Exploring Effects of School Sport Experiences on Sport Participation in Later Life

This paper presents findings on the relationship between high school sport participation and involvement in sport as adults. The data are provided by a survey of a large representative national sample of adult Canadians. For different age subgroups among women and men, we tested the school sport experiences hypothesis that sport involvement during the high school years contributes to later adult involvement in sport. The measurement of sport involvement in the high school years is concerned with intramural and inter-school activities. Adult sport activity has three measures: sport involvement per se, involvement in an organized setting, and competitive involvement. The results are consistent with the school experiences hypothesis. High school sport involvement, for inter-school sport activities, is a comparatively strong predictor of adult sport involvement. The effects of high school involvement persist after controlling for correlated social background factors. Moreover, the effects of school sport experiences hold across age and gender subgroups. Although diminished with temporal distance from the high school years, the effects of high school involvement nonetheless extend even to respondents aged 40–59 (i.e., those approximately 22 to 42 years beyond their school years) among both genders. Interpretations of the results are discussed

The School Sport Co-ordinator Programme: Changing the Role of the Physical Education Teacher?

Over the last decade or so, young people have increasingly become a focus of UK sport policy. Fuelled in part by concerns such as the increasing levels of childhood inactivity and obesity, and the lack of international success in sport, a plethora of policy initiatives aimed at young people have been developed. In April 2000, the government published its sport strategy document, A Sporting Future for All, pulling together all the threads of recent policies, and in it, restating its commitment to youth sport, sport in education, excellence and sport in the community. One such policy initiative, the School Sport Co-ordinator programme, is the focus of this paper. The School Sport Co-ordinator programme, currently being introduced into schools in England, is an initiative that involves two government departments (sport and education) and a number of other agencies, reflecting the government's current agenda to ensure 'joined up policy' thinking. It aims to develop opportunities for youth sport through co-ordinated links between PE and sport in schools, both within and outside of the formal curriculum, with those in local community sports settings. The essence of the School Sport Co-ordinator programme is to free up nominated teachers in schools from teaching to allow them time for development activities, specifically to encourage schools and community sports providers to work in partnership. This paper draws on data from an ongoing research project examining the implementation of one School Sport Co-ordinator partnership, 'northbridge'. Drawing on in-depth interviews, it explores the perceptions of the newly established School Sport Co-ordinators of their changing role. The paper highlights some of the initial tensions and challenges for them in their task of working across different educational and sporting contexts

The school sport co-ordinator programme: evaluation of phases 1 and 2 2001–2003

This report evaluates the effect of the School Sport Co-ordinator programme (the programme) since its introduction in autumn 2000. The programme is part of the national physical education (PE), School Sport and Club Links strategy led by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to widen participation, raise standards and improve the quality of PE and school sport. The objective of the strategy – a joint DfES/DCMS public service agreement target – is to ensure that by 2006, 75% of 5–16 year olds in England are spending a minimum of two hours each week in high-quality PE and school sport within and beyond the curriculum. The background to the strategy and programme is summarised in the annex at the end of this report

Plato makes the team: the arrival of secondary school sport academies.

Since sport captivates many young people in Aotearoa New Zealand, it is not surprising that it is being situated in a new form of educational setting. This is evidenced through the emergence of secondary school sport academies over the last four years. The first academy was established in 1997 at Aranui High School in Christchurch and now there are over 70. This paper examines the changing role of sport in secondary education, discusses the emergence of sport academies and comments on the development of three of these. The academies provide the context - where sport takes place - which is crucial to the education and sport nexus (Gerdy, 2000). Clearly, if sport can achieve educational purposes through sport academies, then we must explore their operation as an educational tool

After-school sport for children: Implications of a task-involving motivational climate

It could be argued that youth sport is one of the most pervasive and popular activities engaging girls and boys in their “free time ” in contemporary American society. Youth sports are those involving young people between the ages of 6 to 18 years that are adult organized and/or supervised. After-school youth sports encompass extracurricular (interscholastic) athletic activities, agency-sponsored community sports (e.g., Little League), club sports, and recreational sport programs organized by recreation departments. Less than 20 years ago, it was estimated that 25 million out of approximately 47 million youngsters participated in some type of organized/supervised youth sport in the United States. Today, participation estimates suggest that 47 million boys and girls (from what census data indicate to be a population of close to 52 million) have joined, at one point or another, an after-school sport program (Ewing & Seefeldt, 2002). Although more boys still engage in after-school sport than girls, the greater involvement of females in sport over the past two decades has certainly contributed to the observed increase in overall participation percentages. With respect to other issues of diversity, the world of after-school sport is multi-racial/ethnic with young people from various cultural backgrounds represented among participants. Females o

New Labour, partnerships and physical education policy

New Labour’s move towards joined up thinking has meant that physical education and school sport was no longer on the receiving end of educational policy but mainstream sports policy. Moreover, ideological assumptions about physical education and school sport has led to it being seen as a ‘vehicle’ for a wide range of broader policy objectives (Houlihan & Green, 2006). These objectives include elite sporting success, lifelong participation, health and well-being, community regeneration and educational achievement. These very different objectives are indicative of the complex nature of policy making within school sport and physical education. The main mechanisms for meeting these objectives in physical education are school sports partnerships and specialist sports colleges as introduced through the PE, School Sport and Club Links strategy (DCMS & DfES, 2004). This New Labour partnership approach means that physical education teachers are having to work with partners from a wide range of sectors, including county sports partnerships, private sector sports providers and voluntary sector clubs. Indeed, the specialist sports college and school sports partnership were introduced into what could already be described as a crowded policy space (Houlihan, 2000). The aim of this paper is to explore how New Labour’s approach to education and sport have shaped physical education since 1997 and to specifically understand the complex, crowded policy space that physical education occupies

Targeting Mr Average: Participation, gender equity and school sport partnerships

The School Sport Partnership Programme (SSPP) is one strand of the national strategy for physical education and school sport in England, the physical education and school sport Club Links Strategy (PESSCL). The SSPP aims to make links between school physical education (PE) and out of school sports participation, and has a particular remit to raise the participation levels of several identified under-represented groups, of which girls and young women are one. National evaluations of the SSPP show that it is beginning to have positive impacts on young people's activity levels by increasing the range and provision of extra curricular activities (Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED), 2003, 2004, 2005; Loughborough Partnership, 2005, 2006). This paper contributes to the developing picture of the phased implementation of the programme by providing qualitative insights into the work of one school sport partnership with a particular focus on gender equity. The paper explores the ways in which gender equity issues have been explicitly addressed within the 'official texts' of the SSPP; how these have shifted over time and how teachers are responding to and making sense of these in their daily practice. Using participation observation, interview and questionnaire data, the paper explores how the coordinators are addressing the challenge of increasing the participation of girls and young women. The paper draws on Walby's (2000) conceptualisation of different kinds of feminist praxis to highlight the limitations of the coordinators' work. Two key themes from the data and their implications are addressed: the dominance of competitive sport practices and the PE professionals' views of targeting as a strategy for increasing the participation of under-represented groups. The paper concludes that coordinators work within an equality or difference discourse with little evidence of the transformative praxis needed for the programme to be truly inclusive. © 2008 Taylor & Francis

Effects of a Sport Education Intervention on Students’ Motivational Responses in Physical Education

This study looked at the influence of a Sport Education intervention program on students’ motivational responses in a high school physical education setting. Two intact groups were assigned curricular interventions: the Sport Education group (n = 25), which received eight 60-min lessons, and the comparison group (n = 26), which received a traditional teaching approach to sportbased activity. Pre- and postintervention measures of student enjoyment, perceived effort, perceived competence, goal orientations, perceived motivational climate, and perceived autonomy were obtained for both groups. Repeated-measures ANOVAs showed significant increases in student enjoyment and perceived effort in the Sport Education group only. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that increases in task-involving climate and perceived autonomy explained a significant amount of unique variance in the Sport Education students’ postintervention enjoyment, perceived effort, and perceived competence responses. The results suggest that the Sport Education curriculum may increase perceptions of a task-involving climate and perceived autonomy, and in so doing, enhance the motivation of high school students toward physical education

Promoting Physical Activity Through the Shared Use of School and Community Recreational Resources

Summarizes research about the use of school sport and recreation facilities outside of school hours by community programs as a way to promote physical activity in areas with limited facilities. Describes challenges of shared use and policy considerations