Jumping together: apprenticeship learning among elite trampoline athletes

Abstract

Background: Elite athletes often take part in group trainings and use teammates as learning resources. Despite this, research on the training and learning of elite athletes tends to characterise this training and learning as primarily individual.Purpose: This study, explores interrelated learning processes among elite athletes by exploring the performance-related learning that takes place between elite trampoline athletes in their training environment. The case will be made that such learning may be described most accurately as apprenticeship learning. Participants: The research focuses on a case study involving two Danish synchronised trampoline jumpers, Daniel and Peter, and their training as part of the Danish national trampolining team. Data collection: The data were generated through participant observation. During 10 days of observations, the principal researcher held informal talks with the athletes and the coach and took descriptive field notes. At the conclusion of the observation period, each athlete submitted to an individual, semi-structured interview. Data analysis: A theoretical reading of the data was carried out to facilitate interpretations that went beyond observations and the athletes' own descriptions, in order to reach a deeper understanding of how practice facilitates learning. Results: We encircle the athletes' interrelated learning processes by introducing the training environment of the national team and situations in which the athletes guide each other verbally or by jumping together. Discussion: We argue that the practice of the Danish national trampolining team can be considered a community of practice. Taking point of departure in our theoretical perspective we discuss how verbal and tacit bodily exchanges between athletes become opportunities for learning. Conclusion: In a practice containing varied resources for learning, we show that athletes can be each others' performance analysts, guiding each other through the use of metaphors and cues which disclose the practical meaning of how to overcome specific practical challenges. We also show that the athletes can be each others' sparring partners when they perform their sport together. In this form of interaction they directly feel and impact the other's performance, which means that both athletes encounter opportunities for learning.

Optimizing Performative Skills in Social Interaction: Insights From Embodied Cognition, Music Education, and Sport Psychology

“…In expert athletes, finally, Lund et al (2014) observed improved synchronization of professional trampolinists’ movements when the athletes remained engaged in the process of jumping together 11 . Here the authors describe how the athletes became progressively sensitive to their partners’ jumps through the sound produced by the two trampolines during training 12 .…”

“…The pursued objectives of individual players, in a way, are thus never fully “individual” − they are developed, transformed, and manipulated in light of specific collective constraints, opening a new horizon of possibilities for joint action. Along these lines, other studies have shown how a specific sensitivity to environmental information enabled co-performers and team members to grasp the state of the group’s coordination through the feeling of being together − or not being together − with others (see Lund et al, 2012, 2014). A significant part of these experiences corresponds to the immediate feelings of being affected by others (Colombetti and Torrance, 2009; He and Ravn, 2017).…”

Creative Togetherness. A Joint-Methods Analysis of Collaborative Artistic Performance

“…There is a vast literature on the psychological dynamics associated with creative teamwork in sports and the performing arts, including studies focused on group cohesion (see e.g., Spink, 1990 ; Heuzé et al, 2006 ; Lund et al, 2014 ; Glowinski et al, 2016 ), collective creativity ( Santos et al, 2016 , 2017 ; Bishop, 2018 ), coordination dynamics ( Keller et al, 2014 ; Laroche et al, 2014 ; Miyata et al, 2017 ; Himberg et al, 2018 ) as well as synchrony and self-other overlap ( Lakens, 2010 ; Lakens and Stel, 2011 ; Rabinowitch and Knafo-Noam, 2015 ; Tunçgenç and Cohen, 2016 ). Group cohesion is usually defined as “a dynamic process that is reflected in the tendency for a group to stick together and remain united in the pursuit of its instrumental objectives and/or for the satisfaction of member affective needs” ( Carron et al, 1998 , p. 213).…”

Successful talent development environments in female Scandinavian Handball

“…As an example, Barab and Plucker (2002) advanced a perspective on talent that acknowledges persons-in-situation and locates talent and ability fundamentally in the dynamic transaction among the individual, the physical environment, and the socio-cultural context. Although Barab and Plucker's work concerned learning and talent development in education, their approach to talent has influenced and proven to be applicable in a sporting context as well (Araujo, 2007;Christensen, Laursen, & Sørensen, 2011;Croston, 2013;Johnson, Edmonds, Jain, & Cavazos Jr., 2010;Lund, Ravn, & Christensen, 2014).…”