Definition and model of life skills transfer

摘要

For a sport skill to be considered a life skill, it must be successfully transferred and applied beyond sport. Life skills transfer is an essential process, but it has yet to be fully delineated within the sport psychology literature. The purpose of the current paper is to present a definition and model of life skills transfer and outline future research needs. A critical review of the literature within sport psychology and other learning-based disciplines is offered to assess our current understanding of learning transfer. A definition and model of transfer are then presented, focusing on the athlete learner's experience of life skills transfer. Within the model, we first examine how athletes bring personal assets and autobiographical experiences to sport. Second, we explore how sport is a learning environment with distinctive demands, programme designs, and coach characteristics and strategies. Third, we explain how transfer contexts provide environmental conditions, which, depending on how they are interpreted or experienced, can help or hinder the transfer of life skills. Ultimately, we postulate that an individual experiences life skills transfer as an ongoing process whereby he/she continually interacts and interprets his/her environments to produce positive or negative life skills transfer outcomes.