Career development and transitions of athletes: the International Society of Sport Psychology Position Stand Revisited

TLDR

The International Society of Sport Psychology Position Stand on athlete career development, originally published in 2009, has become outdated and inconsistently cited, prompting a need for revision as scholars have been consolidating athlete career knowledge into the athlete career discourse (ACD). This paper aims to update the ISSP Position Stand by outlining the decade-long evolution of the ACD, presenting recent trends in career development and transition research, discussing emerging assistance trends, and summarizing current status and future challenges. The authors achieve this by reviewing the evolution of the ACD, describing its current structure, and synthesizing recent research trends and postulates regarding athlete career development and transition.

Abstract

This paper is a comprehensive update of the International Society of Sport Psychology (ISSP) Position Stand on career development and transitions of athletes issued a decade ago (Stambulova, Alfermann, Statler, & Côté, 2009, ISSP Position Stand: Career development and transitions of athletes. International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 7, 395–412.). A need for updating the 2009 Position Stand has grown out of the increasing inconsistency between its popularity and high citation, on the one hand, and its dated content that inadequately reflects the current status of athlete career research and assistance, on the other. During the last decade, sport psychology career scholars worked on structuring the athlete career knowledge and consolidating it into the athlete career (sport psychology) discourse (ACD). The aims of this paper are to: (1) update the decade-long evolution and describe the current structure of the ACD, (2) introduce recent trends in career development and transition research, (3) discuss emerging trends in career assistance, and (4) summarise in a set of postulates the current status and future challenges of the ACD.