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.

Keywords:

• elite sport
• trampoline
• apprenticeship learning
• embodied skills
• guided rediscovery
• scaffolding
• community of practice

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Danish national trampoline jumping team. In particular, we would like to thank the two athletes, Peter and Daniel, and their coach, who kindly gave their time to participate in the study and candidly shared their knowledge. We would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. We conducted the study with the aid of a research grant from The Danish Council for Independent Research/Humanities. The study is part of a larger research project known as From Talent to Expert, based at University of Southern Denmark.

Notes

1. The real names of participants’ have been used. The participants have allowed the publication of their real names. In accordance with guidelines laid out by the Danish Data Protection Agency, their consent was obtained with the signing of a statement of consent.

2. Words and expressions in quotation marks and not accompanied by a citation are the words and expressions used by the athletes or their coach during observations or interviews.