Introduction 

Sport schools are designated for those who have been identified as talented athletes with potential to achieve sporting success at elite level. However, research suggests that talent identification and selection is complex, and highly based upon coaches’ subjective judgements. In Sweden, all pupils in 9th grade can apply to sport schools in upper secondary education. The schools have a restricted entry, governed by the educational act and administered by the Swedish sports confederation (RF). School legislations states that the applicant who is thought to have the best chances of utilizing the school sports program should be given priority when selections are made. RF states that the purpose with sport schools is to support talents with the prerequisite skills to reach national or international elite as adults. Consequently, identification and selection of young athletes are indispensable. 

Aim and theoretical framework 

The aim of this ongoing project is to study school sport teachers’ perspective on the admission process in Swedish sport schools, and furthermore to analyse current methods used to assess and select future student-athletes. The concept community of practice (CoP) (Lave & Wenger, 1991) is used to analyse the data. A CoP is a group of people with shared interest in a specific domain. This group collaborate, share information, and actively work on advancing the general knowledge of the domain. 

Method 

We undertook conversational interviews in focus groups with 18 school sport teachers (male = 13, female = 5) representing six individual sports (alpine skiing, canoeing, cross-country skiing, orienteering, swimming, and track and field). 

Results 

The results indicate that the time-consuming admission-process involves, identification of, outreach to, and pre-selection of young athletes, evaluation of applicants on site (via tests, training, interviews, and social activities) and a collective final selection based on systemized assessments, summarized overall pictures, of the applicants. Furthermore, the admission-process constitutes individual subjective assessments of young athletes. However, our findings imply that the final decision, and selection of student-athletes is a collaborative process. The teachers use their shared competence (professional knowledge), joint accumulated experience, and practical sense, to select the applicant who is thought to have the best chances of utilizing a school sports program and have the prerequisites sport-specific skills to reach national or international elite as adults. 

Discussion and conclusions 

In our preliminary discussion we argue that the admission process is influenced by, and negotiated through, a sport-based community of practice. In this community, the inherent sport culture is reflected through school sport teachers’ assessments of applicants who preferably have the right character, (a positive) attitude, willingness to train, and work hard. On one hand, the teachers in the community deepen their knowledge and expertise in the admission process by interacting on continuing basis, it enhances the validation of, and justifies, their selections. On the other hand, a community with recurrent obligations may limit its development by imposing implicit boundaries, and reproduce, i.e., values and beliefs. To avoid path dependency, it is essential that members of the community continuously renew, renegotiate, and reflect upon, their practice.