Dancing within postmodernism

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Dancing within postmodernism

We're in a dark classroom quietly watching Aborigines dance in an exotic Australian night. They move in brilliant patterns: sudden high jumps of energy, trancing rhythms of instruments we've never seen, constantly stomping feet, twisting torsos. We see these moves transferred to a Western dance stage by a Dutch ballet company. Suddenly we don't like it. The dance has lost something; as if the electrical stage lights have destroyed the exotic feeling of stomping feet. The dance has become too sterile'”it seems pointless

Understanding Effective Coaching: A Foucauldian Reading of Current Coach Education Frameworks

Drawing on a modified version of Foucault’s (1972) analysis of discursive formations, we selected key coach education texts in Canada to examine what discourses currently shape effective coaching in Canada in order to detect what choices Canadian coaches have to know about “being an effective coach.” We then compared the most salient aspects of our reading to the International Sport Coaching Framework. Our Foucauldian reading of the two Canadian coach education websites showed that the present set of choices for coaches to practice “effectively” is narrow and that correspondingly the potential for change and innovation is limited in scope. Our comparison with the International Sport Coaching Framework, however, showed more promise as we found that its focus on the development of coach competences allowed for different coaching knowledges and coaching aims than a narrow focus on performance and results. We then conclude this Insights Paper by offering some comments on the implications of our Foucauldian reading as well as some suggestions to address our concerns about the dominance of certain knowledges and the various effects of this dominance for athletes, coaches, coach development and the coaching profession at large

“Good Athletes Have Fun”: a Foucauldian reading of university coaches’ uses of fun

Fun is deeply ingrained in the ways we talk about and understand sport: Having fun is what makes sport positive and healthy. Drawing on a Foucauldian perspective, we problematize how fun, a psychological construct, informs coaches’ practices. Interviews with 10 varsity coaches from a Canadian university indicated that the coaches used fun to overcome the ‘grind’ of physical skill training. In addition, fun was used to develop and naturalize a need for athletes’ positive psychological traits and skills. In their training contexts, thus, the coaches clearly employed fun to reinforce their use of a number of dominant disciplinary training practices. As a result, instead of operating as a positive force for athlete engagement, the incorporation of fun further legitimized and perpetuated coaches’ ‘normal’ training practices

Qualitative Research for Physical Culture

interior, ambulatory, looking towards assembly hall, 198