2134/15993
Dawn A. Aquilina
Dawn A.
Aquilina
Degrees of success: negotiating dual career paths in elite sport and university education in Finland, France and the UK
Loughborough University
2014
Student-athletes
Dual career
University education
Elite sport
Policy
Europe
Medical and Health Sciences not elsewhere classified
2014-10-06 10:52:45
Thesis
https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/thesis/Degrees_of_success_negotiating_dual_career_paths_in_elite_sport_and_university_education_in_Finland_France_and_the_UK/9609551
The requirements placed on Olympic and professional athletes in
contemporary world sport are such that they need to dedicate themselves
more and more to achieving excellence. This immediately implies that
most athletes' time is dedicated to developing their sporting career, with
very little time left to develop other aspects of their lives outside their
sport. The reality facing many elite athletes is that few are sufficiently
financially rewarded to allow them to make a living out of their sport, and
even fewer can rely on measures in place in their own country to assist
with the financial and psychological impacts of their retirement from sport
(Stambulova, Stephan, & Japhag, . 2007). This places even more
importance on the need for the athlete to either have a 'dual career' or
else to prepare for a post-athletic career while still participating in elite
sport.
However, though policy makers have begun to demonstrate an
awareness of these needs, and programmes have been developed to
assist in the educational and vocational development of athletes, little
effort has been made to identify how athletes perceive the choices which
face them and how they negotiate a way through the challenges of
developing and maintaining a dual career. To redress this, a life story
approach has been adopted during this research study to try to elicit
student-athletes' own life experiences and to identify and evaluate the
decision-making processes they go through, in order to combine an
academic and elite sporting career successfully.
The athletes selected for the development of life-stories are drawn from
three countries, Finland, France and the UK which reflect different
approaches to state intervention in sport/education (Amara, Aquilina,
Henry, & Taylor, 2004). Crucial to an evaluation of these national systems
is an understanding of what these policy systems are seeking to achieve.
This may be expressed in terms of a balance between the roles; rights
and responsibilities of the main stakeholders (including the athlete, the
university, the Member State and the European Union) which are
articulated within the study.
This research study therefore seeks to develop an understanding of the
perspectives on student-athletes' development in academic and sporting
terms, identifying the principal challenges faced and how these may be
overcome, and considers the implications of such insights for
practitioners and policy makers.