Journal of Sport Psychology in Action

During their careers, sport participants experience various transitions and career change events. Each transition comes with a set of demands that a person should navigate to continue successfully in sport and/or other spheres of life. A transition coping process through the interplay of personal and environmental resources, barriers, and coping strategies influences a career trajectory by leading to “progression” (i.e., a successful transition outcome), “stagnation” (i.e., a crisis-transition), or “decay” (i.e., a failed transition outcome). The same processes hold true for sport teams and organizations. Sport psychology practitioners play an important role in assisting athletes, coaches, and other sport related clients in coping with transitions and developmental crises to facilitate their adaptation and more broadly, their pursuit of career excellence. Working with teams and sport organizations in transitions or crises is also a growing line in sport psychology transition research and practice, as indicated, for example, during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Therefore, the aims of this Journal of Sport Psychology in Action Special Issue are:
a) To encourage sport psychology practitioners to share their successful and less successful experiences of helping sport clients, such as athletes, coaches, referees, teams, and organizations, in transitions and crises.
b) To stimulate exchanges of ideas, frameworks, tools, strategies, techniques, and forms of delivery related to working with individual-, team-, and/or organization-clients in transitions and crises.
c) To promote theory/research grounded, holistic, and context-driven transition interventions.

We invite a wide range of potential topics to be addressed in the Special Issue, including, but not limited to, the following:
1. Individual and group-based transition interventions.
2. Consulting athletes, coaches, or sport referees in cultural transitions.
3. Helping student-athletes in transitions.
4. Support in transitions between high performance/dual career development environments.
5. Supporting retiring and retired athletes: Programs and individual interventions.
6. Supporting athletes, coaches, referees to adapt to career change events.
7. Crisis-transition interventions.
8. Counseling and/or relevant frameworks facilitating working with sports people in transitions.
9. Less successful transition interventions: Reflections and lessons to share.
10. Working with teams and/or sport organizations in transitions.

Preparing your submission, please, remember that the Journal of Sport Psychology in Action is an applied journal, and a good balance between theory/research/context and applications is expected. To assist with your manuscript development, please consider the following details:

The JSPA style: please, follow the guidelines to the authors (see the website). What also can be useful is to look through the following papers providing good recommendations:
Schinke, R. J. (2022.) Editorial, Journal of Sport Psychology in Action, 13:1, 1-3, https://doi.org/10.1080/21520704.2022.2028946
Schinke, R. J., Fry, M., Maher, C., & Butt, J. (2022). Current Reflections on Publishing in the Journal of Sport Psychology in Action, Journal of Sport Psychology in Action, 13:2, 71-77, https://doi.org/10.1080/21520704.2022.204624

Deadlines:
Opening the Special Issue portal: January 01, 2023.
Closing: January 15, 2024.
Publication of the Special Issue: Late spring 2024.

For informal inquiries about manuscript possibilities, authors can contact the Guest Editors, Natalia Stambulova ([email protected]) and Roy Samuel ([email protected]), or the Editor-in-Chief of JSPA, Robert Schinke ([email protected]). Once again, please, follow the submission guidelines of JSPA and the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA), Seventh Edition.

Submissions should be made between January 1, 2023, and January 15, 2024, via the journal's submission portal. We are looking forward to receiving submissions and begin professional sharing and exchange.

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