A Study on the Influencing Factors of Retired Athletes Transitioning to Primary and Secondary School Physical Education Teachers from a Configuration Path——A Research Based on Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis

Exploring the factors influencing the success or otherwise of retired athletes in completing the role reversal of physical education teachers is an important guarantee for deepening the integration of sports and education. Using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, a sample of 100 retired athletes in China was used as a case study to examine the configuration pathways of their physical education teacher role reversal. The study found that: 1) Both social capital and new human capital are core requisites for facilitating the successful reversal of retired athletes to physical education teachers, but the pairing of the two with other dimensions presupposes the absence of the other; 2) social capital has a greater unilateral effect on facilitating the role transition of retired physical education teachers, while new human capital is more dependent on a combination of other factors, but the high explanatory and low coverage characteristics make new human capital an “important and special” influencing factor; 3) given the importance and specificity of the new human capital, the synergistic path of agreeableness facets, conscientiousness and extroversion is more stable and has higher explanatory strength when the internal five elemental dimensions are disentangled separately.