The day-to-day realities of applied sport psychology practice: Towards a micropolitical understanding of service delivery.

The reflective accounts produced within sport psychology literature helped to reveal some of the dilemmas, complexities and nuances of service delivery (e.g., Holt & Strean, 2001; Lindsey et al., 2007; Rowley et al., 2012), with limited attention given to the social-political dynamics of everyday life within sporting settings (e.g., Rowley et al., 2018). Despite the welcomed contributions of such publications, it needs to be acknowledged that the majority of accounts of practice have been produced by neophyte practitioners operating within a single setting, providing an overview of practice from one perspective. Therefore, there remains a lack of empirical research directly investigating how multiple practitioners, embedded in a range of settings, interpret interpersonal interactions that they experience in their work and how they attempt to navigate everyday challenges. Accordingly, this thesis provides an insight into the micropolitical challenges faced by two early-career practitioners in the initial stages of the accreditation process, three early-career practitioners in the final stage of the accreditation process, and two experienced practitioners who have both been registered with Health and Care Professional Council for over eight years. The practitioners sampled within the present thesis provided a fascinating insight into the realities of practice across several Olympic and Paralympic sports, including youth (e.g., football academies, pathway programmes) and senior levels. Data for this thesis were collected through a longitudinal series of repeated semi-structured interviews with each practitioner across an eighteen-month period. Four interrelated superordinate themes of finding one’s place, reality shock, experiential learning and forging positive relationships were constructed across practitioners’ career stories through Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA, (Smith et al., 2009) and were principally understood in relation to Kelchtermans (e.g., Kelchtermans 2005; 2009a, 2009b, 2011; 2018; Kelchtermans & Ballet, 2002a, 2002b) work regarding micropolitics and a professional’s personal interpretative framework, as well as Goffman’s (1959, 1969) conceptualisation of impression management. The reflective accounts provided by practitioners illuminated the inherent structural vulnerability of their applied contexts, and the significance of professional self-understanding in informing their interpersonal interactions with significant contextual stakeholders. As such, the present thesis demonstrated that applied sport psychologists had to develop micropolitical literacy (Kelchtermans 2005; 2009a, 2009b) in order to protect and advance their respective careers, but also to negotiate their encountered working conditions to fulfil their deeply held normative beliefs regarding their role. Therefore, the present thesis’ findings can stimulate further debate and discussion among academic and professional accreditation bodies regarding sport psychologists’ education and training, suggesting that programmes of study and training must begin to consider micropolitics and its importance in practitioners’ ability to survive and thrive in their applied careers.