Prof. William A. Harper
William A. Harper is College Professor at Purdue University, Indianapolis. William was Head of Health & Kinesiology between 2006 - 2011 and currently writes all Player Development Project research reviews.
Articles by Prof. William A. Harper
FA Lead National Goalkeeping Coach and England U21 Goalkeeping Coach, Tim Dittmer, brings a wealth of wisdom to his dual role as coach and coach developer. In this interview with the 32-year-old, Player Development Project finds a coach already wise well beyond his years. In normal lore, it is thought that we grow wiser as we grow older. But Dittmer has somehow figured out that wisdom isn’t necessarily a result of a long life. Wisdom is measured by what we are willing to learn,…
Duarte Araújo, Christina Fonseca, Keith Davids, Júlio Garganta, Anna Volossovitch, Regina Brandão, and Ruy Krebs The Big Idea Essentially, this publication is a position paper. The topic of the paper is the development of sport expertise. The more conventional understanding of the interactions between an individual and a specific performance environment is to seek explanations for such expertise based mostly on what is going on “inside” the player (referred to as “organismic asymmetry”). The less conventional understanding—and the position taken in this paper—is that too…
Hugo Sarmento, Antonio Pereira, Maria T. Anguera, Jorge Canpanico, and Jose Leitao The Big Idea What separates this research paper on coaching football from so many coming before it is the decision of method. If you are looking for yet another theoretical and quantitatively-driven model of how coaches should coach football, keep looking. In this paper, the reader will certainly find a suggested model; but it is one that doesn’t depend on theory-building or statistics. Instead it is derived from the practices and reflective voices…
Pedro Passos and Keith Davids The Big Idea These authors, Passos and Davids, call their paper an “opinion piece.” Not so. It is an intelligent discussion of ecological dynamics played out in the learning of team sports through the interactive nature of the sport performance. Such interactions include those within the team and between the team and the opposing players. This dynamic continuously unfolds as players from both teams interact with constraints such as rules and boundaries, attempts at coordinating attacks and defenses and counter…
Some Costs of American Corporate Capitalism: A Psychological Exploration of Value and Goal Conflicts
Tim Kasser, Steve Cohn, Allen Kanner, Richard Ryan The Big Idea It might seem from the title of this research discussion on American corporate capitalism that it might have little relevance for the interests of our loyal Player Development Project readers. Well, if you give this summary a go you will likely change your mind. If one thinks a bit about the values and goals of corporate capitalism, it is impossible to ignore what has mysteriously become something of “the elephant in the room” in…
Dan P. McAdams and Jennifer L. Pals The Big Idea One chronic problem with depending on research results as an aid to coaching practice is the practice of research itself. All too often researchers are engaged in an on-going competitive practice of their own: grand theory building. The theories themselves are generally not that complicated, but the continuous defence of them against adversaries creates a good simulation of a contact sport. A consequence is perpetual uncertainty regarding whether there is progressive improvement in our understanding…
John W. Mahoney, Daniel F. Gucciardi, Clifford Mallett, and Nikos Ntoumanis The Big Idea It would be difficult to find an adult athlete or coach who doesn’t have a favourite quote on the need for mental toughness in competitive sports. Who hasn’t heard the general adage that success in sports is 10% physical and 90% mental? Or who among us hasn’t read the mighty locker room posters from the past: from Babe Ruth, “It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up;” from Bobby…
P.R. Ford and A.M. Williams The Big Idea The American golfer Arnold Palmer (1929-2016) once said “It’s a funny thing, the more I practice the luckier I get.” Risking over-simplification, Palmer’s witty observation is a fair one-sentence summary of this discussion on what research tells the coach about developing elite soccer players. Risking over-complication, the deeper question isn’t how much one practices, but how much one practices the right kind of practice. The authors of this paper urge coaches and players who strive to be in…
Tristan J. Coulter, Clifford J. Mallett, Jefferson A. Singer, Daniel F. Gucciardi The Big Idea There is nothing easy about the study of personality. Over the years, psychologists who do so have generated an incredible number of ways to describe and depict who or what a person is. One of the oldest and maybe the clearest ways of looking at what personality psychologists do is this: they study how a person is like all other persons; like some other persons; and like no other persons. …
Antonio J. Figueiredo, Carlos E. Goncalves, Manuel J. Coelho E Silva, and Robert M. Malina The Big Idea The customary belief about youth and sports is that the youngsters who drop out of youth sports are developmentally disadvantaged somehow when compared to those who succeed over time. But a question immediately arises: What is meant by developmental disadvantage? The big idea of this research study is to help remove some of the mystery behind what kinds of differences between youngsters are or are not relatively…
Clifford Mallett and Sergio Lara-Bercial The Big Idea The rub for these researchers is that the empirical basis for the vocation of sports coaching is seriously limited exactly at the time it is most needed. The burgeoning growth of national and international high performance sports in the last few decades certainly calls for professional coaches. It is a surprise then that the process of professionalising high performance coaches is still so little understood. The Research What we know already about highly successful coaches? Surveying the…
Sara D. L. Dos Santos, Daniel Memmert, Jaime Sampaio, and Nuno Leite The Big Idea In the team sports it is traditional that when coaches are asked what they are coaching, the usual response is, for example, “I coach soccer.” But if soccer coaches were collectively to adopt the general idea of what these researchers call the Creativity Development Framework, they might be more inclined to say “I coach creativity.” However odd this latter response may seem, the authors of this paper imply that this…