WINNERS FOR LIFE

CAPLA 2009 FALL WORKSHOP - Toronto

Presented by: A de Beer E Smith E Swanepoel H Mulder WINNERS FOR LIFE

If you plan for a year, plant a seed If for ten years, plant a tree If for a hundred, teach the people When you sow a seed once, you reap a single harvest If you teach the people, you reap a hundred harvests

-K’uan-tzu Objective

• To develop a skills programme • for professional South African cricketers • based on identified sports skills • which are both transferable to • and recognised by the world of work. Background to this project

• requested Unisa to help them to prepare professional cricket players for a life after cricket.

• Professional cricket players are contracted to six different franchises.

• The total of contracted cricket players for these franchises in South Africa is 110.

NASHUA is the brand name for the Northern franchise and consists of the Northern and Eastern unions. The headquarters are at SuperSport Park, Centurion, with Willowmoore Park, Benoni, also being used as a regular venue. THE BIZHUB HIGHVELD LIONS is the brand name for the Southern Gauteng franchise. The headquarters are at the Liberty Life Wanderers Stadium and m atches are played both there and at Senwes Park, Potchefstroom, the home of North West who are the other constituent partner. DIAMOND EAGLES is the brand name for the central franchise of and has been the most successful franchise in terms of winning trophies. The constituent members are the Free State and Griqualand West Cricket Boards. Their home grounds are the OUTsurance Oval in Bloemfontein and the De Beers Diamond Oval in Kimberley. NASHUA is the brand name for the KwaZulu-Natal franchise which consists of both the Durban and Maritzburg-based unions. They play most of their home matches at Sahara Stadium Kingsmead with the Alexandra Oval in Maritzburg as an alternative venue. CHEVROLET is the brand name for the Eastern Cape franchise of Cricket South Africa. Its constituent parts are the Eastern Province and Cricket Boards. They play their home matches at Axxess DSL St. George's in Port Elizabeth and at Buffalo Park in East London. NASHUA is the brand name for the Western Cape franchise of Cricket South Africa. Its constituent components are the Western Province Cricket Association and the Cricket Board. They consequently play their home matches at Boland Park, Paarl, and at Sahara Park Newlands. The latter ground is the headquarters.

Challenges

• Taking into account the information of the first few slides and the information of the video clip of Cricket SA, what challenges can you identify regarding this project? Guiding Principles

Guiding principles to insure life-long and life wide learning:

– Co-operation instead of competition – Education for transformation – Education, training and work opportunities for all – Distance education – Capacity development – Diversity – Learning will be shaped by finding out and taking action Guiding Principles

Guiding principles for this project :

– Designing a programme ensuring relevancy – Acknowledging situated learning in the programme – Blending formal, non-formal and informal delivery in the programme design – Constructing feedback loops from theory to practice and visa versa – Encouraging members to act as learning companions in learning clusters Conceptual Framework

In the process we identified two phases:

1. The design of the skills programme – Identify different skills of cricket players – Compile skills programme

2. Delivery of the skills programme Design of the programme

1. Phase One:

• Identify the different skills a cricket player needs • Identify skills a cricket player acquires by playing cricket • Compile different skills programmes QUESTIONNAIRE ON SKILLS

– Thinking about your cricket career, could you please tell us if the following skills are very important, fairly important, of average importance, not very important or not at all important for a professional cricket player.

– By playing professional cricket, could you please tell us which of the following skills you have mastered completely and are an expert in, mastered but are not an expert, mastered half, not mastered at all or not applicable to cricket. List of skills

• Problem-solving • Communication • Leadership • Team-participation • Ability to work with people • Basic information technology • Ability to follow instructions • Setting priorities • Planning • Delegating • Ability to work under stress • Ability to adapt to changing environment and frequent traveling List of skills

• Time management • Respect for others’ views • Risk taking • Motivation • Discipline • Ability to set goals • Reasoning • Public speaking • Interviewing • Listening • Explaining • Interpreting ideas • Negotiating Results of the questionnaire on importance of transferable skills

‘Very important’ frequency ratings identified:

• Discipline • Teamwork • Stress handling as very important, while the skills of • Explaining • Problem solving • and Ability to follow orders were rated least important. Perceived importance of listed transferable skills

‘Very important’ frequency ratings identified discipline, teamwork, stress handling, motivation and time management as very important transferable skills in the sports domain, while the skill of explaining, problem solving and ability to follow orders are rated least important. Results of the questionnaire on competences of transferable skills

The best perceived skill competencies were indicated for the transferable skills of:

• Teamwork • Discipline • Time management • Respect for other’s views • Work with people • Motivation • and Goal setting.

• Problem solving • and explaining were indicated as the skills in which respondent competencies were poor. Perceived competency of listed transferable skills

The best perceived skill-competencies were indicated for the transferable skills of teamwork, discipline, time management respect for other’s views, work with people, motivation and goal setting. Problem solving and explaining were indicated as the skills in which respondents competencies were poor. Results of the questionnaire on importance of generic skills

‘Very important’ frequency ratings identified:

• Communication and • Leadership as very important while the skills of

• Basic information technology and • Risk taking rated least important. Perceived importance rating of listed generic skills

Communication, followed by leadership, interviewing and prioritizing were indicated as very important generic skills in the sport domain. In contrast, basic information technology skills and risk taking skills were deemed not important . Results of the questionnaire on competency of generic skills

‘Very important’ frequency ratings identified:

• Communication • Leadership and • Reasoning • Explaining • Handling as very important while the skills of

• Delegation and • Basic information technology are rated least important. Perceived competency rating of listed generic skills

Although perceived competencies for generic skills on the sport field were seemingly (markedly) lower, prioritizing, communication, leadership and reasoning, were perceived as skills in which the respondents had the highest competency. Competency in delegation and basic information technology and strategy negotiation were perceived least favourable. Perception ratings (importance and competency) for each of the 25 skills for generic and transferable skills

• Discipline and communication were perceived as the most important skills in the sport domain and basic info technology and delegation as the least important skills. • Similarly perception seems to indicate that competency perceptions are highest on team work, respect for others and discipline skills and worst on basic info technology, delegation, public speaking and strategy negotiating Scale reliability testing and calculation of scale

Summative measures representing transferable and generic skills for importance and competency perceptions thus need to be developed. Mean importance and competency perception ratings for the two subsets of generic and transferable skills seem the obvious choice of measure. However the reliability of such measures to represent the four aspects have to be established before such measures can be used with confidence. Internal consistency reliability can be established by means of scale reliability testing. Results of scale reliability and calculation of scales Scale reliability testing and calculation of scale

Cronbach alpha coefficients for all four perception-aspects/ constructs (importance and competency for generic and transferable skills in general) were greater than 0.7 – which is regarded as the general guideline for internal consistency reliability. This implies that all importance and competency aspects of skills within the two skills-subsets all contributed towards explaining the four general aspects. It is thus justifiable to calculate a general score for each aspect for each respondent (‘a scale’) by calculating the mean perception score on the subset of skills representing each aspect (generic and transferable importance and competency aspects). The four sets of scores then represent general perceptions of respondents on importance and competence for transferable and generic skills. Development of skills programme

Based on the findings in the first questionnaire we started to develop the following skills programmes:

• Communication • Team work • Leadership • Principles regarding discipline and • Time management Delivery of programme

Requirement for delivery of programme:

– Integrating learning and work, lifelong and lifewide – A flexible learning programme – Lifewide learning environments – Teaching and learning strategies Teaching and learning strategy Mode of delivery: Blended learning

Satellite classes • Satellite classes are presented by the lecturers from the satellite studio in Pretoria, and live broadcasted to 17 linked venues in South Africa and Namibia.

Delivery of programme

Stakeholders assisted each other by:

– Identifying problems by all from the economy and society – Creating new knowledge – Advising each other – Counselling – Coaching – Assessment – Feedback to systems Limitations

• This is a pilot project • The focus was only on the current cricket players and not on former cricket players to determine the different skills • Time – more research needed to determine the skills acquired by playing cricket that can be transfered to the life of work after cricket. Conclusion

The power of a waterfall lies in a single drop … Questions?

Thank You