Sport Practitioners as Sport Ecology Designers: How Ecological Dynamics Has Progressively Changed Perceptions of Skill "Acquisition" in the Sporting Habitat.

Carl T Woods,Keith Davids,Duarte Araújo,Sam Robertson,Ian Mckeown,Martyn Rothwell

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00654

Abstract

Over two decades ago, Davids et al. (1994) and Handford et al. (1997) raised theoretical concerns associated with traditional, reductionist, and mechanistic perspectives of movement coordination and skill acquisition for sport scientists interested in practical applications for training designs. These seminal papers advocated an emerging consciousness grounded in an ecological approach, signaling the need for sports practitioners to appreciate the constraints-led, deeply entangled, and non-linear reciprocity between the organism (performer), task, and environment subsystems. Over two decades later, the areas of skill acquisition, practice and training design, performance analysis and preparation, and talent development in sport science have never been so vibrant in terms of theoretical modeling, knowledge generation and innovation, and technological deployment. Viewed at an ecological level of analysis, the work of sports practitioners has progressively transitioned toward the facilitation of an evolving relationship between an organism (athlete and team) and its environment (sports competition). This commentary sets out to explore how these original ideas from Davids et al. (1994) and Handford et al. (1997) have been advanced through the theoretical lens of ecological dynamics. Concurrently, we provide case study exemplars, from applied practice in high-performance sports organizations, to illustrate how these contemporary perspectives are shaping the work of sports practitioners (sport ecology designers) in practice and in performance preparation.

Highlights

The gardener cannot “grow” tomatoes, squash, or beans – she can only foster an environment in which the plants do so.– Stanley McChrystalThis is an exciting era for sports practitioners and applied scientists interested in understanding how to help athletes “grow and flourish” in complex performance surroundings
We seek to examine the progress made on complementing that emergent consciousness through the contemporary theoretical lens of ecological dynamics, exploring how the original ideas have been advanced in the intervening decades
The results of this case study indicated that the informational constraint manipulation led to the emergence of two distinct passing strategies utilized by players on either team: (i) one in which the players searched their workspaces for opportunities to slow their ball speed down and take lesser-risk disposal options when passing the ball to a teammate (1A) and (ii) another in which players searched their workspaces for opportunities to speed up their ball movement at the expense of seeming to take riskier disposal options when passing the ball to a teammate (1B)

Summary

Introduction

The gardener cannot “grow” tomatoes, squash, or beans – she can only foster an environment in which the plants do so.– Stanley McChrystalThis is an exciting era for sports practitioners and applied scientists interested in understanding how to help athletes “grow and flourish” in complex performance surroundings. Viewed at an ecological level of analysis, the work of sports practitioners is to facilitate a productive, evolving relationship between an organism (athlete and team) and its environment (sports competition) These ideas were originally promoted in sport science over two decades ago in theoretical concerns raised with traditional, mechanistic perspectives of movement coordination (Davids et al, 1994) and skill acquisition (Handford et al, 1997). An important insight was that skill “acquisition” was conceptualized to emerge from an evolving practice ecology, which necessitated sports practitioners to appreciate the complex, deeply integrated, and non-linear reciprocity of the organism (performer), task, and environment subsystems (Newell, 1986) Such a theoretical conceptualization challenged the traditional perspectives of skill acquisition, having profound implications for understanding the performer–environment relationship and for how sports practitioners viewed their role in the preparation of athletes for performance. It is through careful practice design that players can develop a deeply integrated relationship with their performance environment, learning how to co-adapt to and direct the self-organization of their behaviors in response to emergent problems (developing their knowledge of the AF performance environment)

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Conclusion