A psycho-educational curriculum for sport career transition practitioners: Development and evaluation

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to extend sport career transition knowledge by developing and evaluating a psycho-educational curriculum for sport career transition practitioners. Study 1 provides an extensive overview of organisational intervention programmes for sport career transition, as well as of training and development programmes for sport career transition practitioners from 19 countries worldwide. The purpose of Study 1 was to examine the following five features of sport career transition organisational intervention programmes and training and development programmes for sport career transition practitioners: 1) At the government level, which organisation is responsible for the delivery of sport career transition organisational intervention programmes? 2) What is the typical strategy of sport career transition organisational intervention programmes? 3) Which activities and events are included in sport career transition organisational intervention programmes? 4) Who is responsible for the delivery of sport career transition organisational intervention programmes? and 5) Do sporting organisations have training and development programmes for sport career transition practitioners? Findings from Study 1 were used to inform Study 2 and to supplement the literature review. According to the literature, training and development programmes for sport career transition practitioners remain scarce, while the number of sport career transition organisational intervention programmes is gradually increasing. The purpose of Study 2 was to develop and evaluate a novel psycho-educational curriculum for sport career transition practitioners. There were three stages of development and evaluation: (1) content development, (2) curriculum design and (3) curriculum evaluation. To achieve the goal of Study 2, a focus group and a two-round Delphi method were implemented. The final version of the psycho-educational curriculum is presented in Chapter 5. The purpose of Study 3 was to test a key aspect of the psycho-educational curriculum developed in Study 2 concerning 38 competences of sport career transition practitioners. A curriculum package consisting in the key parts from the overall curriculum was developed for Study 3. The findings revealed that the curriculum package positively affected the confidence of the study participants in 38 competences concerning sport career transition. This demonstrates that the curriculum is effective for the development of sport career transition practitioners, as the study participants exhibited greater confidence on all four factorsDual Career Transition Management, Skill Transfer, Social Support, and Career Planningwhen completing the curriculum package. The discussion in Chapter 7 focuses on both the theoretical and practical implications of the research, limitations and future research directions. In conclusion, the findings presented here deepen the knowledge of sport career transition in the areas of organisational intervention programmes for high performance athletes and training and development programmes for sport career transition practitioners. In addition, a novel psycho-educational curriculum for sport career transition practitioners is developed and evaluated.