Public pedagogy and leadership in sports organisations: Futebol dá força for sustainability?

Erik Andersson

doi:10.1177/14749041211053721

Abstract

Sport is a key educational and leadership arena for societal change and today’s sustainability challenges. Sports organisations have the potential to provide, initiate and create processes, situations and spaces for learning, socialisation and meaning making that go beyond traditional schooling and lead community change and capacity building towards sustainable development. This article is located in the research fields of public pedagogy and the intersection of leadership and sport for development, and contributes knowledge about how sports organisations’ public pedagogical practices and leadership support community change towards sustainability. The study is confined to soccer and the non-governmental sports organisation Futebol dá força (Football gives strength). The approach of public pedagogical leadership is developed and used to analyse and reflect on the function of sports organisations’ pedagogical leadership in community change and capacity building towards sustainability.

Highlights

IntroductionThe question of sustainability is existential and value-laden, based on ecological conditions and integrated into social, political and economic systems and the needs of current and future generations
What kind of world do we want to live in and want future generations to inherit? The question of sustainability is existential and value-laden, based on ecological conditions and integrated into social, political and economic systems and the needs of current and future generations
Influence is through public media interviews, such as talking about the organisation, its activities and aims, and sharing Futebol dá força (FDF)’s knowledge and methods

Summary

Introduction

The question of sustainability is existential and value-laden, based on ecological conditions and integrated into social, political and economic systems and the needs of current and future generations. Leadership and sport are all relevant fields of study that in different ways deal with sustainability and its intricate web of relations. Public pedagogy has become a driving force for exploring and theorising the nexus of culture, learning, education and social change. A phenomenon that has so far not been explored in the field of public pedagogy, and hardly at all in sport for development (SFD), is pedagogical leadership. Some studies have started to explore shared leadership as ‘a valuable type of leadership’ (Svensson et al, 2019: 1) for developing sustainable efforts in and through sport. There is ‘an overall lack of leadership research within the SFD literature’ and ‘there remains a need for empirical analyses of different leadership approaches’ (Jones et al, 2018: 83)

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