The lived experience of sport education: a web of interconnected experiences

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ABSTRACT Background There would be little debate that sport education is the most researched pedagogical model. From the earliest descriptive accounts of student and teacher behaviors to quantitative studies testing the efficacy of the model’s objectives, there are now meta-analyses of students’ motivation, knowledge, skill and motor performance. However, the early research using student voice involved small sample sizes and focused on what Kretchmar ([2000]. “Moving and Being Moved: Implications for Practice.” Quest 52 (3): 260–272. https://doi.org/10.1080/00336297.2000.10491714) would call surface level explanations such as fun and enjoyment. By consequence, what is missing in the literature are rich descriptions of the lived experience and meanings that students attach to their experience in classes informed by the model. Purpose The task of this research was to better understand what makes sport education meaning friendly. By examining sport education as it is subjectively lived, it may be possible to discover new meanings and appreciations, or perhaps reorient our understanding of the model itself. Hence, the essential phenomenological question of this study was, ‘What does it mean to participate in a season of sport education?’ Method Participants were 67 seventh-grade students from a school in the southeast United States. The students participated in two seasons, each lasting three weeks over two semesters. Forty-two students participated in small group interviews (2–4 per group) which began by asking them to identify central or personally relevant aspects of their sport education experience. In the days after, we conducted short and informal discussions to help understand individual students’ comments that required further clarification with relevant examples. The students’ testimonies (88 pages) were independently categorized into the three domains of meaning by these authors. This was followed by identifying commonalities among words and phrases at the sentence level throughout the document, a process that occurred collectively. Findings Analysis of the transcripts confirmed that three fundamental components (serious competition, time, and persisting team) were the essence of the sport education experience. The next step involved identifying commonalities among words and phrases at the sentence level throughout the document. Thirteen domain-specific features of the pillars (e.g. winning, losing, communicating, friends, etc.) that pinpointed the experiential aspects that gave sport education meaning for the students were identified. In addition, the students’ descriptions of their experiences made it clear that they were interdependent with each other. Hence, the metaphor of a spider web is presented as an authentic representation of the data. Further, as each spider will have its own spiral width and tension within its web and will rarely build its web in the exact same way, each student will experience the elements of sport education in similar, but not identical, ways. That is, for each student, the pillars and features will have a different degree of impact on their lived experience. This metaphor helps explain how sport education allows a balance between individual and team interests. Conclusion These findings serve to provide more specific explanations of ‘why’ sport education has had such success in terms of promoting positive outcomes with respect to motivation as well as in the motor and cognitive domains.