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Critical scholarship in sport for development (SfD) advocates transformative research to disrupt the historical colonising view of sport as a vehicle to acculturate people into the values and norms of dominant Western culture. Youth participatory action research (YPAR) involves youth throughout the research process and consequently has the potential to challenge hegemonic forms of knowledge production in SfD. In reality, however, authentic engagement of co-researchers in the research process is often largely confined to data collection. This article draws on the decolonising lens as a theoretical framework to examine tensions, possibilities, and power relations that researchers and co-researchers encounter when co-designing and implementing YPAR in SfD. The project comprised a sixteen-week YPAR in a community-based football programme in Melbourne, Australia. Data collection comprised weekly collaborative meetings, observations collected as field notes, artefacts produced by participants, interviews, and reflective meetings. Findings centred on three themes: (a) finding sensitive ways to navigate the tensions of building trust and rapport; (b) negotiating the struggle between the co-researchers and the coaches about the use of space within the sport context; and (c) the challenges of relinquishing power in research and knowledge production, as reflected in our collective struggle to communicate to participants the value of YPAR for themselves and their communities. The findings challenge a romantic view that YPAR is guaranteed to be an empowering experience for young people; instead, they foreground the complexities and messiness of the process of sharing power with co-researchers in SfD. We conclude by advocating for critical, reflexive YPAR with explicit social transformation objectives to work toward the co-production of knowledge with young people.

Background: Over the past five decades, the number of people from refugee backgrounds in developed countries has been on the constant rise. Although the field of refugee and forced migration studies in relation to education and sport has grown considerably in recent years, very little is known about refugee-background students' perceptions of Physical Education (PE).Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate refugee-background students' perceptions of PE in Swedish high schools, using a salutogenic approach. Participants and settings: This qualitative study was conducted in two Swedish high schools and involved eleven students from refugee backgrounds aged 16-18 years (seven boys and four girls) who originated from a variety of countries including Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Ethiopia and Albania. Data collection/analysis: A total of 11 semi-structured interviews were conducted, and the interviews were systematically coded and analyzed using the sense of coherence (SOC) components as analytical tools. Findings: Three themes were identified that captured the students' perceptions and experiences: (1) PE was perceived as more meaningful in Sweden than in their country of origin due to short-term benefits (e.g. social interaction with friends, and improving personal health and wellbeing) and long-term benefits (e.g. learning for the future); (2) understanding the rules and purpose of the activities helped students to better comprehend the experiences acquired in PE and communicate with others; and (3) constructive social relationships with teachers and classmates were an essential resource in order to make PE manageable. Implications: We suggest that strengths-based approaches should be recognized and incorporated into PE in order to facilitate health promoting factors and wellbeing among students from refugee backgrounds.

There is a body of research that indicates the need for community-driven and culturally responsive pedagogies in sport-based interventions. There is much to learn from the pedagogical approaches and experiences of African Australian refugee-background coaches who work with refugee-background young people toward acceptance and affirmation of their cultural and racial identities. This paper explores African Australian refugee-background coaches' pedagogies in working with African Australian refugee-background young people in a grassroots football programme in Melbourne. Participants included an African Australian refugee-background young woman and four coaches. Data collection spanned a six-month period and included observations and semi-structured interviews. The findings were analysed using Ladson-Billings' [Ladson-Billings, G. (1995b). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. "American Educational Research Journal," 32(3), 465-491. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312032003465; Ladson-Billings, G. (2009). "The dreamkeepers?: Successful teachers of African American children." Jossey-Bass Publishers; Ladson-Billings, G. (2014). Culturally relevant pedagogy 2.0: A.k.a. The Remix. "Harvard Educational Review," 84(1), 74-84. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.84.1.p2rj131485484751] conceptualisation of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. The study identified three main themes. First, the coaches considered themselves 'barrier breakers': they were able to connect the African Australian refugee-background young people to different resources in and outside of sports contexts to develop their success in football and in life. Second, the coaches considered the sport programme 'a family' where they were willing to nurture and support cultural competence by sharing power with the participants and their community. Third, the coaches created spaces for young people to develop awareness that allowed them to critique some of the social inequities experienced. Future studies should continue to move beyond a focus on predominantly white and middle-class providers and coaches in sport-based interventions. By including and foregrounding the voices of coaches who have diverse experiences, more diverse cultural knowledges are validated, enabling the translation of this knowledge into more culturally responsive sport programmes.

A great deal of research focusing on organizational diversity has explored dynamics that exclude women and minorities from positions of leadership in sport organizations. The relatively little change in diversity in these positions suggests a need to employ ways of engaging in diversity research that do not center on identity categories and primarily focus on practices. Drawing on notions of subtexts and on queer theory, this critical narrative review aims to make visible and to question organizational practices and processes that may contribute to the diversity "problem" within sport organizations. A subtextual analysis of 32 articles published in leading sport management journals reveals how dynamics of organizational culture, such as an uncritical use of the concept of diversity, the invisibility of practices sustaining gender binaries and heteronormativity, and the intersection of heteronormativity and White normativity, contribute to sustaining the status quo in sport organizations. The authors build on these findings to challenge scholars to further explore and address these practices and processes in sport organizations and in their own research by employing queered intersectional approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The value of sport as a vehicle for social development and progressive social change has been much debated, yet what tends to get missed in this debate is the way education may foster, enable or impede the transformative action that underpins the social outcomes to which the "sport for development and peace" (SDP) sector aspires. This article draws on the critical pedagogy of Paulo Freire and his contemporaries to examine the nature of transformative action and how it may be fostered within SDP programs. Insights from critical pedagogy are applied to, and illustrated through, qualitative research undertaken with SDP programs located in Cameroon and Kenya. The findings show the complexities of designing and implementing critical pedagogy in a SDP context and, in particular, the challenges of creating and mobilizing for transformative action. Opportunities and lessons for embedding critical pedagogy within SDP programs are also presented.