Learning in sport: from life skills to existential learning

Youth sport is habitually promoted as an important context for learning that contributes to a person's broader development beyond sport-specific skills. A growing body of research in this area has operated within a life skills discourse that focuses on useful, positive and decontextualised skil...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sport, education and society education and society, 2021-02, Vol.26 (2), p.214-227
Main Authors: Ronkainen, Noora J., Aggerholm, Kenneth, Ryba, Tatiana V., Allen-Collinson, Jacquelyn
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent Development
athletes
Athletics
Daily Living Skills
discontinuity
Educational Philosophy
identity
Informal Education
informal learning
Learning Processes
Learning Theories
Positive youth development
Skills
Sports
Youth
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Youth sport is habitually promoted as an important context for learning that contributes to a person's broader development beyond sport-specific skills. A growing body of research in this area has operated within a life skills discourse that focuses on useful, positive and decontextualised skills in the production of successful and adaptive citizens. In this paper, we argue that the ideological discourse of life skills, underpinned by ideas about sport-based positive youth development, has unduly narrowed the research on learning in sport to only what is deemed functional, teachable, and economically productive. After considering the problems associated with the currently dominant life skills approach, we explore existential learning as an alternative perspective on conceptualising and studying learning in sport. An existential approach provides a non-instrumental theory of learning with an emphasis on discontinuity, relational self and 'becoming', opening an avenue for exploring various forms of informal learning under-explored in sport. We discuss the applications of this alternative approach for future research and practice in learning in youth sport.
ISSN:1357-3322
1470-1243
DOI:10.1080/13573322.2020.1712655