This paper is informed by a UK based Economic and Social Research Council funded research project which developed and deployed a case-study approach to issues of touch between children and professionals in schools and childcare. Outcomes from these settings are referred to, but the focus here is shifted to touch in sports coaching and its…

According to recent academic reviews, formal coach education courses are rarely considered important or useful events in a broader coach learning process. At present, there is insufficient research to define the nature and extent of this problem which is likely to become more important under the prevailing governing rationalities of modernisation…

Our research examines the relationship among identity, age, gender and athleticism through a study of the association between sports clothing and the identity work of pre-adolescent female soccer players. Based on participant-observation and interviews conducted at three co-ed youth soccer camps, we find that age is an important element of…

Sport education has received considerable support from teachers, teacher educators and the sport pedagogy literature as a cure for much that ails physical education. The purpose of the study described in this paper was to determine the extent to which teachers employing the sport education model rejected and combatted or supported and reinforced…

Within education generally and more specifically physical education inclusion has become a central concern of legislation, policy and programming. Set within an environment where there is much "talk" of inclusion this paper seeks to interrogate adult stakeholders' understandings of inclusion by exploring their responses to the drawings and…

Based on post-structural feminist and gender studies, the present article analyses the importance given to the practice of physical education, sports and exercise as part of the national policy to strengthen the Caucasian-Brazilian population at the beginning of the twentieth century, emphasising the priority made of the White female body as the…

It is widely maintained that sport and physical activities contribute to the development of young people's well-being. Others argue that sports' contribution to good living is so strong that it is even thought to be a human right. Typically, however, the value of physical activity and sport to our well-being is conceptualized and researched within…

What does it mean to promote girls' participation in sports and which girls are seen as needing support? In this article we focus a government-financed sports venture and scrutinize the frames governing what is possible to say about girls and their participation in sports. By analyzing project applications from local sport clubs we investigate how…

Pre-service teachers bring to their university studies particular world views and understandings of themselves and others around health and physical activity. Their biographies and experiences in school physical education, sport and other societal institutions inform these perspectives and understandings. These in turn work to mediate university…

The contribution of sport and physical activity in achieving wellbeing has received much attention in relation to children and adults, although consideration of the physical aspects of bodily pleasure have tended to be ignored in favour of developing health related measures. In physical education, the physical body has been further "disembodied"…

Sport scholars and public commentators have long held both positive and critical opinions about the influence of athletic involvement on participants and their perceptions of the social world. Yet for all of the strong claims and deeply held assumptions, relatively little empirical data or social scientific analysis have been available. This study…

Drawing on data from a three-year Participatory Action Research project, undertaken with 41 teenage girls within and beyond the boundaries of a designated disadvantaged urban school, this article is an effort to critique the use of participatory methods as a means of producing different knowledge, and producing knowledge differently with students.…

In contemporary Western societies, disciplinary and normalising technologies function to create a sense of moral obligation within each individual to monitor and regulate the body in terms of health, including diet and exercise. The settler/Aboriginal experience in Australia provides an example of the ways in which biopolitics has operated at a…

This article explores the concepts of social and cultural capital as analytical tools for investigating the capacity of sport-based intervention programs to contribute to the personal, social and professional development of disadvantaged young people. It draws on survey data (n = 129) and qualitative interviews (n = 53) with participants of the…

In this article, we challenge dominant health and fitness discourses which stress individual responsibility in the attainment of these statuses. We examine the results of an empirical study exploring how a group of 15 Canadian immigrant youth, aged 12-17, discursively construct notions of health and fitness. Qualitative data were collected through…