Roots to Grow and Wings to Fly: An Ethnography of Psychosocial Development in Adolescent Performance Sport

This study aimed to explore the potential for sport to support psychosocial development in young people in a youth performance setting using a novel realistic evaluation approach. Part 1 of this two-paper series published in this Special Issue identified the programme theories-how the programme is s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inSports (Basel) Vol. 10; no. 4; p. 48
Main Authors Lara-Bercial, Sergio, McKenna, Jim
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Switzerland MDPI AG 22.03.2022
MDPI
Subjects
Basketball
Data collection
Ethnography
Field study
Intervention
life skills
Parents & parenting
personal development
Philosophy
positive youth development
Psychosocial development
Qualitative research
realist evaluation
Research methodology
youth sport
United Kingdom > UK
England
life skills
personal development
positive youth development
youth sport
realist evaluation
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Summary:This study aimed to explore the potential for sport to support psychosocial development in young people in a youth performance setting using a novel realistic evaluation approach. Part 1 of this two-paper series published in this Special Issue identified the programme theories-how the programme is supposed to work. A wide and deep network of context, generative mechanisms and outcomes responsible for psychosocial development in this youth performance basketball club emerged. The first paper also concluded that the outcomes and the experience are highly contextual and individualised. In this second part, the stakeholder's programme theories were tested during a full-season ethnography of the same club. Immersion in the day-to-day environment generated a fine-grain analysis of the processes involved, including: (i) sustained attentional focus; (ii) structured and unstructured skill-building activities; (iii) deliberate and incidental support; and (iv) feelings indicating personal growth. Personal development in and through sport is thus shown to be conditional, multi-faceted, time-sensitive and idiosyncratic. The findings of this two-part study are considered to propose a model of psychosocial development in and through sport. This heuristic tool is presented to support sport psychologists, coaches, club administrators and parents to deliberately create and optimise developmental environments.
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ISSN:2075-4663
2075-4663
DOI:10.3390/sports10040048