Anthony J Bush

Contingent intellectual amateurism, or, the problem with evidence-based research.

Given the amalgam of neo-liberal, neo-scientist and neo-conservative forces that frame higher education_safeguarding science and medicine at the expense of arts, humanities and the social sciences_the very existence and continuance of the sociology of sport is imperiled perhaps more than ever. In this moment, and not surprisingly, the epistemological corroborator of these forces is once again championed; there has been an aggressive push towards _science_ defined by evidence based programmes, policies and practices (EBR) as the sole and legitimate avenue for academic survival. Heralded as the _gold_ standard of academic research, and forged through university-industry-government partnerships, the evidence based research mantra emphasizes a shift towards corporate principles of efficiency, accountability and profit maximization. As such, within this paper, we discuss the creeping EBR-based epistemological orthodoxy that is seeping into the critical sociological study of sport, arguing that it threatens to neuter the political and critical potentialities of our field. We propose that pandering to EBR, compromises everything that critical sporting intellectuals strive for and believe in; it is a powerful virus of sorts that speaks against our ontological, axiological, epistemological, methodological and political approaches and offers nothing but collusion with, and explicit support for, existing regimes of power.

Disability [sport] and discourse:Stories within the Paralympic legacy

This paper aims to encourage critical reflection on what are key and pressing social and political issues surrounding the Paralympics Games. The focus of the paper is personal narratives of six current elite Paralympic athletes who have participated in at least one Paralympic Games. In response to critical stimuli presented in the form of five ‘unfinished stories’, the self-reflexive, personal, compelling narrative reflections of these individuals were (re)presented for each of the stories as a composite narrative. The stories expose questions over fear, despair, freedom, hope, love, oppression, hatred, hurt, terror, (in)equality, peace, performance and impairment. To really learn from London and reflect for Rio, we need academic work that can understand sport, sporting bodies and physical activity as important ‘sites’ through which social forces, discourses, institutions and processes congregate, congeal and are contested in a manner that contributes to the shaping of human relations, subjectivities, and experiences in particular, contextually contingent ways.

Towards an evolving critical consciousness in coaching research: The physical pedagogic bricolage

Within this paper we argue that the ontological core of sports coaching is fragile, somewhat narrow and blinkered, and acts to constrict that which counts as knowledge within the field. Through contextualising the field within a corporatised university system that favours instrumentalised forms of knowledge, we challenge the mythopoeic status afforded to the terminology ‘sport’ and ‘coaching’, instead proposing the moniker Physical Pedagogic Bricolage (PPB) to better encapsulate a reconceptualised field. Through opening the field to the deep interdisciplinarity of bricolage, we sketch a more democratic field that promotes understanding, communication, and, creates structures that allow for a better informed, more rigorous, mode of knowledge production which has the power to move the field of sports coaching in a more progressive direction. This is a project that connects coaching to a broader notion of cultural politics designed to further a multiracial, economic and political democracy, a project that connects theory to social change, textual analysis to practical politics, and academic inquiry to public spheres [1]. Of course, we fully recognise that such a challenge to the ontological core of the field will be contested. As such, we intend this paper less as a prescription for coaching research and more of a directional purview that invites—expects—critical dialogue, response and debate as we work towards a set of perhaps competing knowledges, epistemologies, and, axiological approaches that together can ‘do coaching justice.’

Politics, power & the podium: coaching for paralympic performance

This paper considers the cultural politics of working with elite athletes with a disability. The focus of the paper is a coach who has dedicated his career to performance athletes with a disability – Robert Ellchuk – and draws on the coach’s personal experiences and ethnographic work with four different coach-Paralympic athlete dyads. These data are (re)presented in the form of a reflexive conversation supplemented with post-conversation reflections. Important questions are raised about the structure of ‘coach education’, the role of a coach, hierarchies within disabled sport, the impact of commodification on the disabled body and the (perceived) barriers to physical activity for disabled participants. The article concludes with an invitation to readers to make their own meaning of this polysemic narrative, especially at a time when specific representations of ‘acceptable’ disabled bodies will be circulated in, and through, the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

(Re-)thinking digital leisure

4D ibabyscans, wearable baby gro’s/monitors incorporating movement-based technologies and provide real-time video on your iPhone while your baby sleeps, speak to a dazzling assemblage of digital technologies, products, commodities, platforms, materialities and virtualities that enculturate, envelop and are embodied on/in the contemporary corporeality of young people, almost from conception. Play – commodified in the form of soccertots, rugbytots, waterbabies, turtletots, tumbletots, bunnies (gymnastics), musicbugs, and now digitised and quantified (real time ipad feedback during toddler swimming lessons) – is, we are told due to concerns over safety, the loss/privatisation of open space in our communities and multiple other ‘risks’, not something that can or should be done outside or alone. Tablets, phones, computers, consoles and touch screens in reception classes have become the new techno-pedagogic (Rich & Miah, 2014) devices through which the educative, leisured, consumptive and play elements of the everyday are filtered and organised. The capacity for mobile connectivity has blurred the boundaries between public/private/digitised leisure spaces. Our every step surveilled, logged, recorded and stored, as we engage in our neoliberal consumptive practices. Going to the cinema, eating out at a restaurant, taking a trip, shopping in themed malls part of a ‘surveillant assemblage’ (Haggerty & Ericson, 2000) predicated on an aegis of suspicion and a global climate of fear (see Bigo, 2011). Even Christmas is militarised and bought to us by NORAD. (Awkward) physical teenage relationships re-defined by shifting expectations brought about by the ubiquity of online pornography; bedrooms redefined as sexting production studios or as amateur porn streaming showrooms. Fitbit, Jawbone, Garmin, Microsoft Band, MiCoach, Strava, MapmyRun, RunKeeper, Runtastic, Nike+ FuelBand, Endomondo, Lose It!, Pokemon Go quantifying, shaping, sharing and augmenting our physical exertions, instructing us as we glide, plod, pedal, trot and chase. We are living in a digital culture in which personalised data are amassed in great volume and variety and are exchanged with great velocity. Selfies, belfies (bottom or belly selfies), shelfies (of one’s bookshelf), lelfies (legs) and even pelfies (female genitalia, with the dic-pic the male equivalent) overdetermine (to differing intensities) a digitised and exacerbated visual youth leisure culture on a variety of social media platforms (from Facebook to Snapchat to Twitter to Instagram and everything else in between), in which the body (shaped, sculpted, manicured and governed) is displayed (publically, and not just to [virtual] friends).The leisure practices, experiences, structures and forms of young people (their everyday lives) are digitised and datafied unlike anything we ever experienced. As Deborah Lupton points out in the foreword to this volume, lively devices generate lively data that have considerable implications in our understandings of a lively Leisure Studies. The papers in this special issue aim to contribute to such debates, offering nuanced understandings of how various instances, experiences, practices and structures of digital leisure are embedded in complex inter-connections with the economic and political trajectories of neoliberal consumer capitalism, surveillance and the unequal power relations extant in all leisure practices (Spracklen, 2015).

Sports coach as transformative leader: arresting school disengagement through community sport-based initiatives

Reducing social exclusion through interventions designed to sustain school engagement is a key aim of the education and social policy of any government. This paper is a response to the call for there to be more focused empirical sports coaching research through examining the transformative potential of community-based sports coaches to support schools in arresting school disengagement. By embracing an understanding that challenges the definitional core of sports coaching as simply improving the sporting performance of an individual or team, and, drawing theoretically on the work of Carlisle et al. and Shields, the role of ‘coach as transformative leader’ is articulated. Analysis of data collected by means of semi-structured interviews with a group of community-based sports coaches (n = 8) revealed three factors salient to our understanding of re-engaging young people with formal education through sport. These were the impact of the community sport programme; the relationship between schools and community sports groups; and the implementation of transformative leadership qualities by sport coaching practitioners. Importantly, this paper explicates the pivotal function that coaching practice which embraces transformative leadership principles can have on reorienting young people from disadvantaged backgrounds towards more optimistic futures and educational objectives.

A little less conversation; a little more (relational) action please. A fictional dialogue of integrating theory into coaching practice

Abstract This paper presents a fictional dialogue that supports the application of theory in coaching pedagogy. The “constraints led approach” (CLA) is promoted throughout in conversation form, providing pedagogic solutions in response to the decaying performance levels of a fictitious football team. This deterioration is linked to “poor” coaching and the merits of a more innovative pedagogy through a discussion between “manager” and “coach” are presented. Recommendations are made with particular reference to developing games players, who are skilful, perceptive and intelligent, through being able to initiate and modify actions in dynamic contexts. Through substantiating a platform for both changing perceptions about coaching practice and challenging assumptions about learning, such accessibility to unfamiliar knowledge(s) can allow coaches to clearly consider possibilities for change. It is further suggested that through embracing the use of novel methodologies to consider unfamiliar theoretical territory, this demonstrates a responsibility to close and not widen a theory-practice gap. By presenting Mark (coach) as “theoretical negotiator”, this paper emphasises the potency of experimenting with nuanced methods that can be part of an academic process to help shape more theoretically literate coaches.

Connecting knowledge(s) to practice: A Bernsteinian theorisation of a collaborative coach learning community project

ABSTRACT Collaborative action learning was undertaken in response to the growing criticisms of formal coach education. Since it is strongly felt that we can no longer merely commentate on what is not happening in terms of coach learning, a key requirement now is to demonstrate there are other options. The Coach Learning and Development (CLAD) programme was devised and implemented at a community rugby club in Wiltshire, England. The CLAD programme supported volunteers to engage more with contemporary designs for learning, acknowledging a fundamental problem with formal coach education in the way learning (and knowledge) is decontextualised. The theoretical endeavours of Basil Bernstein are introduced to Sport Coaching Research (SCR) for the first time, specifically the ‘pedagogical device’ to illustrate a process of recontextualisation. Findings suggest that the CLAD programme was successful in encouraging coaches to engage with more positive forms of coaching pedagogy. Therefore, the findings draw on the pivotal outcomes of the CLAD programme to re-configure more successful outcomes for coach education, coach learning and volunteers rights to knowledge.