Addressing and navigating the social domain in sport: Coaches and physical education teachers

Abstract

Introduction: Sport is often seen as an activity that requires participants to primarily learn physical, technical and tactical skills. In the last two decades, however, there has been a growing awareness that social skills/behaviors also play a role in the development of athletes. Various scholars have conducted literature reviews to find evidence for the impact of sport on the social development of participants. These reviews have produced ambiguous and inconclusive conclusions about this impact. Little attention has been paid to what those working with young people in sport and physical education (PE) think is important in this social domain and how they address such social dimensions in their daily practices. The central research question guiding this dissertation is: How do coaches and PE teachers address the social domain in their work with young people? I used a social constructivist framework that incorporates various theoretical notions. Five chapters (2,3,4,5,6) contributed to answer the main research question. Methods: Processes of social constructions or how coaches and PE teachers address ‘the social’ can therefore best be explored through qualitative methodologies. Qualitative methods enable researchers to capture how individuals think and feel and why they choose to behave the way they do. Specifically, the use of qualitative methods enables researchers who wish to describe and explain ‘the social’ in sport and PE to do so from the perspective of participants. Results: In chapter 2 athletes described how their coaches tried to control their behaviour in practices and matches. The data showed how these athletes were disciplined or socialized to develop specific dispositions, situated in a discourse of performance. The coaches in chapter 3 prioritized and legitimized their choices regarding ‘the social’ by using a performance discourse that interacted with their claim of expertise. Chapter 4 presented a study of a course specifically designed to meet the stated needs of coaches while chapter 5 describes how these coaches transformed some of their ways of thinking and doing. In chapter 6 is examined how PE teachers interpret and try to implement the mandate to integrate social development of their pupils into their PE classes. Each of them made sense of and implemented this goal in their own way. Discussion: Most of the coaches and PE teachers involved in these studies paid little systematic attention to the personal development of their athletes/students. The PE teachers did give attention to the social development of their students but did so on an individual basis. The coaches seemed to be primarily focused on disciplining their athletes into obedience and into prioritizing winning. There was therefore little evidence in these studies that participation in youth sport is a place that systematically helps young people to develop personal social skills and behavior.The coaches in this dissertation are mainly driven by the discourse of performance and expertise, and create a context where athletes are disciplined into certain behaviors that may not always be in their best interest.