A Part of and Apart from Sport: Practitioners’ Experiences Coaching in Segregated Youth Sport

Sport can present a site of exclusion for many youth who experience disability even when it has a focus on inclusion (Fitzgerald, 2009). While sport practitioners can play a critical role in creating inclusive environments, they frequently struggle to do so. As a consequence, the sport opportunities for young people who experience disability are often inadequate and inequitable. The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of youth sport practitioners who teach and coach youth in primarily segregated settings. The overall goal was to gain a better understanding of how sport practitioners think about disability and sport within the context of their practices. Guided by the method of interpretive description, we interviewed 15 sport practitioners. Analysis of the data led to the overarching theme, ‘a part of and apart from sport’, highlighting the ways in which segregated youth sport was understood to be more or less inclusive/exclusive by sport practitioners. Within this overarching theme, four subthemes were drawn: a) authentic connections, b) diversity and adaptations, c) expectations same…but different, and d) (dis)ability and competitive sport. While highlighting the need for self-reflective and knowledgeable coaches, our findings also bring attention to the concepts of ability and ableism and their impacts on the sport opportunities of youth who experience disability. Our discussion highlights the need to question assumptions underlying segregated sport

Is Recess an Achievement Context? An Application of Expectancy-Value Theory to Playground Choices

This study investigated the application of an expectancy-value model to children’s activity choices on the playground at recess. The purpose was to test the prediction that expectancies for success and subjective task values are related to decisions to engage in specific recess activities such as climbing, playing soccer, or skipping rope. Participants included 242 children in grades 1-4 from five schools. Participation in playground activities was assessed using the Activities for Daily Living in Physical Play (ADL-PP) (Watkinson et al., 2001). Task-specific expectancies and values were measured on the playground activities contained in the ADL-PP. The results indicated that children’s perceptions of competence were significantly higher on playground skills that they had identified as most important compared with least important (pCe projet de recherche porte sur l’application d’un modèle de la perception de la valeur sur le choix d’activités que font les enfants dans le parc de jeux à la récréation. L’objectif de la recherche était de tester la prédiction selon laquelle les perceptions relativement à la réussite et les valeurs subjectives sont liées aux décisions de participer à des activités spécifiques pendant la récréation telles que grimper, jouer au soccer, ou sauter à la corde. À l’étude ont participé 242 élèves de la 1re à la 4e année provenant de cinq écoles. La participation aux activités du terrain de jeux a été évaluée selon le Activities for Daily Living in Physical Play (ADLPP) de Watkinson et al., 2001 (Activités pour le quotidien dans les jeux actifs). On a mesuré les perceptions de la valeur qu’attribuaient les enfants aux activités nommées dans la liste de Watkinson et al. Les résultats indiquent que les enfants percevaient que leur compétence quant aux habiletés sur le terrain de jeux étaient bien plus élevée pour celles qu’ils avaient identifiées comme étant plus importantes par rapport à celles auxquelles ils attribuaient moins d’importance (

A Part of and Apart from Sport: Practitioners’ Experiences Coaching in Segregated Youth Sport

Sport can present a site of exclusion for many youth who experience disability even when it has a focus on inclusion (Fitzgerald, 2009). While sport practitioners can play a critical role in creating inclusive environments, they frequently struggle to do so. As a consequence, the sport opportunities for young people who experience disability are often inadequate and inequitable. The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of youth sport practitioners who teach and coach youth in primarily segregated settings. The overall goal was to gain a better understanding of how sport practitioners think about disability and sport within the context of their practices. Guided by the method of interpretive description, we interviewed 15 sport practitioners. Analysis of the data led to the overarching theme, ‘a part of and apart from sport’, highlighting the ways in which segregated youth sport was understood to be more or less inclusive/exclusive by sport practitioners. Within this overarching theme, four subthemes were drawn: a) authentic connections, b) diversity and adaptations, c) expectations same…but different, and d) (dis)ability and competitive sport. While highlighting the need for self-reflective and knowledgeable coaches, our findings also bring attention to the concepts of ability and ableism and their impacts on the sport opportunities of youth who experience disability. Our discussion highlights the need to question assumptions underlying segregated sport

The exclusionary practices of youth sport

Youth who live with lower incomes are known to experience social exclusion in a range of social settings, including sport. Despite efforts to reduce financial constraints to participation, increasing opportunities in these ways has not led to increased involvement. There is a need to move beyond a discussion about barriers and explore the quality of young people's engagement within sport. The present study consequently sought to understand the sport involvement of young people living with lower incomes. Interpretive description informed the analysis of transcripts generated from interviews with ten youth (aged 13-18 years) and six parents. Three themes captured the ways income had a prominent influence on the sports involvement of young people. Sports settings generally required that young people acquire abilities from an early age and develop these concertedly over time. The material circumstances in which youth were brought up impacted the extent to which they could or wanted to participate in these ways. The final theme outlines the experiences of young people in sport when they possessed less cultural capital than others in the field. The findings of the study collectively highlight a number of interconnected exclusionary processes in sport and demonstrate the need to reimagine sport in ways that challenge the hegemonic discourses continuing to exclude a large number of young people