Widening participation in sport-related studies in higher education: an exploratory study of symbolic struggles

Abstract

This paper focuses on widening participation in higher education and the low recruitment of students from diverse backgrounds within sport-related programs. The purpose of the study has been to describe and increase the understanding of how the preconditions and premises for choosing to study ‘sport’ appear to students from diverse backgrounds, who have started their studies. An interview study was carried out with eight students from three institutes, based on a purposeful sample. The study draws on Bourdieu's analytical concepts of habitus, capital and practical sense. The findings indicate that the interviewees had sufficient symbolic and cultural capital to enable a ‘practical sense’ that choice and action were possible, including evaluating the consequences of choice. For some, this meant a choice that crossed boundaries. Achieving a greater widening of the recruitment to higher education in sport-related programs seems to need clarification of transformable capital.