‘It’s Not What You See, It’s How it Feels’: Meanings of Child-Athlete Welfare in Cypriot Sport

Author(s):

Maria Papaefstathiou(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2016

Network:

18. Research in Sports Pedagogy

Format:

Paper

Session Information

18 SES 06, Ethical Considerations for Research and Practice in Physical Education and Sport Settings

Paper Session

Time:

2016-08-24

15:30-17:00

Room:

OB-E2.38 (ALE 4)

Chair:

Fiona Chambers

Contribution

The study set out to explore the meaning of child-athlete welfare through the perspectives of child athletes and other actors in the world of Cypriot athletics. The study also sought to investigate whether child athlete and more locally rooted perspectives can offer newer and broad understandings of sporting identity and child welfare and to understand the implications of these for potential policy intervention. The main empirical findings addressed the two research questions:

What are the experiences of competitive-level child athletes, ex-athletes, administrators and coaches in Cypriot track and field sports that can inform the meanings of ‘welfare’ and its absence?
What are the sociocultural elements of Cypriot track and field sport that need to be considered for future policy development?

The theoretical perspectives adopted to inform this thesis offered new ways of understanding child-athlete experience. Firstly, the New Social Studies of Childhood [NSSC](James et al., 1998), which have informed numerous studies, outside sport, in exploring the diverse lives of children, have guided this study in exploring the lived experience of athletes holding a ‘child’ identity. Secondly, the meaning of childhood through the theoretical lenses of the NSSC was synthesised with the value framework of Todres et al. (2009), to illuminate and inform athlete welfare experience. Lastly, the study discussed issues of agency (James, 2009) voice and participation in childhood utilising Foucauldian insights on the technologies of the self and governmentality (1977; 1980a; 1980b, 1988), to further extend the debates around neoliberal policy approaches to the topic of Child Protection (CP) and welfare in sport (Piper et al., 2012).

Method

To undertake this research an ethnographic case study (Simmons, 2010) methodology was adopted and involved competitive-level child athletes, ex-athletes, coaches and administrators. The literature and research on this subject in the context of Cyprus, and beyond, remain still in their infancy, influenced largely by EU and UN discourses over the meaning of CP and welfare. To date, little research had been undertaken employing methodologies of an ethnographic character and using narratives (Riessman 2008; Bold, 2012; Sparkes & Smith, 2012) to represent the lived experience of child athletes and other actors. Current research has in its majority offered evidence based on the retrospective accounts of ex-athletes in northern European countries. Moreover, Cypriot sport has been scarcely investigated to include sociocultural perspectives. Therefore, the methods utilised within a one-year period included observations, semi-structures interviews, life histories and focus groups with active child athletes, mainly.

Expected Outcomes

The child-athlete experience has been articulated largely through a positive discourse about involvement in sport and competition. With a prominent media focus supporting the ‘success’/ ‘winner-takes-all’ ethos of contemporary sport, physically and emotionally punishing training can be legitimised in Cypriot sport when training outcomes are positive. Maintaining child-athlete welfare-friendly environments means to consider and acknowledge the sense of togetherness, community and belonging desired in sport participants’ views. Welfare becomes less attainable when child-athletes experience anxieties, sport failures and physical injuries. In the absence of supportive interaction with the coach, mainly, the child athletes face disillusion and despair. The meaning of welfare therefore needs to escape the confines of both the ‘prevention of abuse/harassment’ discourse as well as that of a more instrumental response focused on the pathological individual preying on passive and vulnerable children. According to the research outcomes the child athletes cope with their experiences in a variety of manners demonstrating the multiple layers of individual agency and types of roles they can play such as: a) accepting and playing a key role in the production of their experiences influenced by the dominant ‘performance’ narrative (Lang, 2009), b) partially condemning the sociocultural elements of their sport and c) adopting strongly ‘critically assessing’ views (ibid., p.265) opposing problematic social-structural features of sport and deciding to stand against them. Overall it is suggested that a potentially narrow set of regulations on physical contact and other social practices – in order to prevent child (sexual) abuse – can obstruct the more spontaneous and culturally acceptable behaviours to continue to function within the sporting arena and this is the critical point to consider when developing policy interventions to regulate and also provide awareness on child-athlete welfare.

References

Bold, C. (2012). Using Narrative in Research. London: Sage. Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of prison. London: Penguin Books. Foucault, M. (1980a) Prison Talk. In C. Gordon (ed.), Power/Knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972-1977 (pp. 37-54) Hertfordshire: The Harvester Press. Foucault, M. (1980b) The politics of health in the eighteenth century. In C. Gordon (ed.), Power/Knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings 1972-1977 (pp. 166-182) Hertfordshire: The Harvester Press. Foucault, M. (1988). Technologies of the Self. In L. H. Martin, H. Gutman & P. Hutton (Eds), Technologies of the self. A seminar with Foucault (pp. 16-49). Amherts: The University of Massachusetts Press. James, A. (2009). Agency. In J. Qvortrup, W. A. Corsaro & M.S. Honig (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of childhood studies (pp 34-45). Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Riessman, C. K. (2008). Narrative methods for the human sciences. United States of America: Sage. James, A., Jenks, C. & Prout, A. (1998). Theorizing Childhood. Cambridge: Polity Press. Lang, M. (2009) ‘Swimming in the Panopticon: an ethnographic exploration of good practice and child protection in competitive youth swimming’, unpublished Ph.D thesis, Leeds Metropolitan University. Piper, H., Taylor, B. & Garratt, D. (2012). Sports coaching in risk society: No touch! No trust! Sport, Education and Society, 17(3) 331–345. Simons, H. (2010). Case study research in practice. London: Sage. Sparkes, A. C. & Smith, B. (2012). Narrative Analysis as an Embodied Engagement with the Lives of Others. In G. Gubrium & J. Holstein (Eds). Varieties of narrative analysis (53-73). London: Sage. Todres, L., Galvin, K.T. and Holloway, I. (2009) ‘The humanisation of healthcare: A value framework for qualitative research’, International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Wellbeing, 4(2), 68-77.

Author Information

Maria Papaefstathiou (presenting / submitting)

Ministry of Education and Culture of Cyprus

Task Force on School Violence

Paphos

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