In pursuit of becoming a senior coach: the learning culture for Australian Football League coaches

Background and Purpose: Given the turbulent and highly contested environment in which professional coaches work, a prime concern to coach developers is how coaches learn their craft. Understanding the learning and development of senior coaches (SCs) and assistant coaches (ACs) in the Australian Football League (AFL – the peak organisation for Australian Rules Football) is important to better develop the next generation of performance coaches. Hence the focus of this research was to examine the learning of SC and AC in the AFL. Fundamental to this research was an understanding that the AFL and each club within the league be regarded as learning organisations and workplaces with their own learning cultures where learning takes place. The purpose of this paper was to examine the learning culture for AFL coaches.

Method: Five SCs, 6 ACs, and 5 administrators (4 of whom were former coaches) at 11 of the 16 AFL clubs were recruited for the research project. First, demographic data were collected for each participant (e.g. age, playing and coaching experience, development and coach development activities). Second, all participants were involved in one semi-structured interview of between 45 and 90 minutes duration. An interpretative (hierarchical content) analysis of the interview data was conducted to identify key emergent themes.

Results: Learning was central to AFL coaches becoming a SC. Nevertheless, coaches reported a sense of isolation and a lack of support in developing their craft within their particular learning culture. These coaches developed a unique dynamic social network (DSN) that involved episodic contact with a number of respected confidantes often from diverse fields (used here in the Bourdieuian sense) in developing their coaching craft. Although there were some opportunities in their workplace, much of their learning was unmediated by others, underscoring the importance of their agentic engagement in limited workplace affordances.

Conclusion: The variety of people accessed for the purposes of learning (often beyond the immediate workplace) and the long time taken to establish networks of supporters meant that a new way of describing the social networks of AFL coaches was needed; DSN. However, despite the acknowledged utility of learning from others, all coaches reported some sense of isolation in their learning. The sense of isolation brought about by professional volatility in high-performance Australian Football offers an alternative view on Hodkinson, Biesta and James' attempt in overcoming dualisms in learning.     

我国难美体育项目竞赛表演市场价值趋向分析

运用社会调查法，以体育观众为研究对象，对我国难关体育项目竞赛表演市场的价值趋向进行分析，结果表明该市场具有直观性、趣味性和艺术性特征．     

旅游对民族旅游地文化影响探析

跨学科研究是旅游研究中一种重要的手段,文章从社会学、传播学和旅游学三角度出发,主要就跨民族文化传播、文化冲突和文化控制三方面,分析了民族旅游目的地因旅游产生的正、负影响,进而提出了加强法制建设、加强教育、加强舆论导向和发挥群体作用等具体措施,以图促进民族旅游的健康发展和民族旅游目的地文化的进步.     

超前与滞后的文化尴尬——中国现代主义文学本土化片论

现代主义进入中国文学由中国文化的独特接受机制进行了集体无意识的改造 ,逐渐形成非主流性、不稳定性、不完整性等特点。探究中国现代主义文学本土化的根本原因 ,要在“五四”中西思想文化冲突的大语境下 ,从社会存在、文化心理等多方面切入。中国危急历史迫切召唤启蒙 ,而严酷现实又迫使启蒙让位于救亡 ,中国社会文化土壤“滞后”于强调个体自我表现的现代主义 ,现代主义“超前”于深受传统制约的知识精英的文化心理。文化超前与滞后交错作用 ,发展与变异辩证统一     

库恩思想中的社会学转向

科学哲学中的社会学转向肇始于库恩,表现为从社会学的维度来建立科学划界标准、理论选择标准、真理观和科学发展图景等方面.库恩以此来反对传统科学哲学以逻辑和经验为基础的实证主义,并开启了科学哲学的新方向.     

Discriminating talent-identified junior Australian football players using a video decision-making task

This study examined if a video decision-making task could discriminate talent-identified junior Australian football players from their non-talent-identified counterparts. Participants were recruited from the 2013 under 18 (U18) West Australian Football League competition and classified into two groups: talent-identified (State U18 Academy representatives; n = 25; 17.8 ± 0.5 years) and non-talent-identified (non-State U18 Academy selection; n = 25; 17.3 ± 0.6 years). Participants completed a video decision-making task consisting of 26 clips sourced from the Australian Football League game-day footage, recording responses on a sheet provided. A score of “1” was given for correct and “0” for incorrect responses, with the participants total score used as the criterion value. One-way analysis of variance tested the main effect of “status” on the task criterion, whilst a bootstrapped receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve assessed the discriminant ability of the task. An area under the curve (AUC) of 1 (100%) represented perfect discrimination. Between-group differences were evident (P < 0.05) and the ROC curve was maximised with a score of 15.5/26 (60%) (AUC = 89.0%), correctly classifying 92% and 76% of the talent-identified and non-talent-identified participants, respectively. Future research should investigate the mechanisms leading to the superior decision-making observed in the talent-identified group.     

Quality of life perception of basketball master athletes: association with physical activity level and sports injuries

This study aimed to verify the prevalence and characteristics of sports injuries (SI) and determine the association between the physical activity level (PA) and SI with perception of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in Brazilian basketball master athletes. A cross-sectional study was conducted with 410 male master athletes, between 35 and 85 years of age (mean 52.26, SD ±11.83). The HRQoL was assessed using the Medical Outcomes Study – Short Form-36. The PA was evaluated using the International Physical Activity Questionnaire. Information regarding SI was collected using the Reported Morbidity Survey. Poisson regression, as estimated by the prevalence ratio (PR), was used as a measure of the association of PA and SI with HRQoL. The majority of athletes showed a high SI prevalence (58.3%) and reported one injury (67.8%) that occurred during training (61.1%) and primarily affected a lower limb (74.6%). The adjusted regression models showed a positive association of PA with the Functional Capacity (PR = 1.46, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.12–1.90) and Physical Component (PR = 1.32, 95% CI = 1.03–1.70) of HRQoL. Furthermore, the SI were negatively associated with HRQoL in Functional Capacity (PR = 1.85, 95% CI = 1.51–2.27), Physical Aspects (PR = 3.99, 95% CI = 3.08–5.18), Pain (PR = 1.65, 95% CI = 1.26–2.16), Social Functioning (PR = 1.79, 95% CI = 1.41–2.27), Emotional Aspects (PR = 4.40, 95% CI = 3.35–5.78), Mental Health domains (PR = 1.37, 95% CI = 1.06–1.68), Physical Component (PR = 2.35, 95% CI = 1.90–2.90) and Mental Component (PR = 2.65, 95% CI = 2.14–3.29). These results highlighted that master athletes showed a high SI prevalence, primarily in the lower limbs. PA positively correlates with the physical HRQoL domain, whereas SI may decrease the HRQoL levels of both physical and mental domains.     

Multivariate analyses of individual variation in soccer skill as a tool for talent identification and development: utilising evolutionary theory in sports science

The development of a comprehensive protocol for quantifying soccer-specific skill could markedly improve both talent identification and development. Surprisingly, most protocols for talent identification in soccer still focus on the more generic athletic attributes of team sports, such as speed, strength, agility and endurance, rather than on a player’s technical skills. We used a multivariate methodology borrowed from evolutionary analyses of adaptation to develop our quantitative assessment of individual soccer-specific skill. We tested the performance of 40 individual academy-level players in eight different soccer-specific tasks across an age range of 13–18 years old. We first quantified the repeatability of each skill performance then explored the effects of age on soccer-specific skill, correlations between each of the pairs of skill tasks independent of age, and finally developed an individual metric of overall skill performance that could be easily used by coaches. All of our measured traits were highly repeatable when assessed over a short period and we found that an individual’s overall skill – as well as their performance in their best task – was strongly positively correlated with age. Most importantly, our study established a simple but comprehensive methodology for assessing skill performance in soccer players, thus allowing coaches to rapidly assess the relative abilities of their players, identify promising youths and work on eliminating skill deficits in players.     

社会转型加速期加强城市社区建设的意义

目前我国正处于社会转型加速期，在这一时期社会生活的各个方面，包括人们的劳动方式，生活方式，价值观念等都发生了深刻变化，带来了一系列问题，这在我国的城市社会尤为明显，加强城市社区建设将有助于解决社会转型过程中出现的某些问题，本文对此作以探讨。