The Influence of Context on Occupational Selection in Sport-for-Development

Janet Njelesani,Amie Tsang,Helene Polatajko,Lauren Fehlings

doi:10.3390/soc6030024

Abstract

Sport-for-development (SFD) is a growing phenomenon involving engagement in sport activities to achieve international development goals. Kicking AIDS Out is one sport for development initiative that raises HIV/AIDS awareness through sport. Despite sport-for-development’s global prevalence, there is a paucity of literature exploring how activities are selected for use in differing contexts. An occupational perspective can illuminate the selection of activities, sport or otherwise, in sport-for-development programming and the context in which they are implemented. The purpose of the study was to understand how context influences the selection of sport activities in Kicking AIDS Out programs. Thematic analysis was used to guide the secondary analysis of qualitative data gathered with Kicking AIDS Out leaders in Lusaka, Zambia and Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. Findings include that leaders strive to balance their activity preferences with those activities seen as feasible and preferential within their physical, socio-historical, and cultural contexts, and that leader’s differing understandings of sport as a development tool influences their selection of activities. To enable a better fit of activities chosen for the particular context and accomplishment of international development goals, sport-for-development programmes might consider how leaders are trained to select such activities.

Highlights

Initiatives addressing international development have expanded over the past three decades.While there is no universally accepted definition of development, it can be understood as “a process of enabling people’s choices and increasing the opportunities available to all members of society” [1].An emerging trend among these initiatives is to use single ‘activities’, or in the language of occupational scientists, ‘single occupations’, as a means to address development goals [2]
Sport as a Tool, a Tool for What? expresses how subtle differences in the understanding of sport as a tool for development as a result of the socio-political and cultural contexts leads to differences in occupational selection
This study explored the role of context in the selection of occupations for use in sport-for-development programming using an occupational approach

Summary

Introduction

Initiatives addressing international development have expanded over the past three decades. An emerging trend among these initiatives is to use single ‘activities’, or in the language of occupational scientists, ‘single occupations’, as a means to address development goals [2]. Kicking AIDS Out (KAO) is an example of an SFD initiative that uses the occupation of sport as a means to educate and raise awareness about HIV/AIDS. SFD has faced broad criticisms, including the need for compelling evidence to support the use of sport to achieve development goals [4,5,6,7]. In addition to the need for greater empirical evidence, is the need to explore SFD from the perspective of alternative disciplines [8], and the need to understand the Societies 2016, 6, 24; doi:10.3390/soc6030024 www.mdpi.com/journal/societies

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