Jesper Stilling Olesen

How to Stay Becoming--Living up to the Code of Conduct in a Sports Class.

ABSTRACT In this article we show how a hybridisation of elite sport and school in lower-secondary education in Denmark produces a particular kind of learning subject with dual tracks for development, and we ask what kind of actions the students apply in order to stay becoming along both tracks. We apply theoretical conceptions of ‘becoming’ inspired by Brembeck and Johansson that allow us to understand how the sports students live up to the code of conduct of the sports classes. The article is based on an ethnographic study carried out in four schools located in four regions of Denmark. We argue that the hybrid obliges students to follow a narrow developmental track with an ambitious goal of performing in both sport and school, and that the hybrid is threatened when a sports student prioritises either sport or school while he/she is still enrolled in the class.

Reproduction and opportunity: A study of dual career, aspirations and elite sports in Danish SportsClasses

In this article we analyze the patterns of retention in SportsClasses of promising young athletes in Denmark. Since 2005, SportsClasses have provided extra training for potential elite athletes in Grades 7–9 in designated Danish public schools. They were introduced after the Danish Ministry of Culture lowered the age of recruitment for athletes from 15 to 12 in response to increased competition in the world of elite sports. The SportsClasses attempt to balance collaboration between two different organizations: Danish public schools; and sports clubs. Using a survey of the student population in 2013 and a follow-up sample in 2015, we explored the respondents’ social backgrounds and experiences in order to understand their likelihood of retention during the program and their career aspirations. Focusing on socioeconomic status (SES), the role of having parents in elite sports, gender, and type of sport, we studied what key experiences and relationships lead students to abandon or sustain their interest in careers related to sports and how this differed for boys and girls. By applying Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and types of capital, we concluded that the program produced elements of both reproduction and opportunity but that the patterns strongly favored the retention of boys compared to girls. Our findings also suggest that the overlap between school and sport may have lead students from higher SES background to focus on education rather than sports.