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AUTHOR
David Tod
‘Don’t ever mix God with sports’: Christian religion in athletes’ stories of life transitions
Sport psychology researchers have increasingly recognized the need to adopt a holistic perspective when seeking to understand athletes’ adaptation to life transitions. The present study sought to understand how religion influences athletes’ journeys in sport and experiences of life transitions. Two Christian elite athletes participated in life story interviews which we analyzed via narrative analysis. Although the participants narratively separated religious belief from sport, religion, as a source of basic world assumptions and values, provided a broader framework of meaning and continuity in their sport lives. Yet, both stories involved a growing distance to institutional religious practi…
Hobby, career or vocation? Meanings in sports coaching and their implications for recruitment and retention of coaches
Rationale/Purpose: Traditional European sports clubs are facing increasing pressures to professionalise their services, while also encountering difficulties in the recruitment and retention of the coaching workforce. We used the concept of meaningful work to explore why coaching is worthwhile to coaches and how they have responded to the changes in the structural and narrative context of their work. \ud \ud Methodology: Drawing on narrative inquiry, we explored the various meanings and justifications that athletics (track and field) coaches assign to coaching in Finland and England. Twenty-three coaches (8 women, 15 men) aged 22 – 86 participated in narrative interviews that were analysed u…
A tale of three seasons: a cultural sport psychology and gender performativity approach to practitioner identity and development in professional football
The present study explored how the organisational and cultural experiences of a trainee Sport Psychology Consultant (SPC) working in professional football shaped her identity and professional development. Drawing on Cultural Sport Psychology (CSP) and gender performativity as guiding frameworks, we explored the first author’s identity development as a sport psychology practitioner-researcher within one professional football club over a 3-year duration. Traditional ethnographic data collection methods were employed, including, field notes and a reflective journal. Through creative non-fiction vignettes, we show that the traditional masculine discourse in professional football shaped the firs…
New Approaches to Identity in Sport
Welcome to this Special Issue of Journal of Sport Psychology in Action, which offers new theoretical, methodological and applied considerations on what we (the editors) regard as the important topi...