Educational Insights
Role Conflict among High School Teacher-Coaches on the Football Field and in the Classroom : An Embedded Single-case Study
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Margaret Westmoreland
This study focuses on role conflict experienced by high school teachers who also coach football, a gap in research as previous studies focused on PE and social studies teachers. Role theory was used to understand the decision-making process of teacher-coaches, exploring multiple roles, expectations, pressures, conflict, and consequences. The study used a multi-phased, mixed methods approach, collecting data from one southeast high school during the 2020-2021 academic year and football season. Major themes included head coaches' authority in hiring and terminating teacher-coaches, the need for time and professional development, and excessive workload. Role conflict was a common experience due to juggling dual roles. Recommendations include collaborative efforts to establish guidelines, allocate resources, and provide funding for high school teacher-coaches. Universities were advised to inform education majors about teacher demand in different areas. The study emphasizes the importance of support systems for addressing teacher-coaches' unique challenges.
FemTech Hoopers: Ethics of Biometric Technologies in Sport
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Rachel Roberson
This paper charts the conceptual interlockings of sport, surveillance studies, and Black feminist sociology to provide a framework for understanding how structures and systems of control impact the Black female basketball experience. This is accomplished by unpacking the use of holistic surveillance as a tool for reinforcing power stratification within intercollegiate athletics. Additionally, this paper heeds to the cautionary advice of Big Data scholars (Baerg, 2017; Hutchins, 2016; and Osborne and Cunningham, 2017) by evaluating the rising use of biometric technologies within intercollegiate athletics, interrogating their use and organizational policy protections. While biometric technologies such as microchipped compression layers and sleep sensors are framed as performance enhancing tools, the consent of the student-athlete is not required to mandate use unlike professional athletes. Most importantly, they have primary ownership of the data collected. Student-athletes, legally registered as amateurs, are unable to employ the same labor-oriented channels to voice and exercise their bodily autonomy with said technologies. This paper evaluates the institutional motivations in restricting student-athlete bodily autonomy by employing a critical discourse analysis to map the ever shifting landscape of biometric technologies within intercollegiate athletics. Ultimately, by unpacking the use of bodily regulation as a tool for reinforcing power stratification within intercollegiate athletics this paper is strategically positioned to add nuance to the study of the political economy of the institution of sport.
U.S. Youth Sports Participation: Analyzing the Implications of Generation, Gender, Race/ethnicity, Socioeconomic Status, and Family and Community Sport Cultures
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Chris Knoester
Using data from the National Sports and Society Survey (N = 3,993), this study describes and analyzes U.S. adults’ reports of their youth sports experiences. We consider patterns in ever playing a sport regularly while growing up, ever playing an organized sport, and then relative likelihoods of never playing an organized sport, playing and dropping out of organized sports, or playing an organized sport continually while growing up. We use binary and multinomial logistic regressions to assess the relevance of generational, gender, racial/ethnic, socioeconomic status, and family and community sport culture contexts for youth sports participation experiences. Overall, the findings highlight a number of social structural and cultural ramifications for youth sport experiences in the U.S. and how they have evolved for different generations. For example, we found evidence of increased likelihoods of ever playing an organized sport as well as playing an organized sport and dropping across generations. Although there was some evidence of a decline in playing a sport continually, playing a sport regularly remained an overwhelmingly common experience while growing up. In addition, results indicated some dwindling gender gaps in youth sports participation, but increasing socioeconomic status gaps. Racial/ethnic differences were more uneven, but there was some evidence of more dramatic declines across generations among Black and Other race/ethnicity respondents. Family and community sport cultures were consistent and meaningful predictors of youth sports participation patterns.
