Do youth learn life skills through their involvement in high school sport? a case study

In this study we examined whether and how youth learned life skills through their involvement on a high school soccer team. We collected data from fieldwork and interviews with 12 male student-athletes and the head coach from one team. Results showed that the coach's philosophy involved building relationships and involving student-athletes in decision making. Issues relating to three life skills (initiative, respect, and teamwork/leadership) were identified. Although we observed little direct teaching of these life skills, we saw that players generally were producers of their own experiences that supported the development of these skills.

Key words: ecological systems, positive development

Les auteurs ont cherche a savoir si et comment les jeunes acquierent certaines competences de la vie courante en etant membres d'une equipe de soccer au secondaire. Les chercheurs ont collige des donnees sur le terrain et interviewe 12 eleves-athletes de sexe masculin ainsi que l'entraineur principal d'une equipe. Les resultats indiquent que l'entraineur avait pour philosophie de favoriser l'etablissement de relations et d'impliquer les eleves-athletes dans les prises de decision. Des problemes relies a trois competences de la vie courante (l'initiative, le respect et l'esprit d'equipe/le leadership) ont ete identifies. Bien que les auteurs aient observe que ces competences sont peu enseignees comme telles, ils ont constate que les joueurs etalent les producteurs de leurs propres experiences, qui favorisaient effectivement le developpement de ces competences.

Mots cles: systemes ecologiques, developpement positif

The World Health Organization (1999) has suggested that life skills are important for healthy development and preparing adolescents for the future. Sport psychologists have argued that life skills can be taught in combination with athletic skills in sport contexts (Danish & Nellen, 1997). From this perspective, life skills have been defined as the skills that are required to deal with the demands and challenges of everyday life (Hodge & Danish, 1999). They can be physical, behavioural, or cognitive, and may be transferable to other life domains (Papacharisis, Goudas, Danish, & Theodorakis, 2005). Furthermore, sport is being viewed on a global level as a vehicle for promoting healthy development (Sport for Development and Peace International Working Group, 2006).

Sport-based life skills programs have gathered momentum in the USA since the mid-1990s (e.g., Danish, Nellen, & Owens, 1996; Danish, Petitpas, & Hale, 1995). Danish (2002) created the Sports United to Promote Education and Recreation (SUPER) program, a sport-based intervention intended to teach youth life skills. Workshops are taught like sport clinics and include sport-specific skills as well as more general life skills. Although there has been little evaluation of the effectiveness of the SUPER program, recently Papacharisis et al. (2005) used a quasi-experimental design to evaluate a modified version of SUPER with Greek children. Children who received the intervention reported higher goal setting, problem solving, positive thinking, and sport skills compared to children in the control group. Another US sport-based life skills intervention program is the Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility (TPSR) model (Hellison, 2003). This model was developed to instruct teachers and coaches how to teach individual responsibility through sport and other types of physical activities. Case studies depicting the emergence of youth leaders have been reported (Martinek, Schilling, & Hellison, 2006), and the approach is growing in popularity across the USA, but formal evaluation research has been limited. Similar types of sport-based, life skills intervention programs have been developed in the USA for golf and football (Petitpas, Cornelius, Van Raalte, & Jones, 2005), but evaluations of adolescents' learning experiences through these programs have yet to be published. Overall then, a number of sport-based life skills programs have mainly originated in the USA, but few evaluations of the efficacy and effectiveness of these programs have been published. Thus, there is a need for further examinations of what and how youth might learn through sport (Holt & Jones, 2007).

Danish, Forneris, and Wallace (2005) suggested that high-school sport may be an appropriate context for teaching youth life skills in addition to athletic skills while simultaneously contributing to the educational mission of schools. Supportive evidence from studies of US youth have revealed associations between high-school sport participation and higher academic performance, greater likelihood of attending college, and greater autonomy and satisfaction in one's first job (Barber, Eccles, & Stone, 2001), along with higher levels of self-knowledge, emotional regulation, problem solving, goal attainment, team work, and skill development (Hansen, Larson, & Dworkin, 2003; Marsh & Kleitman, 2003). On the other hand, researchers have also associated negative outcomes with sport participation, including increased use of alcohol (Eccles & Barber, 1999, Eccles, Barber, Stone, & Hunt, 2003), use of smokeless tobacco (Melnick, Miller, Sabo, Farrell, & Barnes, 2001), and adults modeling in- appropriate behaviours (Hansen et al., 2003). Furthermore, it has been suggested that socialization processes in sport may legitimize aggressive action (Shields & Bredemeier, 1995). Researchers have questioned the popular view that sport builds character (e.g., Fullinwider, 2006; Miracle & Roger Rees, 1994). Based on a recent review of this literature, Morris, Sallybanks, and Willis (2003) concluded that there is a lack of robust evidence for the direct, sustained impact of sport participation on positive developmental outcomes.