Student-athletes’ perceptions of the sport school experience while participating in Canadian hockey schools

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Date
2019
Authors
Decker, Matthew
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Abstract
The purpose of this study was to explore student-athletes’ perspectives of their lived experience while participating in a Canadian sport school. A sport school is an academic institution whose curriculum combines core academic courses with sport training or competition to allow high performance student-athletes to pursue academic and sporting success as part of the school day (Way, 2010). Participants consisted of nine high-performance student-athletes, ages 13-17, who participated in a Canadian hockey school to balance high academic achievement with sporting success. This interpretive, qualitative study used photo elicitation interviews to prompt discussion surrounding meaningful aspects of the student-athletes’ environment. Photo elicitation interviews allow the “participants to take a more active role in both data collection and the interview process by informing the direction of the interview with participant-produced photography” (Sawyer, Ucci, Jones, Smith, Fisher, 2018, p. 50). Data was analyzed using previously established guidelines for thematic analysis (Ritchie and Spencer, 2002). Results suggest that student-athletes perceive the sport school environment to provide opportunities for inter- and intrapersonal development in the presence of a strong network of social support and student-athlete-centred program structures. It is expected that this study will add to current literature pertaining to talent development and dual career pathways and provide insight into the sport school experience to help guide policy and practice.
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Keywords
Sport schools, Talent development, Dual career pathways, Student-athletes
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