PUBLISHED 2025 ACADEMIA.EDU · LANDMARK PAPER · EARLY LEARNING SPORTS DEVELOPMENT
The Early Learning Gap in Sports Development
A Literature-Based Comparative Analysis and Call for Research
This paper establishes the foundational gap at the center of the youth sports crisis: the systematic absence of evidence-based programming for children ages 18 months to 5 years. Through comparative literature analysis, it documents that every major framework in sports development — the DMSP, LTAD, and their derivatives — begins at age 6, leaving the earliest and most formative developmental window entirely unstudied and unsupported. Early Learning Sports Development is identified as the field required to address this gap.
What This Paper Establishes
The early learning gap is not an oversight. It is a structural feature of a sports development research enterprise that begins its analysis at the point where children enter organized competition — and treats everything before that point as outside its jurisdiction.
This paper conducts a systematic review of the dominant sports development frameworks and documents a consistent pattern: the birth-to-five developmental window is absent from the scholarly record. Not understudied. Absent.
The implications are significant. Without evidence-based frameworks for the foundational years, practitioners serving children ages 18 months to 5 years have no empirical basis for programming decisions. Families have no developmental framework to evaluate quality. And the conditions that produce the youth sports crisis — dropout, burnout, overuse injury, psychological harm — are established before researchers begin looking.
The early learning gap is not an oversight. It is a structural feature of a sports development research enterprise that begins its analysis at the point where children enter organized competition — and treats everything before that point as outside its jurisdiction.
This paper conducts a systematic review of the dominant sports development frameworks and documents a consistent pattern: the birth-to-five developmental window is absent from the scholarly record. Not understudied. Absent.
The implications are significant. Without evidence-based frameworks for the foundational years, practitioners serving children ages 18 months to 5 years have no empirical basis for programming decisions. Families have no developmental framework to evaluate quality. And the conditions that produce the youth sports crisis — dropout, burnout, overuse injury, psychological harm — are established before researchers begin looking.
Core Findings
The comparative analysis documents three findings that establish the scope of the early learning gap:
The Developmental Blind Spot. Every major framework in sports development research — Côté's Developmental Model of Sport Participation, Balyi's Long-Term Athletic Development model, and their derivatives — establishes age 6 as its earliest entry point. Children ages 18 months to 5 years appear in none of these frameworks as subjects of systematic study.
The Consequence for Practice. In the absence of evidence-based programming frameworks, practitioners serving early learners default to scaled-down versions of competitive sports models designed for older children. This produces a developmental mismatch — programming built for a different population applied to children whose developmental characteristics, learning patterns, and motivational structures are fundamentally different.
The Call for Research. The paper argues that establishing early learning sports development as a named scientific field — with its own theoretical frameworks, research methodologies, and evidence base — is the foundational requirement for addressing the youth sports crisis at its origin rather than its symptoms.
Frameworks Referenced
The analysis engages the following developmental frameworks: Côté's Developmental Model of Sport Participation (DMSP), Balyi's Long-Term Athletic Development (LTAD) model, the American Development Model (ADM), Positive Youth Development (PYD) frameworks applied to sport, and early childhood physical activity guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics and World Health Organization.
The consistent finding across all frameworks: systematic, evidence-based programming for children ages 18 months to 5 years in sports contexts does not exist in the scholarly record.
Relationship to the Field
This paper serves as the documentary foundation for Early Learning Sports Development as a distinct scientific field. The gap it identifies — and names — is the gap that the Natural Order of Sport©, Governing Dynamics of Sport©, and The Jelly Bean Way© were developed to address through 20 years of practitioner implementation research.
The literature analysis confirms that no competing framework claims this developmental territory. The field is not contested. It is empty — and this paper is the formal documentation of that emptiness and the call for its systematic study.
Internal Links
→ The Natural Order of Sport©: The framework to address this gap
→ Governing Dynamics of Sport©: The seven-stage architecture beginning at birth
→ Research Overview: Full scholarly record
Kayden, B.J. (2025). The early learning gap in sports development: A literature-based comparative analysis and call for research. Academia.edu. https://www.academia.edu/143854885/