Looking beyond what's broken: towards an appreciative research agenda for physical education and sport pedagogy
Issue Date
2014-04-22Subjects
appreciative inquiryPESP research
theories of change
strengths-based inquiry
deficit thinking
X300 Academic studies in Education
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Despite the volume of research devoted to the many ills that beset the pedagogical field of physical education and sport, we begin by arguing that there has been insufficient attention given to the way scholars conceptualise change and imagine bringing it about. In particular, we point to a tendency within the field to prioritise problems—what’s broken—and suggest that this tendency harbours a self-fulfilling logic. Although somewhat oversold by some of its advocates, we then draw on Appreciative Inquiry (AI) as a potential intellectual resource for new agenda setting in physical education and sport pedagogy (PESP) research. AI invites researchers to prioritise the positive in the research contexts they study with a view to discovering and generating stories about success that research participants and scholars alike might build on.We argue that an appreciative agenda calls for more flexible and open communication about the start and imagined end points of our research, and a greater emphasis on collaboration that takes seriously the capacity of research participants to be the authors of change and the source of new directions in PESP inquiry.Citation
Enright E, Hill J, Sandford RA, Gard M (2014) 'Looking beyond what's broken: towards an appreciative research agenda for physical education and sport pedagogy', Sport, Education and Society, 19 (7), pp.912-926.Publisher
Taylor & FrancisJournal
Sport, Education and SocietyAdditional Links
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13573322.2013.854764Type
ArticleLanguage
enISSN
1357-3322ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1080/13573322.2013.854764