The coach has a crucial role to play in the furtherance of sporting performance however, unlike the athlete, scant attention has been paid to the development of the expert coach. This thesis investigated methods of coach education, which allowed coaches to develop their practice through the adoption of both structured and unstructured processes. It consists of three different studies, examining coach education, support and development, as perceived by sport coaches. The findings conclude that coaches questioned the effectiveness of formal coach education programmes, the support of their NGBs and the sports specific nature of many of the awards. Coaches progress using a variety of methods but key were the informal Communities of Practice (COP), critical thinking skills, a supportive club environment and a personal desire to develop their knowledge base in a range of areas. Some professions have integrated expertise development into education programmes using a variety of methods. Sport coaching should embrace the examples from these and introduce the concept of long term coach development into the coach education framework.

The prescribing rights of non-medical healthcare professionals in the United Kingdom (UK) are some of the most extensive in western medical practice. Nurses, pharmacists, physiotherapists, optometrists, chiropodists, podiatrists, therapeutic and diagnostic radiographers and dieticians, with appropriate training have the authority to prescribe. They are often referred to as non-medical prescribers (NMPs). These non-medical healthcare professionals should have a specified number of years of post-registration experience in order to undertake specific training in prescribing. There has been a limited amount of research exploring how non-medical healthcare professionals acquire their expertise during the prescribing programme. In addition, there is a gap in the literature on how NMPs apply their acquired expertise during the process of making clinical prescribing decisions. A programme of research was conducted to explore the learning processes and decision-making skills of pharmacist and nurse independent prescribers working in secondary care. The research used current literature on pharmacist and nurse independent prescribing by conducting a systematic review to assess how their expertise development is reported in the literature. In addition, the learning experiences of secondary care pharmacists and nurses undertaking the independent prescribing programme was explored by employing a novel audio-diary technique followed by semi-structured interviews on 7 nurses and 6 pharmacists. Students were mainly recruited via their non-medical prescribing programme leaders at a number of accredited universities across the UK. There was little opportunity in this study to explore the clinical reasoning processes of students as they were learning to prescribe. Therefore, the final study aimed to explore how secondary care pharmacist and nurse independent prescribers make clinical prescribing decisions. A total of 21 independent prescribers working in secondary care took part in this study, mainly recruited via their non-medical prescribing lead and social media. This study employed a think-aloud protocol method using validated clinical vignettes followed by semi-structured interviews. Students and NMPs occupied a wide range of roles. Ethical approval from the University of Manchester Research Ethics Committee (UREC) and governance approvals from a number of National Health Service (NHS) hospitals were obtained before conducting the research. NMPs were influenced by a number of intrinsic and extrinsic factors during the process of learning to prescribe and when making prescribing decisions. Students also experienced an affective phase of transition in which students became highly metacognitive as they began to form their identities as prescribers and reflect on their confidence and competence. There were notable differences between how pharmacists and nurses learned to prescribe, which were also seen during the process of clinical decision-making as independent prescribers. Despite this, pharmacists and nurses revealed a similar pattern in their decision-making processes as prescribers. Findings from this programme of research provide further insight into the specific training and support requirements of these healthcare professionals. Additional research with NMPs would be beneficial to contribute to the currently limited understanding of the learning and clinical reasoning processes of NMPs.

Conscientiousness-related personality traits are relevant predictors of many outcomes in achievement domains outside sport. They have also been associated with several outcomes in sport, however, their relative role on athletes’ deliberate practice (DP) and other criteria of expertise development has not been investigated. The overall aim of this dissertation was to examine the role of conscientiousness-related traits on sport expertise development. It had six specific purposes: (a) to examine the structural validity of conscientiousness-related measures; (b) to understand whether athletes’ DP amounts, skill level, and other criteria of expertise development could be predicted by these measures; (c) to identify the best personality predictor and combination of predictors that explained the maximal variance in different criteria of expertise development; (d) to examine whether grit facets predicted athletes’ practice engagement across a demanding sport season; (e) to explore coaches’ perspectives on the behavioural indicators of conscientious, gritty, and self-controlled athletes in training; and (f) to explore coaches’ views about how these personality traits may impact athletes’ quantity and quality of practice and development toward higher skill levels. The dissertation used a sequential explanatory mixed-methods design, wherein Phase 1 (Articles 1, 2, and 3) quantitatively pursued purposes (a) to (c), Phase 2 (Article 4) addressed (d), and Phase 3 (Article 5) qualitatively addressed (e) and (f). Article 1 tested the factor structure of the Brief Self-Control Scale in sport and showed distinct associations between self-control variables and (a) sport-specific practice amounts, (b) engagement in various practice contexts, and (c) threats to commitment to one’s sport, in a diverse sport sample. Article 2 conducted factor analyses of the Grit Scale in sport and examined a full latent variable model showing associations between grit variables and several criteria of expertise development. In particular, perseverance of effort associated with athletes’ weekly amounts of DP, engagement in different practice contexts, and skill level, while consistency of interests associated with athletes’ commitment to their sport. Article 3 comprised two studies. In Study 1, path analyses were used to assess the role of conscientiousness on criteria of expertise development. At the broad level, conscientiousness predicted athletes’ engagement in practice contexts and commitment to their sport; at the facet-level, achievement-striving was the best predictor of athletes’ weekly DP and engagement in practice contexts. The systematic test of the role of self-control (Article 1), grit (Article 2), and conscientiousness (Article 3, Study1) for key criteria of expertise development culminated with Study 2 of Article 3, which reported comparative analyses of the predictive ability of self-control, grit, and conscientiousness facets—which had shown to be significant predictors when assessed separately—for the criterion measures of sport expertise. Study 2 showed that (a) perseverance of effort was the best predictor of athletes’ weekly DP, engagement in mandatory practice, and the only predictor of higher skill level, (b) achievement-striving best predicted athletes’ engagement in optional practice, and (c) consistency of interests best predicted athletes’ commitment to their sport. Article 4 tested whether athletes’ self-reported levels of grit (broad and facets) were longitudinally associated with their coach-reported practice engagement throughout one sport season. Perseverance of effort was the grit variable most related to indicators of practice engagement, the only variable related to overall practice engagement across three time points, and the only variable marginally associated with athletes’ stability of practice engagement over time. Article 5 explored coaches’ views about the behavioural indicators of athletes’ conscientiousness, grit, and self-control in the daily training environment and how these traits impacted athletes’ training and development. Coaches described (a) conscientious athletes as systematic and detail-oriented, highly considerate of others, and highly engaged in self-regulation; (b) gritty athletes as those who persevere despite adversity and work hard in practice; and (c) self-controlled athletes as those who control impulses, resist temptations, and delay gratification. Coaches believe grit, conscientiousness, and self-control play important roles on athletes’ development toward higher skill levels, but results generally highlighted the preponderance of perseverance of effort. Potential mechanisms (e.g., conscientiousness—self-regulation—practice quality and conscientiousness—self-regulation—skill level) were highlighted to help explain the personality-expertise link found in Phases 1 and 2. This dissertation contributed to the literature on sport expertise by parsimoniously identifying conscientiousness-related personality traits that were associated with measures of athletes’ practice quantity, quality, and stability, commitment to sport, and higher skill level. Although several facets (i.e., perseverance of effort, consistency of interests, achievement-striving, self-discipline, and dutifulness) showed associations with practice and performance-related outcomes, this dissertation generally highlighted the role of grit facets. In particular, while perseverance of effort was the best predictor of athletes’ amounts of DP, the only grit variable associated with quality practice engagement over time, and the only predictor of higher skill level, consistency of interests was the best predictor of commitment variables. Furthermore, results based on coaches’ descriptions (a) provided behavioural indicators of conscientiousness-related traits that serve as reference points for practitioners aiming to help athletes develop desirable traits, (b) suggested that gritty athletes ‘work hard’ and conscientious athletes ‘work smart’, and (c) proposed mechanisms to explain the personality-expertise link found in the quantitative studies. Taken together, the results of this dissertation suggest that the tendency to persevere despite adversity and mindfully use self-regulated processes seems to be a powerful predisposition for athletes’ development toward expert levels of performance.

Experts in the field of molecular and cellular biology (MCB) use domain-specific reasoning strategies to navigate the unique complexities of the phenomena they study and creatively explore problems in their fields. One primary goal of instruction in undergraduate MCB is to foster the development of these domain-specific reasoning strategies among students. However, decades of evidence-based research and many national calls for undergraduate instructional reform have demonstrated that teaching and learning complex fields like MCB is difficult for instructors and learners alike. Therefore, how do students develop rich understandings of biological mechanisms? It is the aim of this dissertation work to explore features of expertise and knowledge building in undergraduate MCB by investigating knowledge organization and problem-solving strategies. Semi-structured clinical think-aloud interviews were conducted with introductory and upper-division students in MCB. Results suggest that students must sort ideas about molecular mechanism into appropriate mental categories, create connections using function-driven and mechanistic rather than associative reasoning, and create nested and overlapping ideas in order to build a nuanced network of biological ideas. Additionally, I characterize the observable components of generative multi-level mechanistic reasoning among undergraduate MCB students constructing explanations about in two novel problem-solving contexts. Results indicate that like MCB experts, students are functionally subdividing the overarching mechanism into functional modules, hypothesizing and instantiating plausible schema, and even flexibly consider the impact of mutations across ontological and biophysical levels. However "filling in" these more abstract schema with molecular mechanisms remains problematic for many students, with students instead employing a range of developing mechanistic strategies. Through this investigation of expertise and knowledge building, I characterize several of the ways in which knowledge integration and generative explanation building are productively constrained by domain-specific features, expand on several discovered barriers to productive knowledge organization and mechanistic explanation building, and suggest instructional implications for undergraduate learning.