Teaching Sport and Exercise Psychology

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to highlight how the field of sport and exercise psychology has evolved, especially from a curriculum point of view, and how this has influenced the teaching of sport and exercise psychology, including innovative strategies for assessment and approaches to teaching. After providing a brief history and current and future issues within the field, the purposes and rationales for curriculum development are discussed. The influences of the Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP) in the United States and the British Psychological Association and the Health and Care Professions Council in the United Kingdom on curriculum development and accreditation of programs helped determine the focus of curriculum development. Specifically, if individuals wanted to be certified in applied sport psychology, they had to complete certain courses and had a certain amount of supervised experiences. Next the core content areas that make up the field of sport and exercise psychology are discussed. These include many topic areas including individual differences (e.g., anxiety, personality, motivation), group dynamics (group cohesion, social loafing, group roles and norms), exercise related to well-being, adherence, and addictive behaviors, burnout, moral development, psychological skills, and psychology of injury. Strategies to enhance assessment and teaching/learning are offered including flipping the classroom, breaking classes into teams, teaching psychological skills through the use of Transtheoretical Model principles, as well as innovative ways to perform formative and summative assessments. These teaching strategies are followed by a discussion of some of the major challenges and lessons learned regarding the teaching of sport and exercise psychology. These challenges include determining the necessary requirements of becoming an accredited sport psychology graduate program as curriculum development will likely accreditation requirements for those universities wanting graduate-level accreditation as well as providing both more applied and theoretically oriented curriculum for those individuals wanting careers in applied sport psychology as well as those wanting to focus on becoming a university faculty member. Furthermore, future curriculums will need to include information geared toward professionals wanting to focus more on counseling or clinical interventions vs. those interested in sport performance.