Literacy in Sports Education - Literature review Example

Literacy In Sports Education Introduction: Educational s use different aspects of Sport Education model to inculcate in the values of social living powered by their love for sports activities. These aspects include enthusiasm, literacy and competency, which grow as values in students once they are subjected to carefully drawn sports education courses as part of their curriculum. While literacy in Sports Education model primarily aims at having educated and we behaved sportsmen on the field, a broader application of its principles has strong social and cultural impacts which have been recognized from time to time through different studies. Evidence shows that a Sports Education model can easily create better social behaviors and encourage better performances as in well trained sports teams lead to responsible citizens as well. Recognizing the need to have literate sportsmen in different fields of physical training and sports, thinkers and researchers have studied the need, impact, and processes of bringing in increased literacy in existing models of sports education. Description: Major breakthrough in understanding and establishment of norms in sports education comes through the works of Siedentop (1994). Sports education model seems to be starkingly different from out of school sports and games since there is monitoring done by teachers which ensure that the children undergoing the training are able to recognize difference between good and bad sports practices. Therefore, the accountability feature inculcates practices of fair play in the students. To quote Hastie, “A literate sports player is one who appreciates the notion of fair play, and who can differentiate between good and bad sports practices whether in children’s or professional sport.” (Hastie, 2012, p.7). Presented here is a literature review of prominent works undertaken in this field which shows how different aspects of literacy in sports education can be dealt with. Literature Review: Literacy in Sports Education model The need to understand how engagement can improve literacy in sports education drove Mowling, Brock and Hastie (2005) to undertake a detailed analysis of student psychology through their paper, “Fourth Grade Students’ Drawing Interpretations of a Sport Education Soccer Unit”. The main purpose of the study was to find out whether students’ psychological progression during the season went according to estimated in the format of the model of sports education being used in schools today. The main tool of assessment was drawings made by students about their role in the season taken on a weekly basis over the season. There were four phases in the order of skill development, pro-seasonal, seasonal competition and culmination. The gradual revelation of thoughts during the weeks that held these phases proved to the researchers that winning and team affiliations were the most important aspects of sports education to students participating in it. Social interactions and role differentiation was found to be minimal on their minds, which coincides with the goals of sports education at all levels. Winning through competition was the most important part of the student psychology that was seen in these fourth graders. (Mowling, Brock & Hastie, 2006). Similar to the work of Mowling et al (2006), MacPhail and Kinchin (2004) in article “The use of drawings as an evaluative tool: students’ experiences of Sport Education” have studied how drawings made by students can be studied to understand their perception of SE in schools. As methodology, drawings were collected from 46 students between the age of 9 and 10. These students had just completed a 16-week SE season. Comparisons were made between the data collected from these drawing with broad conclusions made based on ongoing interviews. Children tend to express their experiences through the drawings they make. It was seen that the drawings collected for this study depicted children’s perception of SE experience in different ways; however one common theme was ‘fun’. Some drawing depicted ‘team allegiance’ as theme which was concluded as students favoring team formations. Competition spirit was also depicted as a positive factor in some drawings. Fair play behavior which is associated only with PE and sports can be developed in students if teachers include social skills lessons in the PE curriculum. Based on rugby sport, Vidoni and Ward (2009) in “Effects of Fair Play Instruction on student social skills during a middle school Sport Education unit” have studied the impacts of Fair Play Instruction on middle school PE classes. As methodology, seven middle school students from grade 8 had been selected for observation. They were observed for 40 minutes in each lesson which numbered 18. Data was based on the positive and negative behaviors of students who actively participated in the lessons. Results showed that Fair Play Instruction consistently enhanced students’ participation. Also, negative behaviors of students were reduced. Fair play behaviors include positive attitude towards opposing teams, accepting defeat with grace and enjoying victory without pride. It was concluded that such behavior cannot be cultivated in students unless teachers include them as PE goals. The impact of literacy in Sport Education model on social behavior is an important factor in this regard. Hastie and Sharpe (1999) made an important contribution to the importance of literacy in sports education model by measuring the impact of sports education models and principles on the positive social behaviors of rural school boys. In their paper titled, “Effects of a Sport Education Curriculum on the Positive Social behavior of At-Risk Rural Adolescent Boys”, they showed us how positive sports education can make an impact on negative social behavior of students who had been reported in small crimes like thefts and discipline referrals. Twenty such students were subjected to the kangaroo ball game which was a twenty unit modified football game. Emphasis was laid on positive social behavior through novice referees. The data was collected, analysed and made reliable using Kazdin’s point by point formula which comprise agreement divided by disagreement divided by 100. The incidence and absence of quality indicators are summed in the scores while doing this analysis. The results showed that positive social behavior was amazingly high during the formal competition while negative social behavior was low after the preseason phase of the experiment. The leadership abilities also rose by a small percent in the formal competition, thereby indicating that peer competition and referee compliance was important when winning the fair play award or the game was on the boys’ minds we need reference here (Hastie and Sharpe 1999). The only limitation of this study was the small sample size and therefore, the repetition of similar results is doubtful in future experiments. In their infamous 2007 paper, ‘Students conceptions of fair play in sport education’ Brock and Hastie are totally focused towards finding how the psychology towards fair play in sports education changes with time amongst students of the sixth grade. Data collection methods used were videotaping and observation, questionnaires, daily journals, descriptive game stats and interviews (individual and group). They found a drastic change in understanding towards fair play develop in participants as with every level of the game, their focus form winning as a goal shifted towards playing fairly as a goal. This led to their accepting that better players should have more playing time and would contribute to team’s performance better. Thus, equitable performance was brought into effect rather than equal scope of opportunities. It is also important to check the long term effects of fair play and practices that encourage it in the minds of students who were involved in it. Sinelnikov and Hastie ( 2010) undertook a more important study in 2010 titled “Students’ Autobiographical Memory of Participation in Multiple Sport Education Seasons”. The students were asked to recollect and record their reminisces of sports education seasons from their sixth to eighth grades. The three seasons of sports education that these students had participated included badminton, basketball and soccer and were built on Siedentop’s format. The procedure used had a combination of surveys and focus group interviews and the data was analyzed and checked for trustworthiness before announcing results. It was found that the students recollected directives and had a deep understanding of the rules of the games and had committed themselves to winning the game during the season when the sports education model was implemented through a competitive and participating mentality. With definite indications on ethical behavior, it was important to find out more. In their study, Harvey et al (2014) aptly brought out suitable suggestions to finding the right inclusions in youth sports centers and sports education models to encourage ethical structuring in society. The paper titled, “Sport Education as a pedagogical application for ethical development” shows us how comparing different research papers itself shows us how Harvey et al have come up with conclusions that social behavior and theories of accountability and responsibility in the context of sports is best developed using a model of Sports Education. Furthermore, they suggest that the same models be used in youth sports centers and common gymnasiums such that the sports ethics rubs off into the characters of these participant youth who carry the values into their social behavior thereby creating an ethically strong society. In another study, Hassandra et al (2007) found that intervention programs in schools that corrected notions of fair play in Olympic education programs had immediate and sustainable impacts on the psychology of students. Their findings are established in the paper “A fair play intervention program in school Olympic education”, the team focused to see if there were evident changes in student behavior through an intervention program and studied the change sin a large sample size of 126 students of the fourth grade from 4 elementary schools. The data was collected using video tapes, interviews and team activities. It was seen that after the initial sessions, students were more inclined towards using fair play practices for reasons of decorum, but by the close of the experiment it was evident that students realized the impact on the true spirit of the game and stuck o practicing fair play ideals due to the quality of experience it brings along with it. So is it enough to use the present sports education models existing today to bring in a cultural change? O’Donovan’s (2003) work in this regard is important to us. Titled as “A changing culture? Interrogating the dynamics of peer affiliations over the course of a sport education season” the paper is a seven month case study of students within the age group of 11 to 13 years and studies their peer interactions in single sex and mixed sex during the season when Sports Education model is pursued. It was noticed that peer groupings and cultural influences had an impact on the initial performances of students in physical education classes. The process employed in the study was participant observation, and one on one interviews. The recordings and interactions showed that adolescences played an important role in determining the social behavior of these students in the Sport Education season. The study used all the interactions to come to the conclusion that fair play in sports education is a broad term for students harboring popularity and culture based biases towards each other. In short, in order to initiate fair play amongst teams plagued by such prejudices, the curriculum has to overcome pedagogical challenges and give students a chance to rise above these prejudices and focus on winning, team spirit and competition. This would be possible by throwing well designed challenges to make the students look at themselves and their peers with a different outlook altogether. In their paper titled, “Developing Physical Education as a ‘Connective Specialism’: Is Sport Education the Answer?” Penney et al (2002) have raised an important question in the context of whether physical education can be treated as a connective specialism that allows students and participants to easily understand and relate to peer group, and whether sports education can serve as a solution to developing this connective specialism to a broader number of individuals so that they develop better ethical and social habits through sports practices. The paper identifies the fact that sports education detaches itself from the crudeness of just sports and is incomplete with literacy in the models. Therefore, those who grow through sports education learn how to make connections and extend learning across teams and groups of individuals, alongside developing a competitive teamwork that aims at winning the award of fair play by following and officiating set rules to the team. Penney et al have suggested that the curriculum be made similarly challenging to happenings in real world, so that they develop a complete ethical psychology powered by monitoring by physical and sports educationalists. Pill et al (2012) compiled a study that concentrated on rethinking sports education in lines of ethical judgment and evolving social connectivity skills and produced a paper titled, “Rethinking Sport Thinking in Physical Education: A Case Study of research Based Innovation in teacher Education”. The study revolves around how to develop new thinking in physical education teacher education (PETE). At the core of it all, we know that sports education curriculum has the best results when teachers are amply educated regarding the goals of the sports education curriculum they are following (Pill et al, 2012). The study was conducted in four phase with documentation and web research in the initial two phases and semi-structured interviews with sports service teachers and recording of their experiences and conclusions. The results indicated that different teachers had different understandings of sports literacy and whilst the sports education curriculum follow a set model, their understanding as imparted to students by teachers may differ from case to case. Therefore, the teachers were more important tools in successful sports education campaigns than just the rules and games. Conclusion: A moral code could be an appropriate way to improve the experience of Sports Education model amongst students, because it allows teachers to think in new ways. Whilst students may experience a better ride with established rules, there is no doubt that the present literature review indicates that innovation at the level of the teacher is a good way to restructure sport education models to suit individual cultural and social scenarios. The limitations of this study however, prevent us from making a definite indication towards which would be the ideal way to restructure sports education and extend learning of physical education rules and best practices. It is still a worthy conclusion that with so many positive outcomes, sports education can be the next major tool in bringing social and cultural uplifting through increased literacy in sports education brought in by combining more than one of the factors discussed above. References Brock, S.J. & Hastie, P.A. (2007). Students conceptions of fair play in sport education. ACHPER Healthy Lifestyles Journal 2007 Vol. 54 No. 1 pp. 11-15 Hassandra, M., Goudas, M., Hatzigeorgiadis, A, & Theodorakis, Y. (2007). A fair play intervention program in school Olympic education. European Journal of Psychology of Education. Vol. 22 No.2, pp 99-114 Harvey, S., Kirk, D. & O’Donovan, T. (2014) Sport Education as a pedagogical application for ethical development in physical education and youth sport, Sport, Education and Society, 19:1, 41-62, DOI: 10.1080/13573322.2011.624594 Hastie, P. (2012) Sport Education: International Perspectives. London: Routledge Studies in Physical Education and Youth Sport. Hastie, P & Sharpe, T. (1999). Effects of a Sport Education Curriculum on the Positive Social Behavior of At-Risk Rural Adolescent Boys. Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk (JESPAR), Vol. 4, No. 4, 417-430, DOI: 10.1207/s15327671espr0404_4 Mowling, C., Hastie, P. and Brock, S. (2006) Fourth Grade Students’ Drawing Interpretations of a Sport Education Soccer Unit. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 2006, Vol. 25, 9-35 MacPhail, A. & Kinchin, G. (2004) The use of drawings as an evaluative tool: students’ experiences of Sport Education. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, Vol.9, No.1, pp.87-108 O’Donovan, T. (2003). A Changing Culture? Interrogating the Dynamics of Peer Affiliations Over the Course of a Sport Education Season. European Physical Education Review, Vol. 9, No. 237 DOI: 10.1177/1356336X030093003 Penney, D., Clarke, G., & Kinchin, G. (2002) Developing Physical Education as a Connective Specialism: Is Sport Education the Answer?, Sport, Education and Society, Vol.7, No.1, 55-64 Pill, S., Penney, D., & Swabey, K. (2012). Rethinking Sport Teaching in Physical Education: A Case Study of Research Based Innovation in Teacher Education. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 37, No.8, n8. Sinelnikov, S. & Hastie, P. (2010). Students’ Autobiographical Memory of Participation in Multiple Sport Education Seasons. Journal of Teaching in Physical Education, 2010, Vol29, 167-183 Siedentop, D. (1994). Sport education: Quality PE through positive sport experiences. Human Kinetics Publishers. Vidoni, C. & Ward, P. (2009) Effects of Fair Play Instruction on student social skills during a middle school Sport Education unit. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, Vol.14, No.3, pp.285-310 Read More