Sensibility to as a vector of expertise: the case of volleyball players

Abstract

Our contribution, backed by research conducted due to dissatisfactions arising from the field of volleyball training, strives to investigate a little-known aspect favouring access to expertise. It is in line with the recent extensions of enactivism and Canguilhem’s philosophy of life, norms and values. We study the activity of two expert volleyball players through systematic observations and self-confrontation interviews. The confrontation of behavioural and verbatim materials reveals a coherence common to both players, but also to some novices, more specifically those who perform and progress more than the others. The results suggest that sensibility to is, at the basis of this coherence, a crucial vector of expertise. It is the entity integrating affectivity, cognition and motor skills, as well as the instance of mobilizing the person towards what is important to him or her. Experts and some novices share a common sensibility and we detail the reasons why this sensibility favours access to expertise. The expert and the novice should no longer be considered as opposites, because their activity can be oriented by the same sensibility to; it is necessary to distinguish and link two axes of analysis: that of sensibility and that of expertise. We defend the principle that to better understand expertise is to understand the conditions that favour it in order to try to design training aimed at accessing it.