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Papers by Will Roberts

This is a peer-reviewed, post-print (final draft post-refereeing) version of the following publis... more This is a peer-reviewed, post-print (final draft post-refereeing) version of the following published document, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.

Amidst the continued theorising and objective epistemological approach to perceptual research (Mi... more Amidst the continued theorising and objective epistemological approach to perceptual research (Michaels and Beek, 1995), there remains little clarity regarding what information athletes use to direct decision making in performance settings and how skill is transferred from training to performance. The role of perception-action coupling within decision-making in team sports has been discussed at great length (Vaeyens et al, 2007; Pinder et al, 2011), with some consensus being reached that skilled performers do not necessarily have superior visual ability, but that their ability to locate and interpret key specifying information determines expertise in a particular skilled actions (Vickers, 2006). The methodological accord has often been to recreate core, single action motor-control tasks in the hope of elucidating data to suggest a change in behaviour in any given number of constraint manipulations (Vickers, 1996; Williams, Singer and Frehlich, 2002; Vine and Wilson, 2011). However, ...

Street Elite has been developed to offer young people living on the edge of gangs and crime a rou... more Street Elite has been developed to offer young people living on the edge of gangs and crime a route back into employment, education and training. These young adults have complex and changing needs and this research offers practical insights into successful approaches to helping them change their lives. It used a robust, evidence-based approach, led by independent experts from Oxford Brookes University working in collaboration with members of the Change Foundation and the Berkeley Foundation.

This paper details an explorative and experimental project that is seeking to better implement vi... more This paper details an explorative and experimental project that is seeking to better implement virtual technologies of Web 2.0 into the pedagogy of higher education. Our project endeavours to position these technologies as a means of reorienting pedagogic practice within higher education around truly chaordic communities of practice that serve to develop digital citizens. We have undertaken this project with the belief that higher education should be concerned with answering the calls of our increasing digital society; that is to say become a place for foster digitally literate learners, who’s learning is not restricted to physical boundaries of the university but rather happens at all times over physical and virtual spaces.

The Constraints-Led Approach, 2019

The University of Gloucestershire accepts no liability for any infringement of intellectual prope... more The University of Gloucestershire accepts no liability for any infringement of intellectual property rights in any material deposited but will remove such material from public view pending investigation in the event of an allegation of any such infringement.

This paper reports on the design of wildlife crossing structures (WCSs) along a new expressway in... more This paper reports on the design of wildlife crossing structures (WCSs) along a new expressway in China, which exemplifies the country's increasing efforts on wildlife protection in infrastructure projects. The expert knowledge and field surveys were used to determine the target species in the study area and the quantity, locations, size, and type of the WCSs. The results on relative abundance index and encounter rate showed that the ibex (Capra ibex), argali sheep (Ovis ammon), and goitered gazelle (Gazella subgutturosa) are the main ungulates in the study area. Among them, the goitered gazelle is the most widely distributed species. WCSs were proposed based on the estimated crossing hotspots. The mean deviation distance between those hotspots and their nearest proposed WCSs is around 341m. In addition, those 16 proposed underpass WCSs have a width of no less than 12m and height of no lower than 3.5m, which is believed to be sufficient for ungulates in the area. Given the limited availability of high-resolution movement data and wildlife-vehicle collision data during road's early design stage, the approach demonstrated in this paper facilitates practical spatial planning and provides insights into designing WCSs in a desert landscape.

Nonlinear Pedagogy and the Athletics Skills Model, 2021

International Sport Coaching Journal, 2021

While recent work recognizes a need for coach education to place greater emphasis on interpersona... more While recent work recognizes a need for coach education to place greater emphasis on interpersonal knowledge when developing coaching expertise, it is our position that coach educators (CEs) must follow a similar trajectory in embracing the interpersonal knowledge requisite of their role and move beyond a reliance on content and professional knowledge in order to shape their delivery. To better understand CEs’ behaviors, the authors observed four experienced CEs in Alpine skiing, using an adapted version of the Coach Leadership Assessment System during delivery of a coach education and assessment course. The authors also interviewed CEs to further elucidate the observational data. The findings suggest the benefit of transactional approaches to leadership during assessment when set against the backdrop of an environment driven by intentions consistent with transformational leadership. Furthermore, we call for a greater appreciation of context when imagining CEs’ behaviors that align ...

The Constraints-Led Approach, 2019

Background Coaches, teachers and other practitioners such as applied sport scientists seeking to ... more Background Coaches, teachers and other practitioners such as applied sport scientists seeking to use the methodologies of a constraints-led approach (CLA) to enhance skill acquisition and learner experiences are faced with a large body of information. The aim of this book series is to provide a nuanced understanding of the ideas and concepts in this body of work. Our aim is to ensure that the main theoretical ideas are accessible to coaches. Some sport practitioners have been using variants of a constraints-led approach in their work, for example to change conditions of practice, without being aware of the theoretical context behind it. While the language used in this theoretical framework can be somewhat technical, there is a lot to be gained by mastering the key ideas because there is a need for theoretical rigour to underpin the development of coaching as a profession. Familiarity and ease with the key theoretical ideas behind the CLA is needed by practitioners since its main methodologies should not be viewed as a magic bullet for all learners. Having a solid grasp of the theoretical ideas underpinning constraints-led coaching will help practitioners use pedagogical methodologies appropriately, effectively and efficiently. The CLA is founded on the theory of ecological dynamics, which considers athletes and sports teams as complex adaptive systems-a network of highly integrated, interacting sub-components (e.g. parts of the body in an athlete or members of a sports team). In complex adaptive systems, the multitude of parts continually form coordinated patterns (synergies), which are shaped by surrounding informational constraints. Through their interactions, one can identify the coordination states that emerge in a complex system in nature (see Figure 2.1). A solid understanding of key concepts in ecological dynamics captures the nature of the learner and the learning process for sports practitioners. Viewing learning from this perspective will ensure that coaching practice is informed by theoretical principles rather than by guesswork, the latest fads or fashions, or traditional ways of doing things. So what, 1: we must view practitioners as environment architects We argue that the role of the practitioner as the environment architect must be given greater emphasis. This perspective is in contrast and proposed as a challenge to the current popular mantra of considering the 'game as the teacher'. While we would agree with the philosophical notions of that mantra, it could lead to practitioners developing an overly passive pedagogical approach. This misinterpretation has led to practitioners being too 'hands-off' at times. An under-appreciation of how nuanced the successful application of a CLA needs to be has led to the provision of rather vague practice environments that lack purpose and any form of targeted development. As we note in this first section, sport practitioners need to provide carefully designed environments which make available desired affordances that are functional for athlete performance, adhering to underpinning theories of ecological dynamics. How Experiential and Empirical knowledge can enrich science, applications and practice in Sport and Exercise Science Experiential Knowledge Empirical Knowledge derives from daily interactions derives from theoretical of coaches, athletes, sport ideas, experimental scientists, teachers, trainers and other research, and performance analysts data and modelling work

Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 2018

Physical literacy is creating significant interest worldwide due to its holistic nature and the p... more Physical literacy is creating significant interest worldwide due to its holistic nature and the potential it has to impact on people’s lives. It is underpinning many physical education programs, coaching strategies, health initiatives, and policymakers’ decisions. However, the complex philosophical and holistic nature of the concept has meant that methods used to chart/assess/measure progress have been very much dependent on the pedagogues interpretation of the concept. This paper will provide a review of current practices and issues related to charting/assessing/measuring progress of an individual’s journey. It will go on to highlight considerations that, we suggest, should be made by any organization developing methods to chart/assess/measure progress.

Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 2018

Application of a constraints-led approach to pedagogy in schools: embarking on a journey to nurtu... more Application of a constraints-led approach to pedagogy in schools: embarking on a journey to nurture physical literacy in primary physical education. Physical education and sport pedagogy, 24 (2), 162-175.

The Quiet Eye (QE) has emerged as a key perceptual mechanism associated with skilled actions and ... more The Quiet Eye (QE) has emerged as a key perceptual mechanism associated with skilled actions and expertise in sport performance. The QE is defined as the final fixation towards a location in the environment that supports a coupled motor action, lasting over 100ms.Vickers, 2016, Kinesiology Review, 5(2), 119-128). In football goalkeeping the QE has been found to be one of the key mechanisms in understanding skilled performance. Yet, there remain a number of conflicts in regard to the actual location used, and the timing of these fixations in a skilled action. The aim of this study was to meet an ecological ‘call to arms’ and challenge traditional understanding of optimal gaze fixations as a tenant of expertise. Having been granted institutional ethical approval, data was collected over the course of a season in a representative experimental trial, four goalkeepers took part in three data collection sessions comprised of 90 recorded trials. Adopting a manual Vision-In-Action system, r...

The Constraints-Led Approach, 2019

Nonlinear Pedagogy and the Athletics Skills Model

The Constraints-Led Approach, 2019

Nonlinear Pedagogy and the Athletics Skills Model, 2021

International Sport Coaching Journal, 2021

The Constraints-Led Approach, 2019

Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 2018

Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 2018

The Constraints-Led Approach, 2019

Nonlinear Pedagogy and the Athletics Skills Model

Scientific Conference on Motor Skill Acquisition: Methodologies to Enhance Sport Performance and Athlete Development - Integration of Research and Practice., 2017

There is a requirement to view the QE beyond an isolated and interventionist approach, for which ... more There is a requirement to view the QE beyond an isolated and interventionist approach, for which the QE could become used as a key perceptual tool to measure the transfer of skill from training to competitive performance (Reinhoff et al., 2015; Davids & Araujo, 2016). Approaching the design of research practices for the study of perception must be categorised under a key experimental research principle. Originally introduced by Egon Brunswik (1956), representative design advocates for the dynamics of any experimental task must host some reciprocity with that of the natural task constraints present. Adopting a probabilistic functionalism perspective will provide the necessary scope of analysis towards QE behaviour under principles of Ecological Dynamics (Brunswik, 1956; Pinder, 2011). Due to the nature of information in complex environments being variable and emergent, practice and training conditions must illustrate a field of affordances that creates opportunities for relative game like actions to occur (Bruinberg and Rietveld, 2014). This study attempts to view the QE under conditions rich in variability, and in which truly replicate the natural performance conditions of the studied task. Through this, it allows the versatility of the QE to be stretched further towards the design of sporting training environments that can replicate the visual energy arrays available in performance conditions (Vickers, 2006). Williams, Janelle and Davids (2004) discussed how there may be benefit in understanding visual search by way of the interacting constraints that shape emergent behaviour. Key observations were raised by Davids and Araujo (2016), in an interesting commentary presented by the authors, they questioned the QE scope, voicing concerns that the QE has become the simple answer in understanding decision making. A vast amount of the QE literature has utilised QE as a tool for perceptual training in sport. For example, QE training interventions have been used in an attempt to train the visual search strategies of non-experts within similar tasks used by their expert counterparts. Harle and Vickers (2001) study demonstrated the potential of QE based training interventions for which significant improvements were noticed during free throw simulations and into games, this is further supported by Schmidt and Lee (1999) whom used a 6-week intervention with volleyball players, for which improvements in gaze durations were noted. Causer, Holmes and Williams (2011) again employed a training intervention to demonstrate the use of QE as a tool for perceptual training, yet there are numerous concerns cited across the literature. Questions are still raised over the legitimacy of QE training interventions, as Causer (2016) suggested in his commentary to Vickers (2016) that there are limited trials and short retention periods across a number of training interventions. It is clear from the literature that the design of training methodologies employed has been given little thought. Resulting in isolated intervention based training methodologies. It is worth noting that often the trials are isolated incidents of performance, with the tasks often being non-representative of the constraints that would occur in the natural task setting (Reinhoff et al.. 2015). Whilst there is great depth in QE research, performance environments are littered with interacting constraints which shape emergent behaviour, yet the role of interacting constraints has been limited in the design of research tasks for study of the QE. Reinhoff et al (2015) search found just 51 studies dedicated towards understanding the impact of constraints on QE, however, a vast proportion of this branch of research has highlighted the resultant gaze behaviour from the interacting constraints compared across trials and individual, rather than the process to which gaze is attuned because of the environments that shape their actions.

Learning on the Edge: Brookes Learning and Teaching Conference, 2016

Changing Lives, Changing Worlds Conference, 2016

This presentation locates sport coaching as a space within which 'hard to reach' young people are... more This presentation locates sport coaching as a space within which 'hard to reach' young people are (re) engaged in society and using an ethnographic methodology that embraces digital wearable technology as a research tool, I seek to understand the way in which social corporate responsibility replaces government responsibility and the type of citizen this produces. Having established that coaching fulfils multiple roles and realities (Lyle, 2002; Jones, 2006; Cregan et al., 2007; Bush and Silk, 2010; Roberts et al., in press) it is important to ask more critical questions pertaining to how coaching is used as opposed to what it is or does. Physical Cultural Studies (PCS) (Andrews, 2008) offers an insight into the promise or inconvenient truth of kinesiology (sport coaching in this instance); whilst Bush and Silk (2010) offer the Physical Pedagogic Bricolage (PPB) as a more appropriate and useful nomenclature and critique of what it is that sport coaching does, is, and ought to be. If we embrace PPB then we can challenge the need to prove what it is that coaching is, and instead examine at this conjunctural (Grossberg, 2006) moment the more pertinent and contextual question of 'how it is that we seek to use coaching?' The research raises critical questions about the use of sport coaching in 'sport for development' projects, and the governance of sport and young people more wholly; importantly, though, it questions the notion of governmentality (Foucault, 1978; Rose, 2000) exerted by those tasked with engaging the 'hard to reach' (Crabbe, 2007).

Political Studies Association (Sport Special Interest Group) : Sport, Policy & Politics Conference, 2013

Within this paper I seek to explore notions of governance of citizenry through the politics of cr... more Within this paper I seek to explore notions of governance of citizenry through the politics of crime and sport. Sport is often presented as a panacea to combat a range of risks to advancing liberal democracies such as ill-health, lack of education and attainment, morality, drug (mis)use and crime. The seemingly redeeming and transformative powers of sport have manifested in the emergence of a plethora of policy initiatives designed to combat the social problems aforementioned. Much has been espoused about the power of sport and this has been accepted, largely anecdotally, as we have witnessed a number of policy shifts focussing on 'elite', 'competitive', 'healthy', 'inclusive' and 'educational' elements of sport and physical activity. In order to offer insight into the experiences of such sporting interventions aimed at tackling these social problems, this paper explores narrative experiences of the 'Street Elite' project which provides the context to offer critical commentary regarding policy, governance and the conforming citizen. This paper will attempt to explore the complexity of governance and control through the eyes of those involved in programmes that are deemed transformative in nature. It will consider the ways in which regimes of control are derived, implemented and received whilst challenging the accepted notion that sport is a vehicle for positive change that can significantly impact upon those 'disengaged' young people. Considering arguments aligned to governmentality and control; this paper will seek to argue that sports initiatives aimed at tackling crime, health and educational issues are instead arresting the concern with government of moral order by producing the conforming citizen.

Teaching Forward: The future of Social Sciences : Higher Education Academy Social Sciences Conference, 2014

This paper details an explorative and experimental project that is seeking to better implement vi... more This paper details an explorative and experimental project that is seeking to better implement virtual technologies of Web 2.0 into the pedagogy of higher education. Our project endeavours to position these technologies as a means of reorienting pedagogic practice within higher education around truly chaordic communities of practice that serve to develop digital citizens. We have undertaken this project with the belief that higher education should be concerned with answering the calls of our increasing digital society; that is to say become a place for foster digitally literate learners, who's learning is not restricted to physical boundaries of the university but rather happens at all times over physical and virtual spaces. We ascribe to the connected and co-dependent world described in the future world of 'only connect'. A world where the zeitgeist of individualism, liberalism and competition has dissolved and been replaced with cultural, political and economic socialism, coherent with the Marxist traditions of Gramsci, Hall and McLaren, and the fall of the regime of

Political Studies Association (Sport Special Interest Group) : Sport, Policy & Politics Conference, 2017

Professional football in the United Kingdom has been significantly transformed by a combination o... more Professional football in the United Kingdom has been significantly transformed by a combination of commercialisation, commodification and globalisation – ideologically, processually and practically-resulting in numerous tensions and conflicts for football supporters as they come to terms with the shifting nature of contemporary football cultures. This paper seeks to discuss the impact of these processes on the lived experience of football fans, utilising an auto-ethnographic methodological approach to critically reflect upon the impact of the hyper-commercialised nature of contemporary professional football on modern football fan identities. The first half of the paper draws upon the findings of an undergraduate student dissertation which uses an autoethnographic and narrative turn – utilising a critical discussion of the football 'song' to poetically explore the impact of foreign ownership, financial investment and competitive success for Manchester City fans, outlining the resultant conflicts and tensions that these developments have caused, such as the marginalisation and alienation of traditional 'City' fans. The second half of the paper builds upon this analysis by discussing the potential benefits of similar narrative projects in a wider range of contexts across the UK, thus exploring the contrasting and nuanced impacts of processes such as commercialisation and globalisation on fan identities in different geographic regions and levels of competition.

Transforming Learning Spaces: Making the Pedagogical more Political Conference, 2010

This paper details an explorative and experimental project based in the Faculty of Health and Lif... more This paper details an explorative and experimental project based in the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences at Oxford Brookes University. It is an example of how a virtual space can be used to support and develop a strong and dynamic learning community in which staff and students work alongside to co-produce learning resources to enhance campus-based learning activities. It is likely to be of interest to colleagues who have experienced difficulties with student engagement in virtual learning environments, and those who are interested in developing more dynamic lecture programmes. The aim of the initiative was to explore how the connective, democratic, interactive and constant accessible qualities of Web 2.0 can be better utilised to engage students in their learning and contribute to their development as digital citizens. Drawing on the well-established theories of communities of practice and situated learning (Wenger 1998, Wenger et al 2002, Lave 1991), a new teaching model was introduced for students on the Global and Cultural Studies module on the Sport, Coaching and Physical Education degree. The module is a 12 week module using face to face and online learning to engage students in the critical and discursive debates located in Sport and Physical Culture in a globalised, neoliberal society. Google+ was used as the main teaching and learning environment, requiring students to engage as active participants and co-producers of the learning resources, rather than passive consumers of content. They were encouraged to find and share relevant resources and use them to debate and explore key questions with their peers; face to face sessions were then designed to respond to and exploit the student-generated content. Much of the online activity took place outside of formal timetabled hours. The initiative was evaluated via discourse analysis of the Google+ environment and in-depth interviews with students. We will present the themes which emerged from the analysis and share the barriers, enablers and impact stories with delegates. Ultimately, we conclude that the Web 2.0 tools can be used to manage and facilitate a vibrant and dynamic flow of people and information in a way that linear discussion boards and chatrooms cannot; we suggest that this reorients pedagogic practice around the emergent idea of 'chaordic' communities of practice that serve to develop digital citizens.

VI International Scientific Conference, Moscow State University. (Philosophic, Historical and Cultural Aspects of Physical Education and Sport)., 2011

Hard to Reach? Not really: a positive debate about tackling youth unemployment (Street Elite Seminar Series), 2014

Foundations in Sports Coaching, 2012

Athlete-centred -term applied to ensuring that the individual is at the centre of your considerat... more Athlete-centred -term applied to ensuring that the individual is at the centre of your considerations when coaching Linear (traditional) coaching -drills and practices that assume learning is sequential Non-linear (non-traditional) coaching -problembased game play that leads to the learning of skills and technique as well as tactical understanding of sport

Foundations in Sports Coaching, 2012