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The purpose of this study was to describe the impact of secondary organizational socialization on six late-career faculty members’ (FMs) delivery of physical education teacher education (PETE). Our specific research questions were: (a) What forms of PETE did late-career FMs deliver? and (b) What factors reinforced or impeded late-career FMs’ delivery of PETE? We collected data through three qualitative techniques (i.e. formal interviews, documents, and a written description of FMs’ ideal PETE program). Data were reduced to themes by employing analytic induction and constant comparison. Findings revealed that FMs delivered three distinct forms of PETE that were combinations of the behavioristic, traditional/craft, personalistic, and critical-inquiry orientations to teacher education. While their university cultures were largely positive, the conditions in which FMs worked were mainly unfavorable and impeded their delivery of PETE. To counter this situation, FMs employed a number of tactics in an attempt to strategically redefine their workplaces for the better. These findings may be a catalyst for change in terms of inspiring other FMs to fight back when they face adverse conditions and to reflect on the forms of PETE they deliver. The findings may also serve to make administrators aware of the difficulties sport pedagogy FMs face in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to present the construction of a project called Feminist Futsal. Based on the experiences of female futsal coaches, this study aimed to analyze and reflect on some of the situations in which feminism was present throughout futsal seasons. For that, five specific moments were selected from field diaries: ‘The construction of the Feminist Futsal Project’; ‘The first season’; ‘Where is “Feminism”?’; ‘The second season: The uncertain path persists’ and ‘Seeds that have already been planted’. Many questions and challenges were encountered, such as how can we address important social issues and connect them to the planning of a futsal training session that does not directly deal with these topics? Do you need to link critical issues directly to the theme of the futsal training session? Where is Feminism? As a result, it was identified that feminism in the project gave women the opportunity to practice a sport, as well as the presence of a female coach; feminism was, also: in the reflections shared in the initial training sessions; in the learning community established with the research group; in the athletes sharing of knowledge with the project. In addition, feminism was at the heart of the project’s belief that men and women should have equal opportunities to participate in sports, paving the way for a fairer world. Feminism was there, facing the risks. Feminism is in the courage to put that name to a sports project. I do not know what the future holds for Feminist Futsal, nor do I have all the answers for other sports projects that might look to us. What I do know is that love and the courage to change how we view the world are the driving forces behind this project. And yes, we are already revolutionizing it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arguments relating moral and character education to the field of physical education are not novel. Despite this, there are few studies dedicated to studying how and why physical education teachers use character education in schools. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to address this literature gap by studying how seven teachers employed character education and the extent to which their upbringing, experiences in teacher education, and formal teaching career impacted their enthusiasm for, and use of, character and virtue pedagogies in physical education. Data were collected with three techniques (formal interviews, documents, and artifacts) and were analyzed through thematic methods. Guided by either a multi-sport or health/ physical literacy curriculum, data revealed that the teachers employed a range of character concepts and strategies to promote character development. Moreover, the acculturation phase, especially the impact of one's family and religious upbringing, appeared to have the most influence on teachers’ motivation for becoming a moral and character educationalist, while the organizational phase had the most impact on how they embodied this role and practice. In addition, while the professional socialization phase, or lack thereof, appeared to impact the type of curricula being promoted in schools, this phase had relatively little impact on how the participants employed character education with young people. In conclusion, the search for a physical education program and a group of physical educators espousing a well-informed and theoretically robust curriculum for teaching character education in schools, remains. Finally, future research concerned with providing and studying the impact of school and university-based professional development programs on department-wide initiatives and (moral) curriculum development would be helpful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the First Special Issue of our Double Special Edition on LGBTQIA+ Topics in Health, Wellbeing and Education. This special issue focuses on LGBTQIA+ Topics in Physical Education. We introduce the Special Issue by describing the sociopolitical backdrop around the world more broadly and specifically in relation to LGBTQIA+ rights. Afterwards, we reflect on the process of choosing Sport, Education and Society as the journal to publish the Special Edition. Moving forward, we briefly summarise the different streams of LGBTQIA+ research in physical education and how this special issue extends our knowledge in these areas. Lastly, we contend that this Special Issue adds a new stream of research on LGBTQIA+ Topics in Physical Education. We conclude the introduction by considering how future research may continue to capitalise on the momentum that LGBTQIA+ research has built in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the study was to construct the life history of Mateo, an American Latino/Hispanic college basketball coach. The study was guided by elements from Latino/a/x critical race (LatCrit) theory. Data were collected through formal semi-structured interviews, informal interviews, and documents and artifacts. They were analyzed by employing analytic induction and constant comparison. Key findings were that Mateo faced considerable marginalization and was frequently subjected to microaggressions. He was able to overcome this racism due to his determination and support from his family and mentors. Mateo's experiences of racism and the political and cultural context led him to develop an activist element in his coaching pedagogy. His life history may inspire other Latinos/as/x and Hispanics to consider coaching as a career or help those who are struggling to realize this goal. It may also play a part in improving the coaching culture for Latinos/as/x and Hispanics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acknowledging differences in contexts, the purpose of this paper considers how physical education and sport pedagogy (PESP), while maintaining our collective identity, can most effectively develop a capacity to engage with academic and institutional changes in productive, proactive ways. This, we contend, entails considering extending the groups or communities in which PESP is represented to increase the potential to access substructures with other academic communities. We have chosen a metaphor to frame this work, acknowledging that metaphor can often open-up new ways to view a specific aspect or phenomenon that has been conceived in a common, or perhaps static way. Worked examples of the metaphor are presented from an Irish and Canadian perspective and implications of these examples pose possible ways forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws upon education policy sociology, and sport coaching literature, in critically examining sport coaches as policy actors. Stephen Ball and colleagues' conceptualisation of different policy actor positions and roles provided the framework for research that investigated how eight professional swimming coaches in Victoria, Australia, interpreted and enacted disability and inclusion policy. A discourse analysis of semi-structured interviews with the eight coaches reveals the complexities associated with how and why different coaches interpret and enact disability and inclusion policy imperatives in different ways in their specific club contexts. Data are presented that shows coaches adopting multiple and hybrid policy actor positions and roles as disability and inclusion policy was interpreted, translated and ultimately, expressed as pedagogic rules and practices. Our discussion brings to the fore questions about power, agency and control in coaching, while highlighting both limits and possibilities for the enactment of inclusive disability sport policies by swimming coaches working in Victoria, Australia. In conclusion we suggest that this research illustrates that coaches are capable of enacting social change, and have some agency to do so, but at the same time appear constrained by established discourses that shape policy and give important direction to pedagogic practice. We advocate that further in-depth research is required into the coaching policy-practice nexus, particularly as it relates to the advancement of equity and inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to examine the challenges of being either a parent–coach or a child–athlete of a coach within the context of Swedish youth sport. Conceptually, this paper draws on educational and sociological theories regarding changing perspectives in child-rearing. The results are based on data gathered from interviews with parent–coaches and child–athletes (age 13–15) of coaches involved in team sports. The results indicate that a range of meanings emerged through these unique sets of interactions, resulting in both positive and negative experiences for both children and their parents. To manage the perceived challenges, four behavioural strategies were used including fairness, distancing, defence and quitting. Overall, this study provides a deeper understanding of the challenges of these unique dual roles in relation to contemporary child-rearing perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sport is widely recognised as having the potential to enhance the personal development of socially vulnerable youth, yet there is very limited knowledge on how community sports coaches can create optimal social conditions for life skill development and transferability. We adopt a salutogenic approach in order to study whether and how community sports coaches create these optimal social conditions. Based on the salutogenic framework, a thematic analysis was conducted of 15 in-depth interviews with community sports coaches providing sports lessons to socially vulnerable youth. As part of the interviews, the sports coaches were presented with several training scenarios and asked how they would respond in specific training situations. The results showed that the sports coaches aimed to create meaningful sporting experiences for youths. These meaningful sporting experiences were considered a precondition for keeping youths engaged in the sporting activities, as well as a precondition for life skill development. The sports coaches specifically focused on creating little moments of success and on making sure that the youths felt they belonged to a group. In order to ensure that the youths could experience moments of success, specific coaching strategies were implemented to increase the youths’ comprehensibility and manageability in specific sport situations. According to the sports coaches, experiencing little moments of success could contribute to an increase in socially vulnerable youths’ understanding of the everyday challenges that they face, as well as contribute to their ability to deal with these challenges. Creating meaningful sporting experiences may help youths ‘to learn to cope' – a skill that could be beneficial over their lifespan and in different societal domains. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the concept of ‘transformative pedagogy’ (TP) in physical education and sport pedagogy (PESP) and research in order to provide an alternative perspective on freedom, justice and the limits of transformation. Although some of the limits of TP have already been pointed out in the literature, such limits have been presented as though originating and having to be resolvedout there, in socio-cultural–political contexts. In an attempt to redirect the attention from the social to the personal, this paper points out the possibility of TP's limits being alsowithincritical pedagogues and researchers ourselves. After analyzing three barriers to (self-)consciousness/knowledge (SC/K), two viable methods for developing SC/K and transformation are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article addresses the notion of ‘making it’ as an early-career academic in physical education and sport pedagogy. In it, we draw on the tradition of material semiotics to reflect on our shared journeys from doctoral student to beginning scholar and beyond. By attuning ourselves to the relationality, materiality and precariousness of our experiences, we offer an answer to the question of what it takes to ‘make it’ as an early-career academic by advocating the practice of ‘making do’ or ‘doctoring.’ We develop this argument, first, by describing the narrative methods we used to conduct our inquiry and by explaining the material-semiotic ideas we used to explore the stories it generated. Then, we tell tales of our transitions from higher degree research student to early-career academic, focusing specifically on our ongoing, collective efforts to make do. In our discussion, we explore these narratives and attend to three features of our actions and activities as early-career academics; namely semiotic relationality, material heterogeneity and the precarious processes of heterogeneous engineering through which we sought to make a career in our field. We conclude by encouraging beginning scholars in physical education and sport pedagogy to become sensitive to these aspects of their own agency, and to experiment, experience and tinker together in ways that are attentive, inventive, caring and persistent. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Of issue in this paper are the ways in which different forms of narrative may be of value in undertaking research in potentially thorny situations. The project that inspired this paper saw 30 Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy (PESP) Early Career Academics (ECAs) from more than 20 universities across Australasia, North America and Europe, provide narrative accounts of their ongoing academic experiences. From these stories, three letters seeking advice and guidance from leaders in the field were constructed. Following further feedback from the ECAs, the 3 letters were sent to 11 professors in the PESP field with a request to respond, also in letter form. The composite letters and the professorial responses were then the subject of a symposium at an international PESP conference. While the larger project engages with questions of being and becoming an academic in the neoliberal university, this paper is primarily concerned with methodological issues, including our steps and missteps with narrative, inquiry and the field. More specifically, the focus is on narrative as both the method and phenomena of study. As such, we consider issues associated with using dialogue as data, the provocation of participants, as well as both the presentation and representation of data and the relative power of the participants. In doing so, we critically engage with issues of anonymity (or lack thereof), the practice of ‘researching up’ and finally reach the conclusion that the careful approach to data generation, treatment and presentation necessitated by this project, should be a more regular feature of all qualitative inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Scholars have drawn some damning conclusions on the current state of the academy. They argue that neoliberal developments such as corporatization and privatization are undermining research and teaching quality, disrupting social relations and impacting negatively on the health and well-being of academic staff. Academia is, according to these scholars, coming to be peopled by hypercompetitive and combative ‘ninjas’, cynical and unmotivated ‘zombies’ and jaded and anxious ‘nervous wrecks’. Against this negative depiction of academics, the aim of this paper is to provide an illustration of an alternative identity that is formed and performed within the field of physical education and sport pedagogy (PESP). This illustration is achieved through the presentation and analysis of an account that shows some of the individuals inhabiting the world of PESP. The account is based on autoethnographic research and relies largely on reported speech and reflective notes to build a description of the author, in the early stages of mid-career, working with his colleagues to write a section of this paper. A Foucauldian framework that includes the concepts of governmentality and care of the self is employed to consider how the author becomes a neoliberal subject with some possibilities for resisting technologies of power. The paper is concluded with reflections on the process of resisting and the significance of local socio-political contexts as issues for further discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Three decades after Daryl Siedentop announced sport pedagogy to be the forgotten sport science, the seven articles in this special issue collectively present sport pedagogy as an emergent field of research and practice. Each contribution presents one or more foci that invite attention to what and how we conduct our research, the political backcloth of research, the issues and challenges that accompany research programmes and where attention must be afforded to ensure an optimistic future for the field of sport pedagogy. As a field we must look beyond as well as within. Just as it is important to revisit what we consider to be the core of our discipline, it is also valuable to look beyond and across our discipline to ensure vibrant and progressive research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper represents the views of two scholars in the USA with respect to the scholar lecture presented by David Kirk at the 2012 BERA – Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy (PESP) Special Interest Group meeting. We discuss how two unique features of the American universities have an impact on both the corporate nature of our work and our scholarship. These features are described as ‘the notion of outreach scholarship’ and the ‘nature of giving.’ In addition, we discuss our different situations and how they affect our ability to do the best academic work. We can, and by consequence, give our best efforts to resist the hegemony of corporatization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this article is to suggest and illustrate a methodological approach for studies of learning in physical education (PE) and sport pedagogy in order to investigate and clarify the relation between how people learn and the settings or context in which they learn. Drawing on the work of John Dewey, the later works of Ludwig Wittgenstein and socio-cultural approaches, a practical epistemology analysis (PEA) with a focus on aesthetic judgements is suggested as a way of developing a valuable approach for investigating situated learning. The approach is illustrated by an analysis of a biographical story written by the English author Jenny Diski. As can be seen from the illustration, the significance of aesthetic experience for learning is visible when an author tells us about skating as a child. By using PEA to examine aesthetic experience—operationalised through the aesthetic judgements the author includes in the story—we can shed light on the relation between the skater and the situation in which skating takes place. The fact that aesthetic judgements are used by the author normatively to decide what is to be included and excluded in skating, and also that aesthetic judgements are used to make relations between the skater and her life as a whole, facilitates an exploration of the relation between the sports learner and the life situation in which learning is situated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The growing incidence of withdrawal of Muslim girls from physical education prompted this study into tensions between religious freedom and educational practices. It was located in a city in the West Midlands of England. Data on experiences, issues, concerns and solutions related to participation of Muslim girls in physical education were collected by a team of eight researchers including Islamic studies and physical education subject specialists, city advisors and teachers. Methods used were: eight in-depth case studies across primary, secondary and Muslim state schools including interviews with 19 head teachers and teachers (two were Muslim), focus-group interviews with 109 pupils and 32 parents. In addition, four focus-group interviews were held with 36 young people in community/supplementary schools for Muslim communities. All city schools (402) and 12 community providers received questionnaires, 50 were returned. Consultations were held with key national associations including the Muslim Council of Britain and the National Subject Association for Physical Education. Empirical analysis is reported elsewhere. During the experience of conducting the study four problem areas emerged that required attention to effectively address tensions between religious freedom and educational practices in physical education: bridging the gap between research and educational practice; the concept of embodied faith; the significance of context-physical education and religion in England; and finally widening researchers' frames of reference to include intersectionality and interdisciplinary approaches. The discussion exposes the complexity of pursuing social justice in a democratic society that embraces people of multiple ethnicities and religions. The paper concludes by exploring ways in which theoretical constructs increase understanding and can influence policy and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]