Tatiana V. Ryba

ISSP Position Stand: Culturally competent research and practice in sport and exercise psychology

The multicultural landscape of contemporary sport sets a challenge to rethink sport and exercise psychology research and practice through a culturally reflexive lens. This ISSP Position Stand provides a rigorous synthesis and engagement with existing scholarship to outline a roadmap for future work in the field. The shift to culturally competent sport and exercise psychology implies: (a) recognizing hidden ethnocentric philosophical assumptions permeating much of the current theory, research, and practice; (b) transitioning to professional ethics in which difference is seen as not inherent and fixed but as relational and fluid; and (c) focusing on meaning (instead of cause) in cross-cultural and cultural research projects, and cultural praxis work. In the paper, we first provide an overview of the concepts of cultural competence and ethics of difference. Second, we present a step-by-step approach for developing a culturally competent project rooted either within cross-cultural or cultural research. Third, we focus on cultural praxis as a project that blends theory, research, and lived culture of practice. Finally, we summarize main points in nine postulates and provide recommendations for enhancing cultural competence in the field of sport and exercise psychology.

Towards a conceptual understanding of acute cultural adaptation: a preliminary examination of ACA in female swimming

This paper considers a novel approach to researching adaptation in transnational athletes. The first part introduces a conceptualisation of acute cultural adaptation (ACA), which extends the current literature in sport psychology by offering original insights into mechanisms underpinning adaptive processes to a new cultural site during an interim relocation. Rereading a self-determination theory through the lens of cultural epistemology, the proposed theorisation suggests that ACA is realised in everyday practices drawing on a range of material and symbolic cultural resources to satisfy basic psychological needs. The second part of the paper engages the conceptualisation of ACA to make sense of the adaptive processes as experienced by female swimmers from Finland during their training camp in Australia. The study’s findings highlight relatedness as a discursive cultural space, offering a starting point for examining the role of culture in psychological functions during short-term relocation.

Methodology as a ritualized Eurocentrism: Introduction to the special issue

As we revise this introduction, a wave of backlash against migrant workers is spreading in Europe. Daily news of (illegal) immigration and increasing incidents of xenophobia, racism, and violence make BBC World News. The need for understanding cultural difference and tackling discrimination in all forms cannot be greater than at the time when our “global village” is spiraling down the economic recession. Academic scholarship is one of the venues to stimulate interest in challenging issues of shifting identities, competing belongingnesss, and contested cultures that have forcefully emerged as the result of geopolitical remapping of the world. This special issue examines questions of difference in relation to our research practices as a means of promoting ethical and moral engagement with those who are not part of the privileged sociocultural space.

The work of cultural transition : an emerging model

In today’s uncertain, fluid job market, transnational mobility has intensified. Though the concept of cultural transition is increasingly used in sport and career research, insight into the processes of how individuals produce their own development through work and relationships in shifting cultural patterns of meaning remains limited. The transnational industry of sports, in which athletes’ psychological adjustment to cultural transitions has implications for both performance and meaningful life, serves as a backdrop for this article. This study applied the life story method to interviews with 15 professional and semi-professional athletes, focusing particularly on the cultural transition aspect of their transnational athletic careers. The aims of the study were to identify the developmental tasks of cultural transitions and strategies/mechanisms through which cultural transitions were enacted. Three underlying mechanisms of the transition process that assisted athletic career adaptability were social repositioning, negotiation of cultural practices, and meaning reconstruction. Based on the data analyses, a temporal model of cultural transition is proposed. The results of this research provide professionals working in the fields of career counseling and migrant support with a content framework for enhancing migrant workers’ adaptabilities and psychological wellbeing.

A new perspective on adolescent athletes’ transition into upper secondary school: A longitudinal mixed methods study protocol

Abstract The challenge of combining elite sport and education into a dual career pathway remains to be a source of concern for many high-performance athletes. Previous research findings suggest that committed participation in both domains is highly demanding and success in one pursuit often comes at the expense of the other. There are emergent studies, however, that argue for the beneficial and complementary nature of dual career pathways. Consequently, we emphasize the importance of understanding the processes underlying differences in the development of athletes’ life trajectories. This article presents a study protocol to explore new methodological and analytical approaches that may extend current understandings of the ways psychological and sociocultural processes are interconnected in the construction of adolescent athletes’ identities, motivation, well-being, and career aspirations in the transitory social world.

Running, Being, and Beijing—An Existential Exploration of a Runner Identity

In this research, we explore the negotiation of a conflicted runner identity in a Finnish runner’s short-term migration to Beijing, China. We examine the historical and cultural construction of the runner identity and discuss the current discourses that constitute the modern runner subjectivities. From there, we continue with a Heideggerian existential-phenomenological analysis of the “boundary situation” when the project of competitive running is challenged due to environmental and cultural barriers in the migration. Our empirical inquiry is based on the first author’s autoethnographic account, written during and shortly after her 10-week stay in Beijing in March–June 2011. Two main themes, the loss of control and isolation, are examined, and an existential interpretation is paired with insight from Buddhist psychology. Finally, we conclude with implications for future research in sport and migration studies as well as practical considerations for the use of autoethnography in psychological research and practice.

A meta-study of athletic identity research in sport psychology: Current status and future directions

ABSTRACT The aim of this meta-study is to provide a critical synthesis of qualitative research on athletic identity in sport psychology. A total of 108 empirical studies were identified, including 63 quantitative studies, 40 qualitative studies, and five mixed methods studies. Qualitative and mixed methods studies were reviewed with the meta-study method, which involves a meta-analysis in terms of theoretical perspectives, methodologies, and findings. In our discussion we focus on evaluating and critiquing the current status of qualitative research on athletic identity and outlining recommendations for improving methodological rigor. It is concluded that both quantitative and qualitative studies need to be more explicit about their philosophical underpinnings and better grounded in psychological identity theory.

‘That is Why I Gave In to Age My Competitive Ability, but Not My Soul!’ A Spiritual Journey in Endurance Running

Abstract In this article, we explore the spiritual dimensions of endurance running. Utilizing existential psychology as our theoretical framework, we approach spirituality as a broad concept encompassing both religious and humanistic worldviews. Through the first author’s reflexive narrative and a discourse analysis of a Finnish runner’s magazine, Juoksija, this study aimed to gain a deeper understanding of how distance runners negotiate dominant discourses on sport and religion in the process of making running existentially meaningful to them. The research results suggest that spiritual aspects of running underlie, but are rarely given voice in, the performance discourse that is dominant in Finnish running culture. The spiritual and/ or existential dimensions become especially meaningful, however, when transitioning from elite-level sports. We suggest that discovering ‘spiritual running’ can be a protective element in athletic retirement, enabling runners to sustain running as a central part of their identity even after retirement from competitive sports. To highlight the fluidity of spirituality, this paper is written as a multi-voiced representation of the spiritual meaning of endurance running current in Finnish running culture(s).

Forward to the past: Puni's model of volitional preparation in sport

Abstract In this paper, we examine the Soviet notion of volitional preparation through the lens used by the prominent sport psychologist Avksenty Cezarevich Puni (1898–1986). First, we provide an English translation of Punis theoretical and practical tutorial on volitional preparation in sport. Then, we discuss how Punis model was grounded in the socio‐political and cultural particularities of his era and suggest some ways it might be used to stimulate future research and theorizing on the development of mental toughness. Finally, we offer some possible applications of the model for practitioners in preparing athletes for the rigors of competition

ISSP position stand: Transnationalism, mobility, and acculturation in and through sport

The historically unprecedented pace of internationalising sport industry and transnational movement of athletic talent in the last 20 years has heightened the need for developing new competencies in research and daily practice of sport psychology professionals. While academic literature in cultural sport psychology and praxis has been increasing, sport professionals and local organisations seem to give scant time and resources to stay abreast of complex social changes in transnational industry and to the development of cultural competencies. Stemming from the continuing need for qualified athletic personnel to support transitioning athletes and to achieve intercultural effectiveness in daily practices, our objectives in this position statement are to critically review and analyse the growing scholarship pertinent to various forms of transnational mobility and acculturation of athletic migrants, and subsequently provide recommendations for further use in research and applied contexts.