methods: A search was conducted on the PubMed and PsychINFO databases. The analysis was done according to the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta Analyses) statement. Results: After screening on title and abstract and full-text review, five studies remained for inclusion. Although literature is still scarce, results show that TT can serve as an alternative pathway in addition to the traditional TD programs. Literature suggests that similarities between donor and transfer sports are helpful, but this is not a prerequisite for TT. Besides, psychological factors are perceived to play an important role. Results regarding other determining factors of TT are still lacking. Athletes, national governing bodies and TD programs might benefit from this additional pathway, but the effectiveness of formal and informal TT remains unclear. Conclusion: A lot remains unknown about TT, hence future research is needed to increase our understanding of TT and its contribution as an extra pathway to the top.