Government involvement in high performance sport: An Australian national sporting organisation perspective

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the Australian Sports Commission (ASC) and Summer Olympic National Sporting Organisations (NSOs) to determine the effect the relationship has on Olympic performance outcomes. Five Olympic NSOs were examined: Athletics Australia, Cycling Australia, Rowing Australia, Swimming Australia and Yachting Australia. All five NSOs represent sports in which Australia has consistently achieved strong results at previous Olympic Games. These NSOs receive significant funding from the ASC and, as such, are expected to achieve success at the Olympic Games. The ASC–NSO relationship was examined through an agency theory framework whereby the ‘contracts’ between the ASC (principal) and the NSOs (agents) were investigated through a survey, interviews and document analysis to identify potential management issues that may affect Olympic performance outcomes, such as agent or principal opportunism. The findings identified a lack of a collaborative high performance sport system in Australia, with the findings emphasising concerns over the ASC’s management of NSO programmes. While the ASC staff identified their organisation as the leader of high performance sport in Australia, the study’s NSO participants did not believe that the ASC had the capacity, capability and knowledge to fulfil this role.No Full Tex

Perceptions of sport science students on the potential applications and limitations of blended learning in their education: A qualitative study

This study sought to gain insight into blended learning-naive sports science students’ understanding and perceptions of the potential benefits and limitations of blended (hybrid) learning, which has been defined as the thoughtful integration of face-to-face and online instructional approaches. Five focus groups, each comprising 3–4 students from either the undergraduate or postgraduate sports science programmes were conducted. The focus groups were facilitated by a researcher who was not involved in sports science. Audio recordings of the focus groups were transcribed verbatim. NVivo software was used to code the transcripts to identify the themes and subthemes. Students generally had little initial understanding of blended learning. When provided with a definition, they believed that blended learning could improve educational outcomes and assist those who were legitimately unable to attend a session. Their reservations about blended learning mainly related to some students not being sufficiently autonomous to undertake independent study, timetabling considerations and access to reliable Internet services. For blended learning to be effective, students felt the online material had to be interactive, engaging and complement the face-to-face sessions. Better understanding the perceptions of the students in the current study may assist educators who are considering implementing blended learning in their teaching. © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Grou