‘Let them see a different path’: social attitudes towards sport,education and development in Sāmoa     

Christina Ting Kwauk 《Sport, Education and Society》2016,21(4):644-660

Drawing on ethnographic data collected over 12 months of field research, this paper contributes to the growing body of literature on sport for development (SFD) by giving voice to alternative constructions of the educative potential of SFD. It does this by exploring the social attitudes of youth, educators, community leaders and government officials in the Pacific island nation of Sāmoa towards sport, education and development. Imagining sport to be like ‘school outside’, my Samoan interlocutors construct sport as an educative platform that prepares young ‘academically unfit’ men to engage an increasingly global political economy in ways classroom education cannot. Viewing international sport as a form of ‘development education’, my interlocutors perceive the educative value of SFD as being rooted in the potential for sport to help move underperforming boys into transnational flows of remittances to the family. In this way, Samoans perceive sport as enabling ‘at risk’ youth to serve their families, to learn English and to become globally minded, ultimately equipping them with the skills needed to achieve transnational futures once beyond their reach. In allowing a grassroots understanding of SFD to emerge, the paper challenges the assumption that the institutions of sport and education are compatible, mutually reinforcing and complementary. Specifically, viewing sport as an alternative to schooling may serve to reintegrate underperforming young men back into an education-to-employment pipeline, but it also carries important implications for the de-skilling of youth and the perpetuation of their positions of marginality. The paper calls into question the role of education and sport in and for development, highlighting important questions that SFD stakeholders should consider.  相似文献   

Now you see,now you don’t … the influence of visual occlusion on racket and ball kinematics in the tennis serve     

Georgia Giblin  David Whiteside  Machar Reid 《Sports biomechanics / International Society of Biomechanics in Sports》2017,16(1):23-33

The serve is considered amongst the most important strokes in tennis. Not surprisingly, the development of a mechanically consistent and proficient serve is paramount. Correspondingly, drills that involve players serving with their eyes closed are thought to promote mechanical consistency. The purpose of this study was therefore to contrast the effect of the removal of visual feedback on ball and racket kinematics in the serve. A 10-camera 500-Hz VICON MX motion analysis system recorded the service actions of eight elite young players as they performed three serves with eyes open and three serves with eyes closed. Removal of vision resulted in considerable differences in both racket and ball kinematics, with players failing to make contact on 16 of 24 serves. Temporally, the preparation phase was significantly shorter with eyes closed. Spatially, the ball was located 6.5 cm further to the right at zenith, and 13 cm higher at impact with eyes closed. These results highlight that the serve is not entirely pre-programmable, and that visual feedback is critical to the spatiotemporal regulation of the serve. In turn, coaches need to be aware of the implications of modifying visual feedback in serve, and ensure that the consequence is congruent with their intent.  相似文献