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31 Dec 20, 4 tweets, 3 min read
This matters 👇 It starts with worries about talk of pre-pubescent children "using the quasi-mythopoetic terms" ‘elite’ and ‘international’ & addresses growing tendencies to view youth athletes as "commodities" - well done @andykirkland71 & @markstkhlm 👀
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P… The authors may well be studying phenomena within an environ
Argument: "There Is No Such Thing as an International Elite Under-9 Soccer Player" 💪

Their reference to "commodification" links to the biggest of all for me: talk of "producing" athletes / players 😡

Language matters.

We never (ever) "make" (anything) out of young people! How Elite Athletes Are Made
We need to see this through to its logical conclusion... which is that "talent pathways" are NOT production lines.

What/how we write reflects convention... so let's get beyond criticism of individual contributors - it's CONVENTIONAL to write like this 👇

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1339945…
Fundamentally, we (across sport) need to be reviewing our social license to continue operating as we have in the past 👇

Let's heed @ChristianSeelos' "Please don't make systems work for people, because that is everything that's wrong with the sector" 😍

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1334928…

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More from @SingleBlade1

Greg Spencer Profile picture
31 Dec 20
"Where old-school conspiracists amassed what looked a lot like evidence; the new school’s calling cards are repetition and weaponized equivocation [...] if you don’t even pretend to have evidence, there’s nothing for your opponent to debunk" @rachelefraser cambridgereview.cargo.site/Dr-Rachel-Fras…
"Michael Gove’s infamous remark that ‘the British people have had enough of experts’ [...] has been a boon for reactionary technocrats eager to pathologise an ignorant public and impose elite gatekeeping on social media.

C.f. "the spectre of rule by experts" - a serious concern? The new conspiraicism’s attitude to expertise
Cassam's prescription sounds depressingly familiar:

1. Arguments & evidence;

2. Critical thinking skills & intellectual virtues;

3. Unmasking the propagandistic nature of conspiracy theories;

Reminiscent of this paper from coach development world...

journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/…
Read 6 tweets
Greg Spencer Profile picture
28 Dec 20
How do we connect sense-makers around:

1. A common respect for the voices of young people;

2. The diverse experiences of those who have spent their lives helping others find meaning in movement?

As @ImSporticus notes, this CSJ paper is not the answer!

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1343452…
Does school-based sport have a place? Of course! For some, school sport will be a way of becoming entangled in the lives of others in ways which will lead to a pastime becoming a valued, stabilising influence throughout life. That's awesome! #becausehuman
But as @ImSporticus notes, it's not "sport" that has the impact. That's down to "good people intentionally designing positive experiences through sport" - which is not the same thing!

Ideal: those involved co-creating the positive experiences! #ownership

Sports charity Made by Sports found that children and young
Read 15 tweets
Greg Spencer Profile picture
18 Dec 20
OK - I don't doubt this is well-intentioned & in good faith... but fundamentally, it embeds talent-pathway / elite sport "exceptionalism" in ways which justify sustaining norms of elite-athlete-transfer & reliance on lots of "-ologies" (declarative professional knowledge).
Keith Davids is cited... but aside from a token reference to non-linearity, the report reads as if his lifetime's work (& the contributions of his colleagues around the world) has no relevance & poses no major challenges to a "business-as-usual" approach.
sportsmedicine-open.springeropen.com/articles/10.11…
Crucially, the "new" position statement doesn't even register challenges from the likes of @markstkhlm - who has called into question the ethics of sustaining established priorities & asks if we should even have a social license to continue with them...

footblogball.wordpress.com/2020/12/04/its…
Read 6 tweets
Greg Spencer Profile picture
6 Dec 20
"A proliferation of competing narratives is characteristic of the phase Thomas Kuhn calls ‘proto-science’ [...] This is where learning/training/education is today: proto-science. A mixed bag of popular stories about how people learn" - @shackletonjones 👀
aconventional.com/2020/05/just-s…
"I write this having recently read a number of comments/posts to the effect that learning ‘is just too complicated’ that there are always ‘many right answers’ or ‘everything depends on context’. This is the pre-evolutionary position: it’s all too complicated for a simple answer.
"One of the tell-tale signs is the sheer number of learning theories which are ‘creationist’ in nature – by which I mean that they are stories one can only tell about humans. Any time a learning theory can only meaningfully be applied to humans [...] we should take care" 👏
Read 5 tweets
Greg Spencer Profile picture
4 Dec 20
"Please, don't make systems work for people, because this is [...] everything that's wrong with the sector. Making stuff work for others. Help people discover & steer and own their own pathways for a change" 😍

Well said, @ChristianSeelos & @NewSystemAlly
What's brought me here? "the realisation that the disadvantage, the injustice, the unfairness we see around us is actually in part caused by the systems that we have seeking to address those issues" - @BethWatts494 - respecting that people sustain systems with good intentions!
"[..] the difficulty we face is the professionalisation of our sector [fueling] obsession with solutions rather than problems. And [...] the more we are driving on the solution side, the more pressure we relieve from the systems that give rise to the problems to change them" - CS
Read 34 tweets
Greg Spencer Profile picture
10 Nov 20
@snowded blog of the year & 3 keys 👇🏽

1. "any map needs to be subject to continuous feedback [...]

"imagine a sort of war room with attitudinal & constraint maps visible and shifting to allow complexity to be navigated rather than contained or avoided"

cognitive-edge.com/intire-of-it-s… We have to shift from the engineering-driven concept of defi
2. Key 2 may be familiar -

"Soil fertility is heavily impacted by a type of fungus known as mycorrhizae which has a symbiotic relationship with the plant [...]

"The equivalent in an organisation and the informal networks and associations that keep the formal systems working.
Likewise, key 3 - which links familiar themes of scaffolding
"organisation units, identities, and other objects and their points of coherence" to the design of interactions in situations where "you can’t fully know what you need to know until you need to know it" #BecauseHuman
Read 4 tweets

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