Self-Control and Emotional Skills of Student Athletes in Relation to Academic Learning

Abstract

The article focuses on the assessment of physical and mental self-control style as an attitudinal pattern in relation to the academic performance of first-year students at the National University of Physical Education and Sport included in the target group of the Rose project in 2022. This is an initial empirical study aimed at identifying attitudinal trends in terms of vision on sports performance and performance in didactic learning. The investigated students responded to a psychological questionnaire made up of items assessing: the dominant tendency to place the locus of control in relation to various aspects of life; the dominant tendency to accumulate information (learning style); the way of relating emotionally to different life contexts. The 2020-2022 period left a special mark on all those involved in a didactic learning process, given the context generated by the COVID-19 pandemic, in the sense of increasing the dropout rate of academic education, and a strong mark on athletes’ mobilization for performance and their vision of the future. Theoretically, we consider the concept of locus of control in one’s own life (Rotter, 1966), in the sense of decision-making, action or non-action in predictable and unpredictable situations, but also the level of dependence on social influences. On the other hand, we refer to the visual or auditory perceptual dominance associated with motor learning.