"The 'project' changed my life": a retrospective analysis of Sport Education's transformative potential

Evidence of Sport Education’s (SE) positive impact on students’ experiences of physical education (PE) has been confined to the curricular context. This study is a follow-up to a project that investigated the participation... [ view full abstract ]

Evidence of Sport Education’s (SE) positive impact on students’ experiences of physical education (PE) has been confined to the curricular context. This study is a follow-up to a project that investigated the participation of a 7th-grade class in a yearlong SE curriculum in the school year 2013-14. Three years later, this study provides a retrospective analysis of the transformative effect of participation in SE on the promotion of sport-related life skills, and positive dispositions toward participation in PE and physical activity (PA). The participants were 21, 10th-grade students (16-17 years-old) tracked from the original 26, 7th-grade class. Participants’ autobiographic memories were prompted through encoding-specificity techniques, the data were collected through semi-structured focus-group interviews and social networks interactions. Two themes were generated: “Sources of sustained transformative dispositions” and “Barriers, resilience, and transfer”. The data suggested that most PE experiences following the 7th-grade were framed in teacher-directed and gender-segregating format with poor instructional practices and perceptions of learning. The participants expressed greater disposition to participate in PE and extracurricular PA following the 7th grade due to a set of competencies and standpoints developed through the SE experience: increased self-perception of competence and confidence to practice sport in different contexts, augmented acceptance of individual ‘differences’ and sense of relatedness that spread beyond the gym, positive perceptions about taking ‘problems’ as subject-matter, and awareness of the educational benefits of cooperative learning. The students used “the basis of games knowledge” and “managerial skills” developed through SE to resist to structural forces such as activity-based gender segregation sustained by PE teachers, or ego-involving educational practices contained in the wider educational setting. Future longitudinal research designs should promote a phased follow-up to the participants with detailed documentation of on-going teaching practices in PE.