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The Academization of Sport in Sweden : Sport Research, Higher Sport Education and The Sport Labor Market, from a Perspective of Knowledge

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the latest 15 years. Up-on closer inspection, however, one can see that the majority of the increase consists of part time, and time-limited employments. Most of the ads are also issued by the relative novelty of companies organiz-ing sport for children.

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In 2009 the number of sport educations had risen to 13, admitting close to 800 students annually. In order to better understand the educations, and what kind of knowledge they mediate, the literature within every education, and every one of its orientations, was analyzed. The goal was to identify different types of sport educations. Every orientation within every education was also treated as a separate education due to their varying content. Through the analysis, 22 separate educations, within six different types of higher sport educations could be identified, see table 2.1.

Almost half of the sport educations where categorized as Sport management educations. I.e. nine of the educations were dominated by management knowledge, such as economy, law, organizational theory, HRM and marketing.

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Diagram 2.1. Higher Sport

Educations (HSE) in Sweden (n).

0 5 10 15 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Diagram 2.2. Students

admitted to HSE in Sweden (n).

0 500 1000 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 6 3 6 27 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70s 80s 90s 00s Pedagogy Psychology History Sociology Other

Diagram 1.1. Sport dissertati-ons within different disciplines in Sweden (n). 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 70s 80s 90s 00s Pedagogy Psychology History Sociology Other Diagram 1.2. Distribution of sport research on different

scientific disciplines in Sweden.

Diagram 3.1. Employees within sport organizations in Sweden (n). 0 10 000 20 000 30 000 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011

Sport Research, Higher Sport Education and The Sport Labor Market, from a Perspective of Knowledge

Fil. lic. Joakim Wirén Åkesson, Dept. of Sport Science, Malmö University, 205 06 Malmö, Sweden. joakim.akesson@mah.se

Theory

Results

Purpose & Questions

Method

Conclusion

Sport Research

Higher Sport Education

The Sport Labor Market

Figure 3.1. The typical complex sport organization in Sweden.

Table 2.1. Sport educations, and students admitted, within different

education types 2008.

Education type n n % Management 9 275 48,6 Coaching 5 71 12,5 Health 3 82 14,5 Culture and Society 2 26 4,6 Medicine and Physiology 2 87 15,4 Psychology 1 25 4,4 Total 22 566 100,0 Admitted students 2008

The purpose of the thesis is to understand the academization of sport in Sweden, from a perspective of knowledge. I.e. the process by which an area of knowledge becomes scientific. Research questions:

− What knowledge is being produced through sport research (social science) in Sweden, and why?

− What knowledge is being mediated through higher sport education in Sweden, and why?

− What knowledge is demanded on the sport labor market in Sweden, and why?

− How does the three bodies of knowledge above relate to each other?

Before the 2000:s there were only four higher sport edu-cations in Sweden, all of them with a focus on pedagogy. But in 2002 something happened, in one year five new sport educations started, more than doubling the amount of sport science educations. Possible explanations to the explosive development are: (1) commercialization, professionalization and medialization processes of sport in Sweden reaching new heights, and (2) a series of educational reforms, enabling: (a) universities to offer new types of educations and (b) more citizens to partake in higher education.

There have been employees within sport organizations for a long time in Sweden. However, there have never been as many as today. The number of employees within sport org-anizations in Sweden have increased dramatically in later decades, more than doubling in amount between 1993 and 2011. The number of sport organizations with employees have increased even more rapidly, tripling the number of organizations with employees during the same time period.

Correspondingly, the number of employment ads issued by sport organizations have also increased significantly

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The thesis is based on, and departs from, a perspective of knowledge, as formulated by Berger & Luckmann in

The

Social Construction of reality

(1997). Where as knowledge is viewed as a social construction, and emphasizes the importance of the social context in which knowledge is produced, communicated, renegotiated and so forth.

Institutional- (Powell & DiMaggio 1991) and organizat-ional theory (Slack & Parent 2006) is adopted when inter-preting the results and trying to understand why the results appear as they do. I.e. in order to understand the acade-mization process of sport in Sweden at a deeper level. Key concepts are: institution, institutionalization, path depend-ency and organizational ideal types and komplexity.

Multiple methods are adopted, such as: document and con-tent analysis, analysis of existing public statistics and infor-mal interviews (Bryman 2002). Both archeological and genealogical methods (Ritzer 1996) are utilized in order to uncover and understand the academization of sport in Swe-den. Data sources are:

Part 1, Sport research: Sport dissertations, journal articles, research reports, and interviews with key-informants.

Part 2, Higher Sport Education: Admittance statistics, curric-ulums, political propositions and education websites.

Part 3, The Sport Labor Market: Sport employment statist-ics, employment ad statistics and employment ads.

Historically, there have been five prominent sport research environments in Sweden, three within pedagogy, one within history, and one within psychology. The five environments share traits, such as having: (1) a sport professor, (2) a phd-education, and (3) regular seminars. The professors within the research environments have also been central figures within national sport research organizations. The five environments have, as a result of structural conditions and strong agency, been successful at expanding and reproducing themselves historically . However, some of them have been struggling lately due to the lack of obvious leadership when their professors have retired. And also, new environments are starting to make an impact, partly due to changed structural conditions (in its turn enabling strong agency).

Sport organizations have existed for a 100

years, sport research within social science has been conducted for 40 years, and higher sport educat-ions have been around for 10 years. Following different lines of history the bodies of knowledge within research, education, and sport organizat-ions inevitably develops differently. The different institutions aren’t born in a vacuum, they are

established, developed and reproduced in social and ideological contexts. There is very little research

be-ing done within the area of Sport Ma-nagement in Swe-den today, even though there are

many sport manage-ment educations, and

professional roles,

deman-ding such knowledge. There

ha-ve been a differentiation within sport research in later years, but the expansion is mainly in areas irrelevant to Sport management. Sport research in Sweden is highly institutionalized, and is to a large extent reproducing itself.

The path dependency sport research seems to be experiencing ought to be addressed in order to forward the development of sport research, to better fit the needs and demands of sport educations and sport organizations. How? That s a political issue…

References

Berger, P.L. & Luckmann, T. (1991) [1967]. The social construction of reality. London: Penguin Bryman, A. (2008). Social research methods. 3. ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Powell, W.W. & DiMaggio, P.J. (eds.) (1991). The new institutionalism in organizational analysis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Ritzer, G. (1996). Sociological theory. 4. ed. New York: McGraw-Hill

Slack, T & Parent, M.M. (2006). Understanding sport organizations. 2. ed. Champaign, Ill:

Human Kinetics

Åkesson, J.W. (2010). The Sport Academization Process. Malmö: Malmö university

The second most common was coach-ing educations, there were five of them. There was three hea-lth-, two culture and society, two medic-ine and physiology educations, and one psychology

education. Sport research within the social sciences first kicked of in

Sweden during the 1970:s, and has increased significantly ever since. Historically the production of knowledge has been dominated by the disciplines of pedagogy, psychology, history and sociology. They still dominate although other disciplines have become more and more engaged in sport research over time. During the first decade of the new millennium one fifth of the sport research was produced outside the four dominant disciplines. Sport research is in other words becoming more and more differentiated.

When analyzing employment ads issued by sport organizations, a number of professional roles, for which knowledge demand looked remarkably multifarious, could be identified. Examples of the most common ones are: sports counselor, sports coach, general manager, finance manager, fitness instructor, personal trainer and communications operative. The professional roles operates within different organizational areas (see figure 3.1), and can be divided in to four groups depending on (a) if specific sport knowledge or another area of knowledge is primary to the role, and (b) if the professional role is on strategic or operative level.

References

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