Top level sport for people with a disability is becoming more competitive, creating an environment in which the rewards for success and the disappointments associated with failure are often great. These are factors which clearly have the potential to place extreme psychological demands on sport performers with a disability. However, few investigations have specifically examined how athletes with a disability respond in highly stressful sporting situations. This thesis, therefore, reports 3 separate studies to investigate stress and coping in wheelchair sport participants. Study 1 examined pre-competition temporal patterning of anxiety and self-confidence in 103 wheelchair sport participants at 3 time periods preceding competition (1 week, 2 hours and 30 minutes before). The findings suggested that wheelchair sport participants show a similar pre-competition anxiety response to non-disabled sport participants. However, there were some differences, particularly in the reduction in self-confidence immediately prior to competition. The purpose of Study 2, therefore, was to explore possible: reasons as to why self-confidence may decrease in wheelchair sport participants" immediately prior to competition. Specifically, Study 2 considered the influence of disability status (i.e., possessing and not possessing a disability) on appraisal of a specific important competitive event, and how appraisal may be influenced by various psychosocial factors. The sample comprised of 75 wheelchair and 44 able-bodied sport participants. The findings showed that wheelchair and able-bodied sport participants had similar psychosocial resources and appraisal patterns; however, different factors predicted an important competitive event as challenging. Study 3 explored this further by investigating, via in-depth qualitative interviews, the sources of stress and coping responses in 10 elite male wheelchair basketball players. Qualitative and quantitative methods were employed in combination to enable examination of stress source characteristics (degree of challenge, threat, harm, severity, control and frequency) and coping details (effectiveness and frequency). Whilst many of the findings were similar to those previously reported for elite able-bodied figure skaters, there were some differences. These differences appeared to relate to various disability factors and also the fact that the study was unique in examining team sport participants. Furthermore, the unique nature of the study obtaining information on stress source characteristics, and effectiveness and extent of use of coping strategies, proved to be extremely useful in gaining a more in-depth understanding of the complex stress-coping process. Finally, the findings from the three studies reported in this thesis enabled a model of stress and coping for wheelchair sport participants to be developed. In summary, the studies presented used a range of methodologies to enable an in-depth understanding of stress and coping in wheelchair sport, whilst simultaneously supporting and extending previous research in the sport domain.

Structured to help readers from a range of disciplines, the thesis looks at the creation of opportunities for participation in adventure sport, specifically the development of a postural support for intermediate level performers with spinal cord injury in sea kayaking. The research has shown that it is possible to increase the performance level of disabled athletes in paddle sport through the development of appropriate adaptive equipment, which in turn promotes inclusion and the broadening of opportunities. This research project takes place against a backdrop of national events and developments; notably, changes in UK legislation to do with disability access (DDA 1995), and developments in legislation to do with outdoor safety. The research also takes place against a backdrop of national campaigns, such as the ‘Campaign for Adventure’, and an increasing number of drives to make the UK’s population more active. The broad-based multidisciplinary approach is in line with reported priorities in international disability sport research, while encompassing paddlesport specific criteria. The research takes the approach of design research to develop the product. Initially the reported studies evaluate the design process utilising desk-based research. They then proceed to utilise design methodology in field-based short and longer expedition settings. The design process utilises existing user-centred staged design approaches to explore methods for wider application. The findings reveal that the development of opportunities in adventure sport with disabled people involves engaging with a social mess. The action of problem definition and resolution can be termed in this paradigm as a wicked problem, being that is does not have one clear solution. The information needing to be exchanged in the problem resolution can be considered as sticky, being that the research process takes place in a specialised arena characterised by sparse resources and with a multidisciplinary team. The research has informed the creation of twelve tools to support those practitioners involved in this area. Used from the bottom up or top down, they provide a common language between the participant, coach, therapist and researcher to help educate and inspire each person to understand the true nature of the problem, improve the shared understanding within the team, and thereby reducing the stickiness of the information. The effect on the development of new equipment is to improve focus and user participation, so making it easier to work within the social mess. A new postural support was designed for use by intermediate level sea kayakers with spinal cord injury, the design of which is given in study 9, which is evaluated in study 10. The study suggests that future work in this area should focus on the coordination of sport science support, further exploration of the link between design research and social change, explore the validity of the tools across a broader population, and further develop the design so that the new equipment can be of benefit to the broader population.

Title: Technique, didactics, and selected training methods in rowing of the disabled. The given thesis deals with the didactics, technique and training in rowing of the disabled. The aim of my thesis was to analyze expert literature from the area of rowing and sports for the disabled, then to find out and describe the appropriate training methods and teaching practices for the physically, visually and mentally disabled rowers and finally based on training, observation and interviews with the disabled athletes and the coaches to add the searched material with the practical experience. Results: Rowing of the disabled is a young sport which is at the beginning of its development. It was found out that the training methods for individual diagnosis of disability are not sufficiantly elaborated. The coaches who wish to devote to this sport have to learn from the experience of the trainers of healthy oarsmen. It is not sure how the rowing motion burdens the body of the disabled and what training dosage is optimal for the increasing of performance. Keywords: rowing, disability, sport training 3

The focus of this thesis is the negotiation of identities by elite-level female athletes involved in disability sport. Recently, the London 2012 and Sochi 2014 Paralympic games have showcased the contemporary nature of disability sport and ostensibly suggest a growth in public interest within this field. However, there has been limited research to date conducted into the experiences of physically impaired, female athletes at the elite level of disability sport. Moreover, the existing literature fails to address the negotiation of identities within the interplay of gender, ‘disability’, body and wider socio-cultural influences. Inspired by this dearth of literature and the desire to contribute to disability sport theorisation, my research questions how elite female athletes negotiate their identities across contexts and the wider social, cultural and political values that influence this process. I address their experiences in relation to these factors alongside the intersection of gender and disability. I have explored the women’s experiences by utilising symbolic interactionism in combination with a social-relational conceptualisation of disability. This theoretical approach recognises the women’s bodies as a ‘fleshy presence’ in their interactional encounters and brings ‘impairment’ back into the theorisation of disability (Waskul and Vannini 2006). This approach allows me to interrogate the women’s unique realities in relation to wider socio-cultural values, and the ‘micro relations’ of their day-to-day lives. A life history perspective guides the methodological framework, which foregrounds and prioritises the seven elite female athletes’ subjective experiences in relation to the socio-historical context. The narratives offer a powerful and original insight into the complexity of disability, whilst addressing the multiple and fluid nature of the participants’ identities. This advances the use of the social-relational model and fosters new understandings of the social relations underpinning the effects of impairment. I have developed the concept of ‘reverse stigma’ and have highlighted the need to disrupt the social processes that create stigmatic physicality, whilst demonstrating how impairment is perceived in different social contexts. My research has provided an original contribution by generating an in-depth picture of how the women experience their lives, how they see themselves as disabled (or not) and the wider intersecting forces that shape and influence their realities. This is significant for highlighting the way disability and disabled female athletes are perceived in Western society.

<p>This study looked at two groups of adolescents aged 12-17 years who had participated in circus training. One group had some form of disability while the other had none. The study was carried out as a qualitative study with observations, interviews and a questionnaire used as methods of gathering data. A small part of the study was quantitative and an observation chart was used. The purpose was to examine the importance of teamwork, environmental factors and the necessary requirements during a learning situation. The results of the study showed that all of the factors, in combination with one another, were important during the learning situation. If the participants worked well together, the circus teacher was able to use relevant demands and the environment was stimulating and not stressful. The negative attitude towards the failure of others in the group became less prevalent and the participants felt more responsible with increased self esteem. Different approaches or theories about disability, or being different, were observed and had an effect on the participants’ self-esteem. The main conclusion was that a training situation is complex and that participants should be met with respect and with an attitude that no one should be afraid of failure. Another conclusion was that the approaches or theories about disability do not have to concur but should complement each other.</p>

This study looked at two groups of adolescents aged 12-17 years who had participated in circus training. One group had some form of disability while the other had none. The study was carried out as a qualitative study with observations, interviews and a questionnaire used as methods of gathering data. A small part of the study was quantitative and an observation chart was used. The purpose was to examine the importance of teamwork, environmental factors and the necessary requirements during a learning situation. The results of the study showed that all of the factors, in combination with one another, were important during the learning situation. If the participants worked well together, the circus teacher was able to use relevant demands and the environment was stimulating and not stressful. The negative attitude towards the failure of others in the group became less prevalent and the participants felt more responsible with increased self esteem. Different approaches or theories about disability, or being different, were observed and had an effect on the participants’ self-esteem. The main conclusion was that a training situation is complex and that participants should be met with respect and with an attitude that no one should be afraid of failure. Another conclusion was that the approaches or theories about disability do not have to concur but should complement each other.

Despite growing interest in coaching sciences, literature has revealed a dearth of research on coaches who work with para athletes (e. g. Cregan, Bloom, & Reid, 2007; McMaster, Culver, & Werthner, 2012). The purpose of this study was to explore how novice coaches in parasport develop their knowledge. The study was conducted in real-time during the coaches’ first contact with the context. Semi-structured interviews and participant observation were conducted with six Canadian para sailing coaches. Thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) revealed that coaches developed context-specific knowledge and skills through a blend of formal, nonformal, and informal learning situations. The participants highlighted the importance of learning from others, especially other coaches and from athletes.

The purpose of this research was to answer longstanding calls to explore the learning and development of coaches in disability sport (DePauw, 1986; Reid & Prupas, 1998). We know very little about coaches in disability sport and although there exists a growing body of work that has explored coach learning, there is an absence of in-depth sociological research on disability coaching and coach education. In order to address this gap in the literature, this research sought to examine the nature of coach learning through analyses of coach education and coaching practice. Drawing upon a critical sociological framework, the research was conducted on the premise that understanding social practice can generate critical insights into the nature of coach learning. The research begins to answer some of the criticisms levelled at previous research by operationalising the sociological framework of Pierre Bourdieu in conjunction with disability studies, to analyse data generated through a two-year case study evaluation of an impairment-specific mode of coach education, and ethnographic data generated from eighteen-months of fieldwork in a specific disability coaching context. Altogether, data were collected through in-depth observations, interviews, focus groups and qualitative surveys to generate data that had both breadth, gathering data from large numbers of participants, and depth, by understanding in detail a particular coaching culture (Polkinghorne, 2005). The findings reveal how knowledge about disability was often marginalised in coach education, with engagement in the field functioning as principle source of knowledge about coaching in disability sport. As a result, disability-specific coach education contributed marginally to coach learning and functioned as a platform for the transmission of medical model discourses about disability, in terms of the pedagogy adopted and its effects on coaches knowledge. In the ethnographic study, analyses revealed how disability was assimilated into a high-performance coaching logic that structured coaches learning according to high-performance ideals. The process of learning was revealed to follow the logic of reproduction as alluded to by Bourdieu (1977, 1990a), and reinforced in social practice through the continual (re)adjustment of class habitus to structural conditions. The mechanisms underlying this process revealed learning to have a symbolic nature, mediated by power, resulting in the uncritical reproduction of ideology related to coaching disabled people. Thus, the research extends an understanding of coach learning, taking into consideration social structure and agency, as a basis for further critical inquiry into coaching in disability sport.

The complex human process of sport coaching is a dynamic and evolving practice that develops over a long period of time. Coaches learn from a number of different situations and their past experiences influence what they choose to pay attention to and learn from (Werthner & Trudel, 2009). This dissertation explores the lifelong learning process through a collective case study involving four coaches for athletes with a physical disability. The theoretical framework that guides this study is Jarvis’ (2006, 2007, 2009) comprehensive view on human learning, including his concept of lifelong learning, and key concepts such as biography, experience and disjuncture, and types of learning. Jarvis' psychosocial perspective on human learning is a useful lens for a closer examination of how coaches develop over a lifetime and how they change and continue the process of becoming through new experiences, which they gain, more often than not, within a social context. The work of Moon (1999, 2004) and her metaphor of a network view of learning is a complementary framework for examining learning through reflective practice. Moon's generic view of learning (1999) illustrates how a network of knowledge, feelings and emotions make up one’s "cognitive structure" and suggests that this structure plays an important role in the learning process as it guides what we choose to pay attention to and what we choose to learn. A thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) was used to extract themes and examples from three in-depth interviews with each coach, observation of the coach in their coaching contexts, as well as interviews with key collaborators in their coaching practice. The transcripts were member checked to increase trustworthiness. Three articles comprise the results section and the main points in this dissertation are as follows: (a) a case study of one exemplary parasport coach and how he learned through a wide variety of life experiences, such as pragmatic problem solving, education, and building relationships; (b) the four coaches who engaged in social learning through meaningful interactions with a variety of key collaborators who contributed to their learning and coaching practice; and (c) the four coaches who used reflection to learn and to build their coaching practices within the unique context of the parasport world. These findings contribute to the emerging body of literature on coaches for athletes with disabilities by adding to our understanding of how coaches’ life experiences and biographies determine what kinds of learning opportunities they each found meaningful; the importance of the social context in learning to coach athletes with disabilities; and the role and importance of reflection in understanding the interconnections of learning from life experiences, particularly in the unique and developing parasport setting. The study will also aid coach educators in understanding the role and importance of past learning experiences and the social context in coach learning.

Despite growing interest in coaching sciences, literature has revealed a dearth of research on coaches who work with para athletes (e. g. Cregan, Bloom, & Reid, 2007; McMaster, Culver, & Werthner, 2012). The purpose of this study was to explore how novice coaches in parasport develop their knowledge. The study was conducted in real-time during the coaches’ first contact with the context. Semi-structured interviews and participant observation were conducted with six Canadian para sailing coaches. Thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) revealed that coaches developed context-specific knowledge and skills through a blend of formal, nonformal, and informal learning situations. The participants highlighted the importance of learning from others, especially other coaches and from athletes.