Sport Psychology

Course Syllabus

Course Description and Objectives

Sport psychology aims to improve athlete well-being and performance. In this class, you will learn about the key concepts and theories from sport psychology such as motivation, anxiety, goal setting, imagery, and team cohesion. There are two intellectual strands to this class. The first strand aims to help students understand, apply, and reflect on these sport psychology concepts and theories. The second strand asks students to interrogate taken-for-granted assumptions embedded in the field of sport psychology.

At the end of this course, students will be able to:

Understand the basic aspects of sport and performance psychology as a scientific domain and professional field.
Apply concepts and theories of sport psychology to self and others.
Consider critiques of sport psychology research and practice.

Strand I: Understand, apply, and reflect on sport psychology concepts

To improve understanding of sport psychology concepts, students read and discuss theories or concepts from sport psychology. In addition, master's students from the Graduate School of Professional Psychology come in and share their knowledge through interactive activities.

To apply sport psychology concepts, student partake in team cornhole tournaments where they test out the concepts discussed. After each tournament, cornhole teams reflect on their experience of applying sport psychology concepts.

Understand

Apply

Reflect

Strand II: Critique sport psychology

To achieve the second intellectual strand, students are provided with readings/podcasts from people who have critiqued sport psychology. They use these resources to identify ways in which our current view of sport psychology might be limited. The ultimate outcome of this strand is to formulate new ways of thinking about sport psychology. They share their critiques through individual discussion boards.

James

"Orthodox science subscribes to a myth of objectivity that attempts to isolate elements of behavior/psychology so that it may be generalized. As Martens discusses, this method leaves a lot to be desired when you are trying to understand the behavior of a real athlete (or athletes). In reality the behavior and psychology of any individual is unique to them, and the same conditions will not produce the same result for every athlete/situation."

Kathy

"Positivism and the methods used to obtain its desired scientific truth are dismissive of socio-cultural factors such as class, ability, gender, and sexuality. In addition to this, the dominant discourse around what an athlete’s body should look like, or how an athlete should act and perform also goes unquestioned among such research. The divorce of psychological processes from socio-cultural factors is reductionistic, and can lead to the disinterest, or even oppression of unskilled, unhealthy, disabled, or LGBTQ+ athletes.

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