engleski

TALENT IDENTIFICATION AND DEVELOPMENT IN SPORTS GAMES

In elite sports records are constantly being broken and performance level is being raised, and a large number of citizens of some country, as well as highly positioned government officials, identify with athletes’ international achievements. Besides, elite sport is a growing business in which success and failure are public. Partly because of this, both strong excitements and painful disappointments are connected to sport. It is in the interest of national governments, sports federations and academies working with gifted athletes to achieve as high a performance level as possible in as short a time period as possible by investing as little as possible (Pearson et al., 2006). Therefore, large interest and desire to identify gifted athletes as early as possible and to direct already limited resources towards those who have the greatest chances to achieve top athletic results are not surprising. An increasing number of academies working with talented athletes are trying to make athletes reach the highest performance level in as short a time period as possible. That is why giftedness identification (IG) and talent development (TD) programs must also be based on results of scientific research and not only on decisions of experts from different sports. Numerous open questions, i.e. problems that have remained unsolved for decades, indicate that this problem has not been approached in an appropriate way. Perhaps the highest obstacle to quicker progress is the distinct division among scientists between those who think that talent is innate and those who think that talent is created by years of quality practice (nature or nurture debate). Most scientists have been unwilling to accept arguments given by “the other side”, even when those arguments are substantiated by scientific evidence (Vaeyens et al., 2008). The lack of constructive dialogue and cooperation between scientists who explored this area from different aspects (genetic, neurophysiological, biomechanical, motor learning, etc.) has to a great extent prevented a multidisciplinary examination of the problem and stifled the creativity and innovation necessary for quicker progress and new findings. Therefore, the problem of IG and TD will be hereinafter examined in a multidisciplinary manner, taking into consideration to objectively analyse previous findings regardless of the “point of view”. To begin with, basic terms will be defined to decrease the possibility of misunderstanding the text and possibly coming to wrong conclusions and decisions because of it. After that, the genetic basis of talent, possibility of talent development by persistent practice, and influence of different environmental factors on TD will be analysed. The most important problems that should be taken into consideration by scientists with the aim of obtaining reliable and valid results that would improve IG and TD programs will be pointed out. The specificities of sports games will be additionally emphasised. Models that have been most frequently applied for IG and TD will be briefly analysed and based on this recommendations will be given for future research and development of those models. Next, the results of the most important studies carried out by the author of this paper and his associates will be discussed and an attempt will be made to contribute to answering some of important questions in the area of IG and TD in volleyball. After that, a quasi-longitudinal model of IG and TD will be suggested.

giftedness identification ; talent development ; quasi-longitudinal model

nije evidentirano