Critical Research in Sport, Health and Physical Education

How to Make a Difference

Richard Pringle, Hakan Larsson, Göran Gerdin, Richard Pringle, Hakan Larsson, Göran Gerdin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351333856
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation physique

Within the overlapping fields of the sociology of sport, physical education and health education, the use of critical theories and the critical research paradigm has grown in scope. Yet what social impact has this research had?

This book considers the capacity of critical research and associated social theory to play an active role in challenging social injustices or at least in 'making a difference' within health and physical education (HPE) and sporting contexts. It also examines how the use of different social theories impacts sport policies, national curricula and health promotion activities, as well as the practices of HPE teaching and sport training and competition.

Critical Research in Sport, Health and Physical Education

is a valuable resource for academics and students working in the fields of research methods, sociology of sport, physical education and health.

Chapter5 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Chapter 1

Introduction: Are we making a difference?

Richard Pringle, Håkan Larsson and Göran Gerdin

Introduction: Are we making a difference?

In this co-edited text, Critical Research in Sport, Health and Physical Education: How to Make a Difference, we consider the capacity of critical research within the fields of sport, health and physical education to challenge injustices and produce social transformation. In examining these key issues, we are interested in understanding how the use of different research approaches and social theories shape the research process and influence sport policies, national curricula and health promotion activities as well as the practices of school health and physical education (HPE) teaching and sporting practices. Although there are relatively clear distinctions between critical thinking, critical pedagogy, critical theory and critical research (see Kincheloe, McLaren, Steinberg and Monzó, 2018), within this text we are primarily concerned with researchers who accept that the social world is fundamentally unfair and correspondingly use research as a tool to challenge inequities, inequalities and injustices.

At the outset of this text, we wish to dismiss the view that if critical research aims to make a real difference then the focus should be specifically on overtly political issues such as neoliberal capitalism or the growth of the precariat class. We clearly do not dismiss the importance of such critical research, yet we acknowledge that sport and HPE can have significant impact, both positively and negatively, on a range of social issues and injustices. Nelson Mandela (cited in Hansard, 2002) quixotically asserted that: “We can reach far more people through sport than we can through political or educational programmes.” Mandela subsequently alleged that sporting practices are “more powerful than politics.” Although a debatable claim, we acknowledge that sport and HPE play important roles in shaping concepts and practices concerning embodiment (e.g. obesity, dis/ability, beauty), subjectivities (e.g. sexualities, genders, ethnicities, nationalities, religious affiliations) and health (e.g. fit, youthful, physically active, lean). Sport and HPE can therefore have significant impact on relations of power between different individuals and groups of people and are worthy of critical attention.

We are particularly interested in understanding the various research strategies and processes employed for producing social change. This is not to suggest that we are looking for select solutions on strategies of resistance or transformation, but believe there is value in examining ‘ethical practices’, which is how we conceive the processes of doing critical research. In drawing from Richard Bernstein's (2011) deliberations on ‘going beyond objectivism and relativism’, we note:

In ethical know-how there can be no prior knowledge of the right means by which we realize the end in a particular situation. For the end itself is only concretely specified in deliberating about the means appropriate to a particular situation. (p. 147)

“For the times they are a changing …” (?)

We are writing this introductory chapter in a given historic moment within which we have witnessed tremendous growth in critical research and various forms of social activism. The protest movements that emerged and proliferated in the 1950, 1960s and 1970s—such as focused on women's ‘liberation’, civil, indigenous and gay rights—have been accompanied, typically afterwards, by a proliferation of critical research projects and publications. This combination of activism, critical research and associated public debate has undoubtedly had impact on policy and social practice. Within post-industrial nations we have observed associated changes in a number of specific areas, such as, the legality of same-sex marriage (now in over 26 countries) and a trend towards equal pay for males and females. More broadly, we acknowledge that there has been a growing acceptance of the tenets of liberal feminism in many western democracies and various attempts, in different countries, to challenge the problems associated with racism and colonisation. Bob Dylan's (1964) anthemic proclamation “that the times are a changing” appears correct.

Yet with hindsight we do not think that it is time for celebration, as we have less confidence in Dylan's secondary assertions that: “the order is rapidly fading and the first one now will later be last.” By contrast, we suggest that the existing social order and associated sets of power relations appear somewhat unchanged. Richard Edwards and Tara Fenwick (2015), in a more categorical manner, asserted that despite the best of intentions, critical researchers have “more or less successfully avoided changing the existing reproductions of power and inequalities” (p. 1385). Although such a bold assertion is open to critique, we do at times still question, ‘what substantive power-relation changes have been made’?

We could draw on numerous cases to illustrate our concerns but three global political examples suffice: These are the times, we suggest, within which the hope that underpinned the election of Barack Obama, has seemingly dissolved and ‘white privilege’ appears, once again, entrenched via Trump politics and disparaging talk of ‘shithole countries’ (with particular reference to El Salvador, Haiti and African nations) and ‘Mexican rapists’ (see Davis, Stolberg and Kaplan, 2018). Although it is 150 years after the end of slavery and five decades after the civil rights movements, the wealth gap between African American and white families in the United States has tripled since 1984 (Shapiro, Meschede and Osoro, 2013). These are also the times within which the assumed set of emancipatory changes associated with feminism and popular culture have been repositioned via the global revelations of sexual abuse, thus indicating that feminist scholarship and activism, such as the #MeToo campaign, are still needed in the contemporary post-feminist context. Lastly, these are the times when the global occupy movement, which raged against socio-economic inequalities in 2011–12, appear to be a distant memory with revelations that the cumulative wealth of the world's billionaires has increased by 18 per cent over the last year (Dolan and Kroll, 2018).

We use the above three examples to indicate that although some specific social justice ‘wins’ have occurred in recent years that the broad pattern of power relations, that tend to stabilise patterns of privilege and disadvantage, remain seemingly intact. Some might feel that our view concerning the apparent lack of substantive power-relation changes is pessimistic. Yet we concur with George Sage (1990) who argued that criticism, even if it might seem unduly negative, “is actually a form of commitment, a way of saying: There are problems here and unwarranted abuses; let's identify them and work to make things better for everyone” (p. 4).

The rise and impact of critical research in sport, health and physical education

Within the overlapping fields of HPE and the sociology of sport we acknowledge the concomitant growth in the use of critical research and qualitative methods over the last three decades (see Donnelly, 2015; Leahy, Wright and Penney, 2017; Sage, 2015). In fact, qualitative/critical research approaches now dominate research publications in select journals within these fields (e.g. Critical Public Health; International Review for the Sociology of Sport; Quest; Sport, Education and Society; Sociology of Sport Journal). We further acknowledge that although the related critical research findings tend to circulate narrowly (see Atkinson, 2011; Zirin, 2008), they are at times drawn upon to inform debate, policy and practice. Donnelly and Atkinson (2015) illustrate, as an example, how Loy and McElvogue's (1970) formative research on racial segregation in sport ‘filtered down’ and encouraged further research that has contributed to making a social difference. We are also confident that pressure from feminist activists/scholars (e.g. Donnelly and Donnelly, 2013; Kane et al., 2007) has played a role in contributing to the seemingly revolutionary growth in female sport participation and the associated trend towards an equal number of events for female and male competitors at the Olympics. In similar respect, we acknowledge that research efforts have contributed to produce an assortment of specific transformations, such as, the development of ‘socio-critical curriculums’ in HPE in Australia and New Zealand.¹

Despite these gains we are concerned that many of the prime socio-cultural issues that were critically examined in the 1980s remain firmly on the contemporary research agenda: indicating that these social problems and associated power relation issues are still in need of attention.² Although we recognize that it is complex, perhaps impossible, to ascertain with any certainty the influence of critical research, the following three examples suggest that our ability to orchestrate change in our own fields has been somewhat underwhelming.

Firstly, Toni Bruce (2015) laments that if we exclude the unique and nationalistic coverage devoted to the Olympics that “30 years of activism and pressure on sports media to increase both the quality and quantity of coverage” (p. 383) devoted to sportswomen has produced nominal change in the majority of western countries. She adds, “sportswomen languish at about 10 per cent of everyday coverage” (p. 383) and “the default settings of mediasport—such as marginalization, ambivalence and sexualization” remain (p. 382). In a similar manner of concern, Sheila Scraton (2018) concludes via her reflection on 25 years of feminist research within physical education: “Sadly, even though we do have new powerful understandings, a strong netw...