The involvement of external agencies in extra-curricular physical education: reinforcing or challenging gender and ability inequities?

Within the UK and internationally, schools are increasingly being encouraged to call on external agencies and draw on the services of individuals, including sport coaches, to ‘help teach or lead sports within the school setting and out of school time’. This trend arises from and has contributed to a changing policy landscape and relations that characterise ‘physical education and school sport’ (PESS) and the growing use of the terminology of ‘PESS’. Previous research has highlighted that neither PESS considered broadly as a policy space, nor specific initiatives centring on ‘partnership-based’ development of physical education (PE) and/or sport in schools, can be assumed to facilitate greater equity in provision for young people. This study reports on research that has sought to build on past studies revealing gender and ability inequities amidst PESS developments. The research was designed as a small-scale case study investigation to critically explore the equity-related messages being conveyed in and through the hidden curriculum in a context of coaches’ involvement in extra-curricular provision. Utilising observations and interviews with coaches and PE teachers, data collection focused on ways in which ideas of ability, masculinity and femininity were being constructed and reproduced in and through coach's pedagogy, and sought insight into the prospective impact of the particular constructions on girls’ and boys’ involvement in extra-curricular PE. Analysis revealed that the hidden curriculum expressed in and through the organisation of extra-curricular PE and coaches’ pedagogical practices in this context can be seen as reaffirming limited conceptions of ability in PE and gender inequity in relation to girls’ and boys’ respective participation opportunities. Discussion critically addresses the relationship between policy and pedagogy in PESS in pursuing apparently ongoing tendencies for long-standing inequities to be reproduced in and through extra-curricular provision.     

Youth multi-sport events in Austria: tourism strategy or just a coincidence?

Impact and legacy research of touristic issues has become more popular with the appearance of manifold approaches to examining tourism. In recent years, the region of Western Austria has successfully staged multi-sport youth events, with two being staged in Innsbruck, Tyrol (YOG 2012; ICG 2016) and one in the region of Montafon, Vorarlberg (EYOF, 2015). This leads to the assumption that the high frequency of youth sports events in these regions necessitates and therefore also follows a set hosting policy or at least a strategic approach to event bidding and staging. To examine these assumptions, a mix of desk research and qualitative interviews was chosen, encompassing bidding files, final reports, official tourism statistics, press releases from tourism boards, political working papers, internal documents and interviews with organising committee members, event experts and political representatives. Staging youth sports events is found to have left legacies in Western Austria such as generating immediate overnight stays in the low season and creating a positive image for the host regions, depending on the frequency with which events are staged and affirming the purpose of using events to boost tourism. The host areas lacked a written (youth sport) strategy and unexpectedly, the existing strategies do not include the youth sports events. However, it can be assumed in the case of Innsbruck that a hidden event strategy exists. In conclusion, the study reveals the importance of sharing events and their benefits among the various local stakeholders, thus branding the region as a host city.     

Can Sport Form a National-Socialist Elite? The Example of SS Sports

Heinrich Himmler, leader of the Schutzstaffel (SS, Protection Squadron), regarded sports and sports competitions as efficient means to strengthen the importance of his organisation. The members of the SS were obligated to obtain the sports badges of the Sturmabteilung (SA, Storm Detachment) and the ‘German Sports Badge’, thereby – according to national socialist ideology – promoting a ‘natural selection’ and guaranteeing the formation of an elitist troop. The SS wanted to ensure they could successfully compete with other organisations during nationwide sports events and to nominate 50% of the members of the German Olympic Team. Moreover, the athletic rivalry between SS and SA continued in the struggle over the leadership within German sports. The SS tried to occupy as many positions of party officials as possible and consequently SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich saw himself as the legitimate successor of the Reichssportführer,1 ^1. On April 28, 1933, Hans von Tschammer und Osten was first named Reichskommissar für Turnen und Sport (Commissioner for Gymnastics and Sports of the Reich). On July 19, 1933, he was elevated from Hitler to Reichssportführer and the whole sports sphere in Germany was placed under his power. the leader of the national socialistic sports system.     

The Development of Elite Cycling in China: 1992–2012

Abstract

By analyzing China’s approaches to elite cycling, this paper seeks to answer the question why the bicycle kingdom failed to produce any Olympic cycling champions. Many factors could explain China’s lack of medal success on the international stage, ranging from the limited degree of organizational specialization, problems regarding the quantity and quality of domestic coaches, to the lack of influence in the international governing body and more importantly the tension between the national team and provincial teams. However, there have been a series of developments contributing to China’s notable progress in cycling in the 2000s in general and in the London Olympiad in particular, the most important of which were the recruitment of world-leading coaches and the organization of overseas training. All these culprits and positive developments are discussed, not only to explain China’s overall poor medal performance in cycling at the Olympic Games yet with some gradual progress in recent years, but also to provide a representative through which China’s approaches to many non-traditional and less-successful sports can be understood. Four semi-structured interviews were conducted, accompanied by comprehensive document analysis derived from official documents and website information of associated sports governing bodies and influential media in China.     

Competing by investments or efficiency? Exploring financial and sporting efficiency of club ownership structures in European football

Professional European football clubs have been hypothesized to maximize sporting or financial objectives. The authors analyze the impact of various ownership structures on the realized management efficiency in maximizing profitability and national sporting success. Therefore, they apply the time-varying stochastic frontier model by Battese & Coelli (1995) to an unbalanced panel from England and France between 2006 and 2012. French professional football is characterized by a shift towards private investors. Results show that clubs majority-owned by private investors are less efficient than other clubs in French Ligue 1. In English professional football, the majority of takeovers is pursued by foreign investors. Although previous researchers have shown that foreign investors increase financial resources and team investments, the authors demonstrate that foreign investors reduce both financial and sporting efficiency. The analysis of survival and financial team efficiencies of club ownership structures indicates that clubs tend to compete by investments rather than efficiency.     

Relative age effect and soccer refereeing: A ‘Strategic Adaptation’ of relatively younger children?

Abstract

Previous research suggested that the relative age effect (RAE) has a psychological influence on children and their decision to engage in a particular sport. Relatively younger children seem to have lower self-esteem. Indeed, because of the disadvantages of being younger, it is assumed that these players experience more situations of failure and inferiority. Because of these negative performance cues, it is likely that these young players feel less competent, which eventually leads to a higher dropout rate. These children can also decide to participate in sports in which physical attributes are less important. This shift from one sport to another can be interpreted as a ‘strategic adaptation’. The purpose of this study was thus to investigate whether refereeing could be another form of ‘strategic adaptation’. If a child chooses a specific sport but then does not feel competent enough to be a player, refereeing might be an alternate path followed to stay in the environment of a sport they like. Given the minimal age limits for refereeing, two hypotheses were formulated: (1) ‘reversed’ RAE would be observed in district referees younger than 18 years old and (2) no RAE would be observed in district referees older than 18 years old, regional referees and national referees. The birthdates of all official male soccer referees (n=13,952) were collected from the federation database. Results show that the distribution of all district referees was significantly unbalanced (χ²=18.73, df=3, P<0.001) with an over-representation of individuals who were born in the second half of the competitive year. As expected, this imbalance was exclusively located in district referees of 18 years old and less (χ²=8.03, df=3, P<0.05), while the distribution was uniform for adults (χ²=5.17, df=3, P<0.16). Concerning regional referees (χ²=2.09, df=3, P<0.554) and national referees (χ²=3.75, df=3, P<0.290), the results also provide support for our initial hypothesis as uniform distributions were found for both groups. This study brings to light new elements in the potential relationship between relative age and refereeing. Qualitative and/or longitudinal research is needed to confirm our quantitative data.     

The coach–athlete relationship: a motivational model

The aim of this paper is to present a motivational model of the coach–athlete relationship that describes how coaches may influence athletes' motivation. In line with cognitive evaluation theory (Deci and Ryan, 1980 Deci EL Ryan RM 1980 The empirical exploration of intrinsic motivational processes In Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 13 (edited by L. Berkowitz) pp. 39–80 New York: Academic Press  [Google Scholar], 1985 Deci EL Ryan RM 1985 Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior New York: Plenum Press [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]) and the hierarchical model of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (Vallerand, 1997 Vallerand RJ 1997 Toward a hierarchical model of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 29 271 360  [Google Scholar], 2000 Vallerand RJ 2000 Deci and Ryan's self-determination theory: a view from the hierarchical model of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation Psychological Inquiry 11 312 318  [Google Scholar]), a motivational sequence is proposed where coaches' personal orientation towards coaching, the context within which they operate, and their perceptions of their athletes' behaviour and motivation influence coaches' behaviours. Also, coaches' behaviours in the form of autonomy-supportive behaviours, provision of structure and involvement have a beneficial impact on athletes' needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness, which, in turn, nurture athletes' intrinsic motivation and self-determined types of extrinsic motivation. Here, we first review coaches' autonomy-supportive behaviours. We then describe the psychological processes through which coaching behaviours have a positive influence on athletes' intrinsic and self-determined extrinsic motivation. Finally, we identify social and personality processes that determine coaching behaviours.     

The mainstreaming of disability cricket in England and Wales: Integration ‘One Game’ at a time

Disability sport in Great Britain has, since its genesis over sixty years ago, gained greater public profile with each passing decade. Arguably, this is a result of a more direct, interventionist approach from the British government and the Sport Councils into the field of disability sport over the past twenty years. In this paper we highlight a case of integration within sport by examining the process of mainstreaming disability cricket within England and Wales. Following a review of the extant literature in this area we will draw upon Bourdieu's practice theory in order to examine the impact of the implementation of policy on the management of issues of disability in mainstream cricket. Longitudinal ethnographic data (including participant observation and semi-structured interviews) was collected on the organizations involved in this mainstreaming process. Informants were either involved in the delivery of disability cricket or in the management of disability sports partnerships. Preliminary findings suggest that true integration is still unrealized. Whether the policy seeks true integration or whether mainstreaming is simply another modernizing process seeking greater efficiencies from sport organizations is unclear. Nevertheless a number of institutional pressures from the proximal and distal external environments have provided support for generating mainstreaming initiatives at management levels. In addition to these findings we argue that an additional outcome of this research is to demonstrate the suitability of a relational approach for conceptualizing policy, its interpretation by sport managers and the implementation strategies that follow.     

Relative age effect in elite sports: Methodological bias or real discrimination?

Abstract

Sport science researchers refer to a relative age effect when they observe a biased distribution of elite athletes' birth dates, with an over-representation of those born at the beginning of the competitive year and an under-representation of those born at the end. Based on the complete sample of French male licensed soccer players (n=1,831,524), we suggest that there could be an important bias in the statistical test of this effect. This bias could in turn lead to the false conclusion of systemic discrimination in the recruitment of professional players. Our findings question the accuracy of previous research on the existence of this effect in elite soccer.     

Sports participation and health during periods of educational transition: a study of 30–35-year-olds in north-west England

In view of the persistence of health inequalities and declines in leisure-sport participation over the life course, several quantitative investigations have explored the links between participation and other leisure activities, which have their foundations in childhood and youth, as a means of understanding adults’ health behaviours. This paper presents new qualitative evidence to examine the largely under-explored relationship between leisure-sport participation and health within the context of educational transitions among a sample of 30–35-year-olds in north-west England. Drawing on semi-structured interviews conducted with 19 participants between July and August 2009, the paper illuminates the differential impact that gender and social class had on sports participation, and other health-related behaviours (e.g. drinking and smoking), among different groups of adults during the inherently transitional life-stage of youth. The findings suggest that while significant, the length of time spent in education and the differential educational experiences recalled by adults cannot adequately explain the observed differences in health and leisure-sport participation. The major sources of difference, while associated with educational transitions, appeared to lie instead in the broader inequalities that characterized adults’ lives and it is argued that simply enhancing leisure-sport participation and individual lifestyle change, as a means of health promotion, is a futile endeavour that does little to tackle the socio-economic structural determinants of health. We conclude by suggesting that until this is recognized by government and those both inside and outside of the health and sport policy communities, stubborn differences in leisure-sport participation rates and health inequalities—that have their foundations in childhood and youth, but extend over the life course—are likely to remain intact, and the unequal lives people currently lead are likely to become even more unequal in the future.     

“Sometimes you go into competitions with little or no expectations”: England,Euro 2012 in the context of austerity

This paper analyses media coverage of the England football team in the run up to Euro 2012. The study also describes the dominant discourse of ‘low expectations’ underpinning media representations of England and considers various reasons for this. Short-term factors are considered, including the resignation of the England manager, the intra-team tensions arising from racism, along with longer-term factors, including the perceived constraints placed on the England national team’s development by the English Premier League. While these factors are important, they cannot alone, or even in combination, sufficiently explain why the discourse of ‘low expectations took such a hold over media representations of the England national team. One missing factor is the broader problems facing the economy and society, particularly the preoccupation with ‘austerity’, which has created an aura of low expectations; particularly, the tendency to represent ‘austerity’ as ‘growth’ in a ‘low expectations’ culture. Previous research has demonstrated the links between the fortunes of the wider economy and sentiments surrounding the fate of the English national team. This article takes the opportunity to reconsider these wider links in terms of an elective affinity, arguing that the discourse of ‘low expectations’ haunting the England team in the present period is the manifestation and transference of a more pervasive general lowering of expectations among the media and the political elite, concerning the present and future political economic prospects of economic growth and social prosperity.     

‘A Threat to National Unity’ – Football in Jordan: Ethnic Divisive or a Political Tool for the Regime?

In Jordan, national identity is composed of two sub-national identities: the Transjordanian identity of Jordan's indigenous inhabitants from east of the Jordan river, and the Palestinians originating in the west of the Jordan river. Historically, the Jordanian throne has maintained power through an alliance with the Transjordanians. As the majority of the Jordanians are of Palestinian origin, democratisation in Jordan would likely imply the Palestinians taking over the political momentum in the country. When unrest has erupted in Jordan, as during the democracy protests of the Arab Spring, this has on some occasions been labelled as threats to the national unity by the Jordanian monarchy. No one wants to return to the civil war of 1970. On the other hand, to avoid democratisation, the memory of the civil war must be sustained. Since the civil war, Jordan has had a history of ethnic-based football riots. These are reminders of the threats to stability, security and national unity. But as long as they are contained at the football stadiums, they serve the interests of political forces wanting to preserve power and political status quo.