The role of representative design in talent development: a comment on “Talent identification and promotion programmes of Olympic athletes”

                                                   Photo by Florian Schmetz on Unsplash

🚀 Article in 3 Sentences

1. The first part of the paper centres around these two important questions(i)why is there so much wastage of talent in such programmes? And (ii), why are there so few reported examples of successful talent transfer programmes?
2. The then propose how an ecological dynamics underpinning could enhance the development of existing protocols
3. They then discuss more specifically discuss how representative learning design could be used

🤝Impressions

Really interesting article that raised some important points to help reduce ‘talent wastage’ in development.

👨‍🏫Who should read this?

This would be a good read for any coach/organisation that use talent evaluation or interested in using it. I think it would also be beneficial for teachers/researchers to see the limitations of measuring FMS in decomposed tasks .

🎾How Article will influence my coaching

Evaluation Tasks should

• Embrace Variability
• Include the key information from the performance environment
• Ensure decisions are context dependent
• Representative affordances for action need to be present
• Consider individual differences

📃Takeaways for coaches

• Current Talent ID is tries to maximise limited resources available to organisations which ultimately ends up excluding potentially talented performers.
• Traditionally Talent Identification tends to highly value a smaller number of metrics that are measured in isolation from performance context.
• Typically decomposition is a big part of measurement and evaluation. Easier to measure small performance sub phases.
• Ecological Dynamics captures the continuous interactions of athletes with their performance environments. Performance Evaluation tests need to include specifying information for performers to regulate their actions.
• Current approach to talent evaluation does not value the functional role ‘degeneracy’ will play in successful performance.
• By focusing too much an certain aspects of performance they are deficient in we can fail to see how they can compensate or make up for these deficiencies in other ways.
• Representative Learning Design ensures that tasks simulate the constraints of the performance environment.
• RLD allows prescribers to understand the the usefulness and limitations of specific training tasks. The fidelity of a performers actions to should be analysed to compare practice and performance tasks.
• Current test designs don't contain the specifying information used by individuals in the performance context to regulate their actions.
• Tests should aim to recreate the emotional states experienced in performance during evaluation tests.

🥇Top Quotes

💡 Traditional talent identification models tend to be operationalised by assessment of a small number of heavily weighted variables typically measured in isolation from the performance context. 

💡 In reconsidering approaches to talent development, tasks should embrace variability, sample functional information sources from the performance environment, ensure decisions are context dependent, provide representative affordances for action, and consider individual differences 

💡 By using a principled theoretical framework in performance evaluation to develop the concept of representative design in sport applied to learning design and performance evaluation test design, sports scientists may reduce the amount of wastage in talent transfer and development programmes, allowing testing protocols to more faithfully simulate aspects of performance environments in sport. 

💡 In conclusion, a key challenge for sport scientists interested in talent identification is to consider environmental constraints and accurately predict the performance environment of the future. Such an advance in methodology may prevent talented individuals from being deselected from programmes 

🔍Resources 

Detailed Notes

Here's the link to my detailed breakdown of the paper. I go through each section of the piece and pick out the parts that stick out to me 

Mrtenniscoach-researchreview/The-Role-of-Representative-Design-in-Talent-Development

Reference

Pinder, R. A., Renshaw, I., & Davids, K. (2013). The role of representative design in talent development: a comment on “Talent identification and promotion programmes of Olympic athletes”. Journal of sports sciences, 31(8), 803-806.