Search Results

This article is organized around the idea that a person can be a part of kinesiology without being in kinesiology. Trained as a sociologist and never having a faculty appointment outside of a sociology department, I am an outsider in kinesiology. However, my participation in kinesiology and relationships with scholars in kinesiology departments have fostered my professional growth and my appreciation of interdisciplinary approaches to studying sports, physical activities, and the moving human body. The knowledge produced by scholars in kinesiology subdisciplines has provided a framework for situating and assessing my research, teaching, and professional service as a sociologist. The latter half of this article focuses on changes in higher education and how they are likely to negatively impact the social sciences and humanities subdisciplines in kinesiology. The survival of these subdisciplines will depend, in part, on how leaders in the field respond to the question, Kinesiology for whom?

This article explored how 45 novice physical education teachers perceived success, and how success affected their motivation to continue teaching. Self-determination theory (SDT) was used to interpret the teachers’ written reports, and focus group discussions were held concerning their success. Satisfaction with the competence, relatedness, and autonomy of the teachers’ needs were related to the teachers’ perception of success. Based on the findings, we contend that SDT can have strong implications for both school life and professional development facilitators. We suggest that strengthening certain aspects of success from the very beginning of the teaching experience may lead to a better adjustment to teaching.

The burgeoning number of football academies in Africa are widely understood by young aspiring players and their family members as a conduit for transnational migration and a professional career in the game. However, for the vast majority of academy recruits the stark reality is involuntary immobility. While there is a growing literature on African football migration, the experiences of young players from the continent who are unable to translate their academy training into a professional career overseas has been neglected. This article addresses this lacuna by focusing on how this process is experienced and navigated by a cohort of former Ghanaian academy players. These experiences are positioned within the context of the intergenerational contract, a pervasive social norm in West Africa that places considerable expectations on young adults to reciprocate materially to their household. The analyses here are based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Ghana totalling 12 months, conducted between January 2008 and July 2015.

This paper challenges the popular argument that sport is an effective channel for upward mobility, especially for ethnic minorities. My study of retired professional soccer players in Israel establishes the following findings: First, members of the subordinate ethnic group are disadvantaged in attainment of status not only in schools and labor markets but also in and via sport. Second, a professional career in sport does not intervene between background variables and later occupational attainment. Third, both ethnicity and educational level are the most significant determinants of postretirement occupational attainment; higher education and higher ethnic status improve opportunities for later occupational success. On the basis of these findings it is suggested that the same rules of inequality that push individuals to seek alternative routes of mobility, such as professional sport, continue to operate in and beyond sport.

The purpose of this study was to understand the meanings and lived experiences of multiple concussions in professional hockey players using hermeneutic, idiographic, and inductive approaches within an interpretative phenomenological analysis. The interviewer was an athlete who had suffered multiple concussions, and the interviewees were five former National Hockey League athletes who had retired due to medically diagnosed concussions suffered during their careers. The men discussed the physical and psychological symptoms they experienced as a result of their concussions and how the symptoms affected their professional careers, personal relationships, and quality of life. The former professional athletes related these symptoms to the turmoil that is ever present in their lives. These findings are of interest to athletes, coaches, sport administrators, family members, sport psychology practitioners, and medical professionals, as they highlight the severity of short- and long-term effects of concussions.