Background
The Winner For Life program is based on the latest research on life skills in sport and positive development in young athletes. It is also guided by the performance determinants of the Institut national du sport du Québec (National Sport Institute of Québec: INS Québec). According to this literature, in order to promote positive development and the development of life skills in youth, it is important to:
- Establish a positive climate by engaging all actors in the school sport setting of the athletes, including peers, adults working in education and sport, and parents. Accordingly, the program uses a collaborate approach between school sport stakeholders (e.g., coaches, teachers, administrators) and parents to foster the development of life skills in athletes.
- Explicitly teach life skills to student-athletes through activities that target skills development and transfer to other life settings (e.g., classroom, training, home). The program provides diversified educational content to assist all the stakeholders and parents to teach life skills development to student-athletes and promote transfer of these skills to other life settings.
Educational approach
The learning context provided by the program draw from a reference framework with a proven track record in the education and coaching fields (Trudel et al., 2013). For each life skill, school sport stakeholders and parents have the opportunity to engage in complementary learning situations to facilitate the teaching of life skills. These resources include:
- A web platform that provides access to teaching tools and activities, such as video clips, information(or)fact sheets, turnkey tools for use in the field, discussion(or)chat forums for collaborating with colleagues and parents, and reflection sheets.
- Workshops with specialists in each life skill.
Innovative aspects
The program was designed to meet the expressed needs of student-athletes and school sport stakeholders. Therefore, the research objectives and the work of the research team align with practical, real-life issues, which increases the potential for positive impacts in the different settings.
Because the parents are key factors for their children’s success in school and sport, they are involved in the process of teaching life skills to athletes. This ensures that the messages conveyed at school, in sport and at home are consistent.
A participatory action research design was chosen to allow adjustments throughout the project’s run, depending on the needs raised by the participants.
The program has a hybrid format, with both a distance and a face-to-face component. It is meant to be accessible and adaptable to the realities (such as time constraints) of school sport stakeholders and parents.
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- Lerner, R. M., Lerner, J. V., Almerigi, J. B., Theokas, C., Phelps, E., Gestsdottir, S., Naudeau, S., Jelicic, H., Alberts, A., Ma, L., Smith, L. M., Bobek, D. L., Richman-Raphael, D., Simpson, I., Christiansen, E. D., & von Eye, A. (2005). Positive youth development, participation in community youth development programs, and community contributions of fifth-grade adolescents. The Journal of Early Adolescence, 25(1), 17-71. https://doi.org/10.1177/0272431604272461
- Trottier, C., Toupin, J., Drapeau, V., Pépin, M-A., Frenette, E, Goulet, C., Falcão, W. R., Billaut, F., Pelet, S., Trudel, P., Veillette, R., & Lavoie, S. (2021). Évaluation des enjeux et besoins des élèves-athlètes faisant partie d’un programme Sport-études au secondaire. Ministère de l’Éducation du Québec, 161.
- Trudel, P., Culver, D., & Werthner, P. (2013). Looking at coach development from the coach-learner’s perspective: Considerations for coach development administrators. In Potrac, P., Gilbert, W., & Denison, J. (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Sports Coaching (pp. 375-387). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203132623