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Competitive youth sport does not occur in a vacuum, and societal changes impact coaches' practices. Researchers have called for a paradigm shift for coaches to become more socially responsible and adopt a critical praxis. The purpose of this dissertation was to advance our current understanding of critical praxis development within competitive youth sport, through narrative introspections into coaches' learning journeys. Anchored in cultural sport psychology research, this dissertation was guided by a relativist ontology, a social constructionist epistemology, and narrative inquiry methodology. The critical positive youth development framework (Gonzalez et al., 2020) was used to explore coaches' critical praxes and critical consciousness development in sport. In Article 1, I explored coaches' challenges and successes in creating safer and more inclusive sport spaces. The coaches felt responsible for enacting change in sport while questioning when it was okay to intervene, feeling burnt out, and finding success with their critical actions. Composite creative nonfictions were developed to reflect the individual and shared experiences in developing their critical praxes as coaches. The coaches shared a desire for in-situ support for unpacking their biases and understanding complicated social issues in sport. In Article 2, a 15-month collaboration is detailed, whereby I acted as a personal learning coach to support a competitive Nordic ski coach's (Sophie) critical praxis as they reflected on social issues and acted to enact positive change in their sport context and community. As suggested by Rodrigue and Trudel (2019), my role as a personal learning coach was guided by the narrative-collaborative coaching approach (Stelter, 2014) to focus on Sophie's narratives and co-create knowledge. From working together during two competitive seasons, Sophie's learning journey is presented through time hopping snapshot vignettes as they figured out what to fight for, grew through discomforts and unknowns, and experienced progress in their critical consciousness-building. An autoethnographic account is presented in Article 3 to detail how I 'ran with' becoming a personal learning coach for two competitive youth sport coaches, Sophie and Zoe. Through reflexive, evocative, and analytical writing, three salient experiences are presented, including how I used my 'full' biography to be(come) a personal learning coach, focused on the intricacies of relationality, and learned how to understand my limits as a researcher-participant acting as a personal learning coach. The complexities involved in co-learning between researchers and coaches are narratively explored. Collectively, this dissertation contributes to cultural sport psychology research with the use of the critical positive youth development framework and the narrative-collaborative coaching approach to explore coaches' varying levels of critical consciousness. Through creative analytical practices, narratives are shared of coaches' who are working to create safer, more inclusive competitive sport spaces. Researchers, sport leaders, and coaches are all responsible for looking inwards, challenging biases and assumptions, and advocating for a transformed competitive youth sport system that is safer and more inclusive for all.

Elite athletes often risk their health to achieve the highest level of performance, but this might instead result in decreased performance and health over time. Over the last few years, multiple elite athletes have expressed their struggles with mental health (MH), and it seems like the prevalence for mental illness in elite athletes is comparable to the general population. Multiple factors influence the balance between MH and performance, and it is known that elite athletes experience unique stressors in their careers. The purpose of the study is to explore career narratives of Swedish elite tennis players to learn about how, at different periods of their careers, they searched for, maintained, lost, and restored their perceived optimal balance between MH and performance. The methodology used is narrative inquiry with thematic analysis and composite vignettes to analyze and present the data. Three Swedish elite tennis players were interviewed. The findings show five different themes that create a thematic map which demonstrate the stages the athletes faced and experienced as they attempt to balance MH and high-level performance. It is concluded that sport psychology professionals are obligated to understand how athletes can work towards an optimal balance between MH and performance, and this study provides a step towards that goal. / Elitidrottare riskerar ofta sin hälsa genom att göra allt de kan för att uppnå den högsta möjliga prestationsnivån, men det kan tyvärr resultera i försämrad prestation och hälsa i längden. Under de senaste åren har flera elitidrottare uttryckt deras problem med mental hälsa, och det verkar som att prevalensen av psykisk ohälsa hos elitidrottare är jämförbar med den allmänna befolkningen. Flera faktorer påverkar balansen mellan mental hälsa och prestation, och det är även känt att elitidrottare upplever unika stressfaktorer i sina karriärer. Syftet med studien är att utforska karriärberättelser från svenska elittennisspelare för att lära sig hur de, under olika perioder i karriären, sökte efter, bibehöll, förlorade, och återställde sin balans mellan mental hälsa och prestation. Metodiken som används är narrativ undersökning där tematisk analys och sammansatta vinjetter användes för att analysera och presentera resultatet. Tre svenska elittennisspelare intervjuades. I resultatet hittades fem olika teman som tillsammans skapar en tematisk karta, vilket visar de stadier som spelarna stod inför och upplevde när de försökte balansera mental hälsa och prestation på hög nivå. Slutsatsen är att arbetare och forskare inom idrottspsykologi är skyldiga att förstå hur idrottare kan jobba för en optimal balans mellan mental hälsa och prestation, och denna studie tar ett steg i rätt riktning mot det målet.

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This research continued a line of inquiry previously established at Project P.L.A.Y. School, a play-based, Reggio-Emilia-inspired preschool in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, the purpose of which was to explore what can happen when young children and adults co-construct music in a social, relationship- and play-based environment. Three questions initially guided this study: 1) How does musical content emerge? 2) How is music play developed in this setting? 3) How do children and their teachers story their music experiences? Using narrative and heuristic approaches to inquiry, I, along with my co-researchers, highlighted ways to make children's musical learning audible and visible. Having been a member of this community in the dual role of musical play partner and researcher since fall of 2012, I framed this dissertation study to encompass the weeks of September 16 through December 18, 2014. During that time frame, I increased my visits from once to twice weekly, with fourteen children aged 2.5 through 5 years old, five of whom I knew from the previous year, and five other adults. As both a play partner and researcher, I continued my role as music facilitator who views young children as competent and capable co-music researchers. Amidst other stories, I increased focus as I continued a pedagogy of close listening to children as music co-researchers. Living alongside each other at Project P.L.A.Y. School, children and adults generated and collected shared musical stories. Data sources for this study included audio and video recordings, photographs, artifacts such as artwork and musical notation, and my research notes and journal. I continued using narrative and heuristic approaches to inquiry, and restoried narrative vignettes highlighting children and adults as music co-researchers. From the resulting grand narrative, I found that shifting lenses and all adults mindfully viewing these young children as competent music researchers facilitated and supported children's creative, multimodal expressions of their research interests. Viewing children's and adults' interactions through the lens of co-music researchers lead to abundant, creative musical expression from children and adults alike. Musical content emerged when adults and children interacted as music co-researchers and protagonists in their shared stories. This inquiry generated the following additional questions: 1) How can adults best facilitate young children's musical research interests? 2) How can adults and young children make their collaborative research audible and visible? Implications from this study include encouraging all adults to adopt a pedagogy of listening, to notice and value children's creative musical expressions, and to value children's musical lines of inquiry as researchers. / Music Education / Accompanied by two .m4v files.