Interrogating the intersection of participation and performance outcomes in school sport: A case study of sport in educational settings

Abstract

The aim of this research was to explore the challenges faced by educators when attempting to offer both participation and performance pathways for pupils in a school setting. Education is often overlooked when performance sport is integrated into community, youth, and school settings. This research sought to explore the nuances of school sport delivery within New Zealand. Amidst falling participation rates of youth in sport, it is evident that schools play a critical role in offering quality sporting experiences to young people. One of the driving factors of the falling rates of participation is the professionalisation (including specialisation) of youth sport. To counter this, initiatives such as 'Balance is Better' and GoodSports have been developed to prioritise youth development in sport. Yet schools and sporting academies can deliver sport how they see fit, and as such, do not need to align to these initiatives. It is therefore important to understand what the day-to-day delivery of youth sport looks like within schools. Specifically, this research considers the tensions that school sport staff face in delivering sport programmes within a complicated youth sport landscape. This thesis adopts a pragmatic paradigm, informing a qualitative case study. The primary tools for data collection were observations and interviews with nine staff across a range of roles within an independent school in New Zealand. Using Practice Architectures as a theoretical lens through which to analyse data, interactions within the school were grouped into social-political; cultural-discursive; and material-economic arrangements. Through the bundles of these arrangements, three key tensions emerge when considering some of the challenges faced by sport staff in education settings: 1) inconsistent and ineffective leadership to determine the direction of sport; 2) a disconnect in values between practitioners; 3) a need for processes to socialise the staff to the school values. The findings and implications of this study highlight the importance of schools offering opportunities for staff to align themselves with the values of the school, and the importance of the school having a sense of what day-to-day sporting delivery looks like to its students. Beyond this, it is argued that further research and sport governance platforms (such as that of Sport New Zealand) should work to support schools to ensure that sport is delivered in accordance with school values and youth development initiatives.