Van Veghel, Bart

The Construction of Personal and Social Responsibility through After-School Athletic teams in Inner-city Communities

Keywords: After school athletics, social development, responsibility, inner-city

Abstract

Sport provides an arena that allows for many of the qualities needed to operate within society’s traditional structures to be developed. Sports potential to contribute to child development, through the experience of relevant real life situations (failure, success, companionship, teamwork, responsibility, practice etc.) in a structured and safe environment, should be exploited and integrated within the education of the whole child. This research study explores after-school team sports programs for students between the ages of five and eleven as potentially valuable and effective avenues for constructing positive personal identity and fostering social development. A theoretical framework that provided a base for the various dimensions of social and personal development in students was created using Humphrey’s (2003) concept of Total Development and Hellison’s (1995) Five Levels of Responsibility. The framework used for this study identifies specific components of development through the evaluation of cumulative progression of social and personal development articulated through the concept of responsibility. Information was gathered through a qualitative analysis of interviews of teachers at three inner city schools in Toronto who facilitated after-school athletic programs. Through the qualitative analysis different levels of development were categorized depending on the athletic program in place and successful trends in specific types of athletic programming were found.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my advisor Dr. Elizabeth Campbell for her support, critique and flexibility. I would also like to thank Dr. Daphne Heywood for her inspiration and help in my growth as an educator. Finally I would like to thank my family and brother for all their encouragement and my partner Sarah for her grammatical corrections.