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Harwood_A holistic perspective on career development in UK female soccer players_A negative case analysis ACCEPTED.pdf (304.88 kB)

A holistic perspective on career development in UK female soccer players: A negative case analysis

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journal contribution
posted on 2016-04-05, 08:49 authored by Adam Gledhill, Chris Harwood
Objectives: The purpose of this study was to examine dual career experiences of UK-based female youth soccer players from a holistic perspective with a view to producing a substantive grounded theory of talent development and career transitions in UK female soccer. Methodology: A Grounded Theory methodology (Corbin & Strauss, 2008) was used. Negative case (Denzin, 1989) former female soccer players (N=13), their best friend (N=13), soccer coaches (N=4), and teachers (N=8) took part in semi-structured interviews about factors associated with talent development and career transitions in female youth soccer. Results: Multiple social agents (players, team-mates, peers, teachers, parents and siblings) need to optimally interact to ensure that an optimal talent development and learning environment is created. This will provide a supportive holistic talent development environment and lead to adaptive player-level changes that will lead to a greater chance of successful career development. Conclusions: This study presents a rich understanding of the dual careers of players who did not make it in female soccer. By considering their perspectives alongside of a range of important social agents, we have been able to construct a substantive grounded theory of talent development and career transitions in UK female youth soccer. As a result, these findings may contribute to policy and practice development in UK female youth soccer

History

School

  • Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

Published in

Psychology of Sport and Exercise

Volume

21

Pages

65 - 77

Citation

GLEDHILL, A. and HARWOOD, C.G., 2015. A holistic perspective on career development in UK female soccer players: A negative case analysis. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 21, pp. 65-77.

Publisher

© Elsevier

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2015

Notes

This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Psychology of Sport and Exercise and the definitive published version is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2015.04.003

ISSN

1469-0292

Language

  • en