Background: The previous two decades have witnessed an increasing number of policymakers and practitioners using sport programmes to achieve broader social development aims, particularly in countries ...in the Global South. A core element of these programmes has been the use of sport as a context to provide young people with social, personal and health education. However, despite the educative focus of the 'sport for development and peace' (SDP) movement, there has been limited analysis within the existing literature of the pedagogies used and whether these are appropriate for achieving the aims of SDP programmes. This article seeks to review and critique the core pedagogical strategies used in SDP initiatives.
Theoretical framework: This article draws on Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy as a theoretical framework to examine education through sport in the Global South. The authors consider Freire's work to provide a number of aspects that are relevant to SDP education. Freire has long been established as the standard-bearer of critical pedagogy globally including contexts relevant to where SDP education takes place. His work offers a conceptual framework that challenges the status quo and offers marginalized groups the opportunity to enhance their agency, outcomes that are at the heart of the SDP movement. This article outlines key themes associated with Freirean pedagogy including the politicization of education, the possibility of transformation through education and the importance of dialogical education for creating 'critically transitive consciousness'.
Discussion: We use these core foundational concepts to critique existing pedagogical strategies in SDP and outline how they currently do not go far enough in providing a truly transformative educational experience for participants. The discussion considers the use of traditional didactic, peer education and relationship-building pedagogies in SDP and analyses the limitations of each of these using the critical lens of Freire's pedagogy.
Conclusion: We conclude by outlining how Freirean pedagogy could be better utilized within SDP education and outline some of the practical implications of doing so. The need for flexibility in SDP curriculum development is highlighted and the importance of ensuring that this is grounded within a local context, dealing with specific local issues, is also noted. This is at odds with the current movement within SDP to standardize the education that takes place within this context. We also consider the implications for recruiting and training educators to deliver a more critical pedagogy, outlining some of the qualities such individuals should be seeking to develop in order to engage in a more transformative education process through sport.
Issue addressed: The significance of physical activity (PA) for the health and wellbeing of older adults is well documented. Local government (LG) publish PA policy and interventions to encourage and ...improve older adult PA participation. However, LG documents have rarely been studied to examine the extent to which LG incorporates evidence-based strategies into the development of older adult PA policy.
Methods: The behaviour change wheel (BCW) 'retrofitting' approach was used to identify and explain available evidence-based PA policies and interventions across 10 Victorian LGs. A document analysis was completed using LG policy and involved elements of content analysis and thematic analysis.
Results: The analysis found 41 documents that included policy and interventions to encourage and improve PA among older adults. Some of the more popular BCW combinations included service provision and enablement and environmental/social planning, and environmental restructuring. In addition, LGs embrace modifying the built environment and creating partnerships. However, our results suggest that some are not considering modelling or incentives to increase PA.
Conclusions: According to the BCWs, Acceptability, Practicability, Effectiveness, Affordability, Side-effects, and Equity (APEASE) criteria, it is not feasible for Victorian LGs to be including all intervention functions and supporting policy functions. However, contemporary older adult PA intervention literature suggests LGs could benefit from including incentives and modelling into current PA policy.
So what?: This research is one of the first to identify and explain how Victorian LGs facilitate PA participation among older adults. This research will guide Victorian LGs when drafting and implementing PA policy in the future.
This jointly authored book extends understanding of the use of sport to address global development agendas by offering an important departure from prevailing theoretical and methodological approaches ...in the field. Drawing on nearly a decade of wide-ranging multidisciplinary research undertaken with young people and adults living and working in urban communities in Zambia, the book presents a localised account that locates sport for development in historical, political, economic and social context. A key feature of the book is its detailed examination of the lives, experiences and responses of young people involved in sport for development activities, drawn from their own accounts. The book's unique approach and content will be highly relevant to academic researchers and post-graduate students studying sport and development in across many different contexts.
Sport participation has been shown to be associated with health and social benefits. However, there are persisting inequities and barriers to sport participation that can prevent children and young ...people with diverse backgrounds and abilities from accessing these benefits. This mixed methods study investigated how diversity is understood, experienced and managed in junior sport. The study combined in-depth interviews (n = 101), surveys (n = 450) and observations over a three-year period. The results revealed that a focus on performance and competitiveness negatively affected junior sports clubs' commitment to diversity and inclusive participation. Gender and a range of attitudes about diversity were also strongly related. On average, we found that those who identified as men were more likely to support a pro-performance stance, be homophobic, endorse stricter gender roles, and endorse violence as a natural masculine trait. In addition, those who identified as men were less likely to hold pro-disability attitudes. These findings suggest that the participation-performance tension and gender affect to what extent, and how, sports clubs engage children and young people with diverse backgrounds and abilities.
Introduction
Sport is regularly used as a policy-led tool to facilitate outcomes aligned with resettlement and integration of refugees. However, the understanding of the role of sport in the ...resettlement of refugees is limited by a narrow focus on policy-led integration outcomes and player participation (Nunn et al., 2021). Moreover, refugee men prevail as the dominant participants, in not only sporting programs, but also within the research that informs the sport resettlement agenda (Ekholm et al., 2019). Therefore, the participation of refugee women in sport policy and programming is largely understood through refugee men's experiences, where the role of sport in resettlement and the daily lives of refugee women is less well understood. This research, guided by postcolonial feminism, examined how sport is deployed as a resettlement and integration policy tool for refugee backgrounded women living in Melbourne, Australia, and aimed to determine the relevance of sport in the lives of refugee backgrounded women.
Methods
Bacchi (2009) framework for policy analysis examined three government sport policies texts that represented refugee integration as a ‘problem’ to be managed through sport. Interviews with policy actors and sport program providers investigated practices and discourses underpinning refugee women’s inclusion in sport programming. Ethnographic fieldwork conducted over a 12-month period with a culturally diverse community football club, explored the role of sport in the lives of refugee backgrounded mothers and their children. Data was analysed using critical discourse analysis and thematic analysis.
Results
Factors at policy level, i.e. the tokenistic presence of women and girls in policy texts, and programming level, i.e. their inclusion into male dominated spaces shaped by neoliberal agendas, continue to resist refugee women’s participation in mainstream sport. Refugee women’s secondary presence in policy and programming was reinforced by temporary, sporadic and competitive funding opportunities that were heavily reliant on participation numbers and hegemonic masculinity, preserving the privilege of the status-quo. Integration in the policy texts was understood as belonging to the dominant Anglo-Australian culture, but belonging was contested, and the refugee mothers in this study understood belonging as being to their own cultures. Their sporting club was a space of belonging, stress relief, social connection, agency and cultural maintenance. The sport club was an important part of their lives as individuals, and was an important aspect of parenting and motherhood.
Discussion/Conclusion
Our study indicates that policy level and policy actors that promote the inclusion and integration of refugees through sport regularly marginalise refugee women and place them as tokenistic participants. Our findings suggest that ethno-specific, community driven sporting spaces are not oppositional, but play a complementary role in policy-led integration agendas. Sport can play an important role in resettlement among refugee backgrounded mothers and their families, where it offers a stable foundation from which other outcomes and benefits are able to facilitated. If sport has the capacity to facilitate positive social outcomes in line with settlement and integration, then greater efforts must be made to ensure women and girls are included and represented in the sport rhetoric (Ekholm et al., 2019).
References
Bacchi, C. (2009). Analysing Policy: What’s the problem represented to be? Pearson.
Ekholm, D., Dahlstedt, M., & Rönnbäck, J. (2019). Problematizing the absent girl: Sport as a means of emancipation and social inclusion. Sport in Society, 22(6), 1043-1061. https://doi.org/10.1080/17430437.2018.1505870
Nunn, C., Spaaij, R., & Luguetti, C. (2021). Beyond integration: Football as a mobile, transnational sphere of belonging for refugee-background young people. Leisure Studies, 41(1), 42-55. https://doi.org/10.1080/02614367.2021.1962393
•Builds an exchange between Freire’s and Wegerif’sdialogical theories.•Introduces a conversation between Wegerif’s creative body and sports education.•Brings grassroots data from a diverse set of ...countries.•Integrates Freire’s theory to sports pedagogy.•Highlights creativity as a key component of sports education.
Sports educators have long used coaching and teaching methods based on regimes of mechanical execution of movements. Without accounting for the social context in which sports education takes place, these methodologies consider exhaustive action replication the best way to master physical skills. The past decades have seen a surge in alternative pedagogies that acknowledge that sporting bodies are much more than a combination of techniques. Pedagogies such as Game Sense approach the sports teaching-learning process through a constructivist perspective in which the intellectual dimensions of games are highlighted. This paper empirically examines how dialogic pedagogies can be put to work in sports education in order for students’ bodies to become creative and a central part of their own development. Using autoethnographic data drawn from the authors’ international personal experiences as sports coaches, physical educators, researchers and evaluators in two sports education contexts – school sports education and sport for development (SfD) – the paper aims to reveal pedagogies that foster creative participants who can enjoy, read and write their own games. The authors conclude that while dialogic sports education is not without conflict, it enables sports educators to create spaces in which continuous dialogue can occur. These pedagogies are not simply a tool for inquiry-based educational possibilities; they are the actual dialogic education.
There is increasing scientific and public support for the notion that some foods may be addictive, and that poor weight control and obesity may, for some people, stem from having a food addiction. ...However, it remains unclear how a food addiction model (FAM) explanation for obesity and weight control will affect weight stigma. In two experiments (
= 530 and
= 690), we tested the effect of a food addiction explanation for obesity and weight control on weight stigma. In Experiment 1, participants who received a FAM explanation for weight control and obesity reported lower weight stigma scores (e.g., less dislike of 'fat people', and lower personal willpower blame) than those receiving an explanation emphasizing diet and exercise (
= 7.675,
= 0.006; and
= 5.393,
= 0.021, respectively). In Experiment 2, there was a significant group difference for the dislike of 'fat people' stigma measure (
= 5.157,
= 0.006), but not for personal willpower weight stigma (
= 0.217,
= 0.81). Participants receiving the diet and exercise explanation had greater dislike of 'fat people' than those in the FAM explanation and control group (
values < 0.05), with no difference between the FAM and control groups (
>0.05). The FAM explanation for weight control and obesity did not increase weight stigma and resulted in lower stigma than the diet and exercise explanation that attributes obesity to personal control. The results highlight the importance of health messaging about the causes of obesity and the need for communications that do not exacerbate weight stigma.
Whilst Initial Teacher Education (ITE) is only one leverage point for teacher professional learning and development, it is of vital importance that ITE supports pre-service teachers (PSTs) in ...developing knowledge and skills necessary to promote inclusion of students with a disability in their class-spaces. Whilst 'inclusion' is a key feature of legislation, education policy and standards internationally, students with disabilities continue to report exclusion from Physical Education (PE) by both teachers and peers. There are thus increasing calls for PE to be more inclusive, and for teachers to enact curricula and pedagogies that dismantle ableism and offer diverse ways for students to learn in, through and about movement. This paper outlines how ITE can have a positive impact on the pedagogical knowledge, competence and 'readiness' of PSTs to teach inclusively. We offer a unique contribution to existing scholarship in that we outline how a specific combination of elements can be enacted within one unit/module within a Bachelor of Education (specialising in Health and Physical Education) to promote inclusion of students with a disability in PE. More specifically, the findings suggest that the elements of the unit that best supported PSTs in becoming more inclusive teachers were: (i) pedagogization of theory; (ii) sense of safety; (iii) partnerships for authentic learning; and (iv) student voice and co-design. Combined, these elements served to support PSTs in moving away from fixed, normative and ableist assumptions about their learners. It also provided opportunities for PSTs to explore and enact alternatives to the 'disability as problem' discourse, and thus more effectively teach students with a disability.
Sport organisations continue to place a low priority on addressing the exclusion and discrimination experienced by LGBTQ+ people (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, questioning/queer, and sexual/gender ...diverse). It was previously thought this was due to a lack of quantitative evidence of a problem; however, over the past decade, a large body of quantitative research has been conducted, including two international studies, providing strong evidence that discriminatory behaviour remains common in sport and is harmful to this population. In this paper, the authors summarise existing quantitative evidence and consider why sport organisations continue to be slow to address LGBTQ+ exclusion. They argue sport management scholars are in a unique and privileged position to address current resistance to action and drive change through conducting research aimed at identifying pragmatic, practical approaches to end harmful discriminatory behaviours. Finally, the authors describe why such research has the potential to mitigate harm while also advancing the discipline in ways described as being needed by leading scholars.
There is strong evidence that LGBTQ+ people experience discrimination in sport.
Sport managers remain resistant to addressing the harm caused to this community.
Solution-focused research is needed to identify ways to overcome this resistance.
Sport management scholars are in a privileged position to lead these investigations.
Leading this research could mitigate harm while helping to advance the discipline.
This article critically examines the work undertaken by Global North volunteers in Global South sport-for-development programmes. Whilst existing studies acknowledge the centrality of Northern ...volunteers to the delivery of sport-for-development programmes in the Global South, there are few detailed explorations of how volunteers approach working in diverse cultural contexts and their impact on local communities. Drawing on an ethnographic methodology and post-colonial theory, the article reflects on the first author’s experiences as an AusAID funded volunteer working as a cricket development officer in the Solomon Islands. In addition to the first author’s fieldnotes and critical reflections, the article draws on interviews conducted with indigenous and expatriate stakeholders involved in the sport-for-development programme. The findings demonstrate the complexities of Global North volunteers’ engagement with sport-for-development. The use of post-colonial theory illustrates the ways in which Global North volunteers can perpetuate neo-colonial initiatives and systems of working that are imposed on Global South communities. The study suggests that volunteers can be very aware of their position but can feel helpless in challenging external agencies to promote more culturally sensitive and localised approaches to development work. Furthermore, the paper indicates the complications of developing localised initiatives, indicating how external agencies, through the Global North volunteer, used indigenous people to create the impression that programmes are locally driven. The paper concludes by examining the ways in which indigenous communities resisted the imposition of a sport-for-development initiative that did not meet their needs.
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