Talent Identification and
Development
L1 – introduction
Article: quantifying the extent to which junior performance predicts senior
performance
Talent in sports can be understood as a youth athletes potential for the long term
development of a high performance level in future elite sports. Talent
identification includes the forecasting of the youth athletes future performance
development, but the long term prognostic validity of often poor. Most talent
selection procedures have one fundamental ideal in common: predicting future
performance by past or current performance. The assumption is that high level of
performance in youth is a prerequisite for the development of a high level of
performance in adulthood. This view follows theories of giftedness and expertise.
Predictors of junior performance and senior performance are different and in
some cases opposite. Biological maturation can also have an influence. Multiple
factors develop at different timescales and rates within individuals and between
individuals. Predictors of performance do not necessarily predict persistence. And
at junior level championships, athletes typically compete within a 2-year age
group, whereas in the senior level the athletes compete with peers from a wider
range.
This study looks at the correlation between junior and senior performance. The
junior performance explained only 2.2% of the reliable variance in
senior performance. Whereas 97.8% of the variance of senior performance was
explained by factors other than junior performance. These findings were robust
across ages, types of sports and sexes. The younger the age category, the
lower the association between junior performance and senior
performance. Findings indicate that predictors of early junior performance and
of later senior performance differ and are partly opposite. And that successful
juniors and successful seniors are largely two disparate populations. These
findings have two critical theoretical implications: it runs counter to claims made
by traditional theories of giftedness and expertise. And the results indicate quite
clearly that predictors of performance from studies among junior athletes cannot
be justifiably be extrapolated to senior performance. From a applied perspective,
enhancing a youth athletes junior performance does not reliably lead to
increased senior performance. Talent identification and promotion programs
that preferentially select the highest-performing youth athletes cannot be
confident they are selecting the highest future senior performers. Youth
athletes current performance is not a sensitive criterion for the
evaluation of talent promotion programs or of youth sport programs. A
more adequate evaluation criterion of youth talent promotion is the future
performance progress the youth athletes make during the years into adulthood.
,Article: is it time to retire ‘talent’ from discussions of athlete development?
The concept of talent is neither well-defined nor understood. There are many
‘definitions’:
- ‘Outstanding systematically developed skills’
- ‘a special ability that allows someone to reach excellence in some activity
in a given domain’
- ‘functional relationship developed between a performer and a specific
performance environment.’
- A combination of: genetics, identifiable and measurable indicators of future
potential, early basis for predicting who succeed, found in a minority and
relatively domain-specific
- Talent is positioned as innate, multi-dimensional, emergenic, dynamic and
symbiotic.
The inconsistent definition of talent is only one of the factors making athlete
assessment and performance forecasting so difficult. Most approaches to
evaluating athlete talent have significant flaws. They usually begin during early
stages of the athlete pathways. It is unclear what attributes at an earlier
timepoint contribute to future successful sporting performance and sports evolve
and change over time. Selections likely have a disproportionate impact early in
development. Approaches to assessment do not normally reflect the dynamic and
chaotic nature of sport as a system, or development as highly individualized
process. The use of simplistic ‘one-size-fits-all’ approaches have limited value.
The way sports are structured has led to persistent biases that affect the
efficiency of athlete development. When coaches are aware of the developmental
differences, the relative age effects disappear. Other biases are the maturational
bias, socioeconomic biases and geographic biases. Talent decisions need to
consider both current performance and potential.
Many sport systems have resource limitations that affect athlete identification,
selection and development. These limitations often require coaches and other
scouts to make decisions about which athletes get access to these available
resources using their own personal ‘models’ for talent. Perceptions of talent make
it easier for someone to assign value or provide praise or criticism. In reality,
sport performance is much more complicated and impossible to split into the
simple dichotomy as having talent or not.
Often, the efficacy of a identification practices is judges through the success of
the athletes performance with the team. This concept of judging the quality of a
decision solely based on the outcome is considered as a outcome bias. This type
of thinking fails to acknowledge the interaction between the decision-making and
development processes in place for developing talent after it has been identified.
Talent identification may not be feasible due to a limited understanding of how
elements of human development emerge and interact over time.
,By focusing on talent as fixed it may devalue the importance of time spent in
high quality practice and long-term process approaches. This fixed approach also
has a psychological effect on how athletes think about their engagement in sport.
De-emphasizing the concept of talent in identification, selection and development
practices may allow sporting governing organizations to support more athletes. It
is recommended to delay athlete identification and selection until post maturity
so that athletes remain in the system for longer, thereby allowing more time and
opportunity to develop their skills.
There are two thinkings to promote the change of the use of talent in sport
identification and development:
- Retiring from talent it leaves more room for terms that may be more
representative and appropriate (like, player, athlete, performer). They
would also consider re-naming the athlete development programs and
education models. It may also discourage early identification. And helps to
solve the blurry question of what talent is and how it is applied in some
sport settings. If could improve clarity in policy and education documents
to enhance the experiences and development of youth sport participants.
- Not totally retire it could be counterproductive to retire from all terms,
as the term could still have value in the complexity of talent in athlete
development. It may help consider performance and potential youth
athletes to help make decisions for athlete identification and selection.
More opportunities are created for more individuals based on the idea of
talent. This could also help in keeping the athletes with potential instead of
only looking at the current performance. Removing the word form the
context could be problematic is a way that all individuals have equal
potential for eventual success. Whereas it is important to recognize that
some participants have actual disadvantages (e.g. due to lower
socioeconomic resources etc.) and recognize that appropriate support can
be provided.
It would be a good idea to retire from the term being used generically and
incorrectly. But removing it completely could result in a detrimental and
unproductive concept to the long-term development of athletes. As it may
promote views that are too simplistic to capture the complex interaction between
environmental, experimental, and biological factors.
Article: the complex and conflicting beliefs about talent
Coaches can describe an athlete by saying he has talent in a specific sense or
more generally to say the is a talent. But the term talent is very vague and has
many closely related synonymous. Gagne made the Differentiated Model of
Giftedness and Talent, where he put gifts on one side of the spectrum and
talent on the other. He believed that maturation or even informal learning
resulted in gifts, whereas talent was the product of development and thus, in
theory, gifts can become talents. Potential is describes as “latent qualities or
abilities that, if developed appropriately, may lead to future success; having or
showing the capacity to develop into something in the future”. Howe et al.
, proposed a five-point definition of talent: 1) genetically transmitted
structures 2) some advanced indications that could identify the presence of talent
before mature performance has been demonstrated 3) these early indications
provide a basis for predicting who is likely to excel 4) only a minority is talented
5) talent are relatively domain-specific. The coaches who believes talent is the
product of genetics may behave differently compared to a coach who believes
talent is the product of hard work.
This study fount that coaches do use the term talent and believe that talent
exists. They use this term to describe their best athletes and/or abilities of the
athlete. They also stated that talent has multidimensional qualities, it includes
psychological, physical, emotional and physiological components. Talent also
appeared to be context-specific, complex and nuanced. Talent can exist in
multiple forms; raw and/or trained. So they to acknowledge the nature vs
nurture debate and noting that talent has a genetic component. Findings helped
to highlight the potential interest (naturalness bias) in those who are described
as being a natural talent. The individuals attitude about talent affects their
motivations, behaviors, and performance (also known as Growth Mindset). People
have beliefs regarding the source of their abilities and that a view of sporting
talent as something a person either has or does not has the potential to influence
both the coaches and athletes behavior in significant ways.
The use of the term talent can be problematic and it may not serve any real use
in practice without concrete definitions and reliable measurement tools. But
trying to identify a uniform understanding of talent may never be feasible
because of its dynamic an fluid nature.
Development
L1 – introduction
Article: quantifying the extent to which junior performance predicts senior
performance
Talent in sports can be understood as a youth athletes potential for the long term
development of a high performance level in future elite sports. Talent
identification includes the forecasting of the youth athletes future performance
development, but the long term prognostic validity of often poor. Most talent
selection procedures have one fundamental ideal in common: predicting future
performance by past or current performance. The assumption is that high level of
performance in youth is a prerequisite for the development of a high level of
performance in adulthood. This view follows theories of giftedness and expertise.
Predictors of junior performance and senior performance are different and in
some cases opposite. Biological maturation can also have an influence. Multiple
factors develop at different timescales and rates within individuals and between
individuals. Predictors of performance do not necessarily predict persistence. And
at junior level championships, athletes typically compete within a 2-year age
group, whereas in the senior level the athletes compete with peers from a wider
range.
This study looks at the correlation between junior and senior performance. The
junior performance explained only 2.2% of the reliable variance in
senior performance. Whereas 97.8% of the variance of senior performance was
explained by factors other than junior performance. These findings were robust
across ages, types of sports and sexes. The younger the age category, the
lower the association between junior performance and senior
performance. Findings indicate that predictors of early junior performance and
of later senior performance differ and are partly opposite. And that successful
juniors and successful seniors are largely two disparate populations. These
findings have two critical theoretical implications: it runs counter to claims made
by traditional theories of giftedness and expertise. And the results indicate quite
clearly that predictors of performance from studies among junior athletes cannot
be justifiably be extrapolated to senior performance. From a applied perspective,
enhancing a youth athletes junior performance does not reliably lead to
increased senior performance. Talent identification and promotion programs
that preferentially select the highest-performing youth athletes cannot be
confident they are selecting the highest future senior performers. Youth
athletes current performance is not a sensitive criterion for the
evaluation of talent promotion programs or of youth sport programs. A
more adequate evaluation criterion of youth talent promotion is the future
performance progress the youth athletes make during the years into adulthood.
,Article: is it time to retire ‘talent’ from discussions of athlete development?
The concept of talent is neither well-defined nor understood. There are many
‘definitions’:
- ‘Outstanding systematically developed skills’
- ‘a special ability that allows someone to reach excellence in some activity
in a given domain’
- ‘functional relationship developed between a performer and a specific
performance environment.’
- A combination of: genetics, identifiable and measurable indicators of future
potential, early basis for predicting who succeed, found in a minority and
relatively domain-specific
- Talent is positioned as innate, multi-dimensional, emergenic, dynamic and
symbiotic.
The inconsistent definition of talent is only one of the factors making athlete
assessment and performance forecasting so difficult. Most approaches to
evaluating athlete talent have significant flaws. They usually begin during early
stages of the athlete pathways. It is unclear what attributes at an earlier
timepoint contribute to future successful sporting performance and sports evolve
and change over time. Selections likely have a disproportionate impact early in
development. Approaches to assessment do not normally reflect the dynamic and
chaotic nature of sport as a system, or development as highly individualized
process. The use of simplistic ‘one-size-fits-all’ approaches have limited value.
The way sports are structured has led to persistent biases that affect the
efficiency of athlete development. When coaches are aware of the developmental
differences, the relative age effects disappear. Other biases are the maturational
bias, socioeconomic biases and geographic biases. Talent decisions need to
consider both current performance and potential.
Many sport systems have resource limitations that affect athlete identification,
selection and development. These limitations often require coaches and other
scouts to make decisions about which athletes get access to these available
resources using their own personal ‘models’ for talent. Perceptions of talent make
it easier for someone to assign value or provide praise or criticism. In reality,
sport performance is much more complicated and impossible to split into the
simple dichotomy as having talent or not.
Often, the efficacy of a identification practices is judges through the success of
the athletes performance with the team. This concept of judging the quality of a
decision solely based on the outcome is considered as a outcome bias. This type
of thinking fails to acknowledge the interaction between the decision-making and
development processes in place for developing talent after it has been identified.
Talent identification may not be feasible due to a limited understanding of how
elements of human development emerge and interact over time.
,By focusing on talent as fixed it may devalue the importance of time spent in
high quality practice and long-term process approaches. This fixed approach also
has a psychological effect on how athletes think about their engagement in sport.
De-emphasizing the concept of talent in identification, selection and development
practices may allow sporting governing organizations to support more athletes. It
is recommended to delay athlete identification and selection until post maturity
so that athletes remain in the system for longer, thereby allowing more time and
opportunity to develop their skills.
There are two thinkings to promote the change of the use of talent in sport
identification and development:
- Retiring from talent it leaves more room for terms that may be more
representative and appropriate (like, player, athlete, performer). They
would also consider re-naming the athlete development programs and
education models. It may also discourage early identification. And helps to
solve the blurry question of what talent is and how it is applied in some
sport settings. If could improve clarity in policy and education documents
to enhance the experiences and development of youth sport participants.
- Not totally retire it could be counterproductive to retire from all terms,
as the term could still have value in the complexity of talent in athlete
development. It may help consider performance and potential youth
athletes to help make decisions for athlete identification and selection.
More opportunities are created for more individuals based on the idea of
talent. This could also help in keeping the athletes with potential instead of
only looking at the current performance. Removing the word form the
context could be problematic is a way that all individuals have equal
potential for eventual success. Whereas it is important to recognize that
some participants have actual disadvantages (e.g. due to lower
socioeconomic resources etc.) and recognize that appropriate support can
be provided.
It would be a good idea to retire from the term being used generically and
incorrectly. But removing it completely could result in a detrimental and
unproductive concept to the long-term development of athletes. As it may
promote views that are too simplistic to capture the complex interaction between
environmental, experimental, and biological factors.
Article: the complex and conflicting beliefs about talent
Coaches can describe an athlete by saying he has talent in a specific sense or
more generally to say the is a talent. But the term talent is very vague and has
many closely related synonymous. Gagne made the Differentiated Model of
Giftedness and Talent, where he put gifts on one side of the spectrum and
talent on the other. He believed that maturation or even informal learning
resulted in gifts, whereas talent was the product of development and thus, in
theory, gifts can become talents. Potential is describes as “latent qualities or
abilities that, if developed appropriately, may lead to future success; having or
showing the capacity to develop into something in the future”. Howe et al.
, proposed a five-point definition of talent: 1) genetically transmitted
structures 2) some advanced indications that could identify the presence of talent
before mature performance has been demonstrated 3) these early indications
provide a basis for predicting who is likely to excel 4) only a minority is talented
5) talent are relatively domain-specific. The coaches who believes talent is the
product of genetics may behave differently compared to a coach who believes
talent is the product of hard work.
This study fount that coaches do use the term talent and believe that talent
exists. They use this term to describe their best athletes and/or abilities of the
athlete. They also stated that talent has multidimensional qualities, it includes
psychological, physical, emotional and physiological components. Talent also
appeared to be context-specific, complex and nuanced. Talent can exist in
multiple forms; raw and/or trained. So they to acknowledge the nature vs
nurture debate and noting that talent has a genetic component. Findings helped
to highlight the potential interest (naturalness bias) in those who are described
as being a natural talent. The individuals attitude about talent affects their
motivations, behaviors, and performance (also known as Growth Mindset). People
have beliefs regarding the source of their abilities and that a view of sporting
talent as something a person either has or does not has the potential to influence
both the coaches and athletes behavior in significant ways.
The use of the term talent can be problematic and it may not serve any real use
in practice without concrete definitions and reliable measurement tools. But
trying to identify a uniform understanding of talent may never be feasible
because of its dynamic an fluid nature.
