The historically unprecedented pace of internationalising sport industry and transnational movement of athletic talent in the last 20 years has heightened the need for developing new competencies in research and daily practice of sport psychology professionals. While academic literature in cultural sport psychology and praxis has been increasing, sport professionals and local organisations seem to give scant time and resources to stay abreast of complex social changes in transnational industry and to the development of cultural competencies. Stemming from the continuing need for qualified athletic personnel to support transitioning athletes and to achieve intercultural effectiveness in daily practices, our objectives in this position statement are to critically review and analyse the growing scholarship pertinent to various forms of transnational mobility and acculturation of athletic migrants, and subsequently provide recommendations for further use in research and applied contexts. © 2017 International Society of Sport Psychology
Objectives
In adolescence, personally meaningful autobiographical memories begin to integrate into cultural narrative structures to form a life story. We examined how and to what extent adolescent Finnish athletes narrate and integrate significant life events in sport and education into their identities and future narratives in order to delineate the different styles of athletes’ career construction.
Design
Longitudinal qualitative study.
Method
Ten female and eight male, elite junior athletes, aged 15–16 at baseline, participated in individual conversational interviews. The resulting interview data were analyzed using narrative analysis.
Results
Thirteen of 18 adolescent athletes drew primarily on the performance narrative plot to construct their life story and five of 18 athletes could not project into the future beyond their athletic selves. We identified three styles of athletes’ career construction. Employing musical terminology as a metaphor, the contrapuntal style entwines sport and education as harmonically related life-themes; monophonic style draws on a prominent athletic life-theme; and dissonant style is underpinned by discord of sport and education. We did not detect direct associations between narrative types (performance, discovery and relational) and career construction styles. We show the dominant style development within an exemplary story.
Conclusion
Exploration of the future and possible selves are critical for developing meaningful (dis)continuity of a dual career pathway from adolescence to adulthood. We conclude that dual career discourse is gaining traction in directing young athletes’ future thinking; however, a broader repertoire of exemplary success stories which allow athletes to imagine achieving excellence in diverse ways would enable them to channel action. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd
Transnationalism, as part of the globalization processes, has transformed the lifestyle and the course of athletes' careers. This presents previously unexplored challenges encountered by student-athletes in combining athletic and academic pursuits. In this article, we propose a conceptual framework for the taxonomy of transnational dual careers (DC).
Design and method
Narrative inquiry from the life story perspective was used to elicit and analyze career narratives of six transnational athletes (3 male and 3 female), generating about five interview hours per athlete. The developmental transition from secondary to higher education was chosen as a key transition to classify the DC pathways. Additional insights into DC mobilization across international borders were gleaned by employing the typologies of sport migrants developed in the sport labor migration research.
Three patterns of transnational DC were discerned from the narratives based on the direction of geographic mobility and the core migration motive underpinning the storyline. Within the present dataset, the taxonomies are: (1) Within EU mobility: the sport exile DC pathway; (2) Mobility to the U.S.A.: the sport mercenary DC pathway; and (3) Mobility to the U.S.A.: the nomadic cosmopolitan DC pathway.
Conclusions
The identified transnational DC paths are not exhaustive, and highlight possibilities of individual development, unfolding through the matrices of social structures in a given location. Further research with a diverse set of transnational athletes is needed to test and expand the proposed taxonomy. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd.
Sport psychology is expanding in how it might be utilised to benefit human activity and social life. Performance enhancement remains central to the field; however, there is growing interest in how sport psychology practices and sport contexts can be crafted to enable social missions. The classification of social missions through the context of sports might vary from one sport development agency or scholar to the next, and could relate to health and well-being, sport for peace, social development, disease prevention, and positive youth development. This position stand has been conceived to situate the International Society of Sport Psychology within sport for development for the betterment of people in communities, countries, and regions. This ISSP Position Stand is structured into a historical overview of sports as social missions, sport for cultural exchange and social justice, sport for health and well-being, sport for positive youth development, sport for peace, and postulations and recommendations. © 2015 International Society of Sport Psychology
In this review article, a content area of athlete career in sport psychology is analyzed through the cultural lens: that is, through paradigmatic perspectives of cross-cultural psychology, cultural psychology, and cultural studies. Based on previous review papers, but mainly on the chapters of the anthology Athletes' Careers across Cultures, we identified three dominant (North American, Australian, and European) and two emerging (Asian and South American) cultural discourses in the career topic. These discourses are characterized by research foci, theoretical frameworks, and career assistance programs in action. Our critical analysis of career research and assistance around the world further indicates a need for more contextualized and culturally competent career projects, which blend theory/research, applied work, and lived culture into cultural praxis. To satisfy this need, a new paradigm termed cultural praxis of athletes' careers is suggested. In conclusion, we emphasize the importance of review papers in negotiating emerging terminology, values, principles, and approaches underlying the career topic, and share some ideas for future reviews in career research and assistance.