Sharedness evolution within soccer team in training: A longitudinal study

The aim of this study was to identify the sharedness construction during the training of young professional soccer players. The identification of shared content within expert teams as military teams, work teams or sport teams is a common research object in Team Cognition, however few studies have focused on sharedness construction within team during training. More precisely, we used the Team Situation Awareness approach to study sharedness evolution within a team of young professional soccer players for 10 months. Behavioral data from eight young players were recorded for 10 months and supplemented by verbal data collected during self-confrontation interviews after the game. Data were analyzed in four stages: (1) reconstruction of match timeline, (2) encode players’ individual activities during each phase, (3) synchronization and analyze the articulation of individual activities, and (4) analyze shared contents during training. Results indicated (1) the synchronic presentation of shared contents during training session on 10 months, (2) the evolution of shared contents rate during training in a graphical representation of the shared content evolution by element and by session, and (3) the evolution of shared knowledge contents during training with a graphical representation of the shared knowledge contents. These results are discussed in three points: (1) sharedness evolution and “stable” contents decrease, (2) shared knowledges focused on team external contents, and (3) methodological contributions for Team Situation Awareness study in a longitudinal perspective. This study, registered to the psychology and ergonomic field, could have practical and theoretical repercussion to team training in dynamical and uncertain situations (sport team, operation team, military team).