Holistic approach to understanding a dual career environment at a Swedish university

• Dual career (DC; combination of sport and studies) research is traditionally focused on student-athletes’ developmental demands and coping resources. To support athletes’ talent development in combination with education, sport federations and universities (and others) co-create high performance centers or DC hubs. Research into these environments is limited. Inspired by the holistic ecological approach, and particularly by the athletic talent development environment model (Henriksen, 2010), we created the dual career development environment (DCDE) working model and then used this model to explore a ‘golf and study’ environment at a Swedish university. The DCDE model is structured into three levels (micro, meso, and macro) and three domains (study, sport, and private) taking into account societal institutions, sport and education systems. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with nine university elite golf-students about perceived support during their transition to, and first year within the environment, and with four stakeholders (e.g., coach, study director) to discover their perspective on the environment and the support they provided. Observations and documents collected from the environment web-page also supported the analysis. Key features of the investigated DCDE related mainly to the micro and meso levels and included: collaborative arrangements between sport and academic stakeholders aimed at facilitating the student-athletes’ DCs, high quality coaching and facilities, stakeholders’ shared focus on a ‘whole person’ including, for example, student- athletes’ physical and psychological well-being. It was also found that the daily life of the student-athletes was concentrated around the campus gym as a place to meet and discuss various sport, study and personal life issues with each other and with their physical coach (also a university teacher). Further study is planned to target the macro level of the environment to advance these findings. 

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Psykologi -- Tillämpad psykologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Psychology -- Applied Psychology (hsv//eng)

Keyword

dual career

dual career development environment

holistic development

student-athlete

support

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)