ABSTRACT
A range of personal, task and environmental constraints impinges on performance and learning during athlete development at different, related, timescales. A problem with current research on skill acquisition, expert performance and talent development in sport is that they typically proceed along distinct investigatory strands along different timescales of analysis. These focus separately on: (i) the macro-structure of developmental participation histories (e.g., estimating time spent in deliberate practice or unstructured play during prolonged periods of development); and (ii), the contexts of the micro-structure of practice (e.g., analysis over shorter timescales on the constraints of the tasks undertaken and the performance goals achieved in each session). Here we consider how the development of an athlete, through sporting activity in practice and competitive performance, has both a macro- and a contextual micro-structure that needs to be analysed at these shorter and longer timescales. Analyses of developmental activities have diverged in current scientific research. Understanding development of expertise in a talented individual requires analysis of larger ‘granules’ (macro-structure), plotting developmental trajectories of athletes over many years. Analysis of motor learning on the other hand (e.g., performance during and between individual practice sessions) involves a more ‘fine-grained’ analysis (micro-structure), focusing on the daily and weekly activities of athletes and coaches during training, especially the contexts and functions of practice (Davids, 2000). In this chapter we discuss how the umbrella framework of ecological dynamics can provide theoretical and practical insights from integration of data at these two scales of analysis (differing in granularity and time) for talent development in sport.
