I love the Olympics: developing experiential learning in students on sportbased degree programmes

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I love the Olympics! developing experiential
learning in students on sport-based degree
programmes

• Helen Pussard Eileen Kennedy
• Roehampton University
• HEA HLSTN 6th Annual Conference
• September 2007

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I love the Olympics!

• Students who enrol on sport-based degree
  programmes are often motivated by their prior
  engagement with sport, exercise leisure.
• Their experiences of sport are gained from
  performance, participation, spectatorship and
  consumption.
• These are embodied experiences that resist
  simplistic theorisation, presenting challenges to
  educators delivering critical sociological
  studies of sport.
• Todays workshop addresses some of these
  challenges and proposes some responses.

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Experiences of the Olympics

• Identify some experiences or memories of the
  Olympic Games that have significance for you.
• Select one from your list and jot down some brief
  details about it.
• In pairs, share your chosen experience or memory
  with your partner.

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Experiential learning

• As the exercise demonstrated, we have prior
  experiences and knowledges of the Olympics.
• Students also bring their prior experiences and
  knowledges to the learning environment.
• Higher Education can harness this knowledge in
  ways that enable students to achieve
• Reflexivity
• Critical (self-) understanding
• Independent thinking

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Experiential learning

• Experiential learning is the process of creating
  knowledge through the transformation of
  experience (Lai, C. H, et al., 2007 326).
• We argue that experiential learning (Beatty,
  1999 Jacques, 2000) modes of learning and
  teaching are integral to Higher Educations
  contribution to understanding, planning for and
  evaluating sport spectacles such as 2012 London
  Olympics.

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Experiential learning

• Without experiential learning, we risk
  uncritically re-inscribing prevailing discourses
  about sport and leisure.
• The challenge for our subject areas is to
  transform the depth and breadth of student
  experience into critical and engaged thinking,
  leading to informed social action.

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Case-study HE3 module

• The Cultures of Consumer Society, 20-credits, HE3
  module
• Learning Outcomes
• Students who successfully complete this module
  will
• Demonstrate a comprehensive knowledge of the
  historiography of the consumer society.
• Develop a conceptual understanding of consumption
  as an important arena for the construction and
  maintenance of social identities.
• Be able to critically evaluate their own consumer
  experiences using the appropriate socio-cultural
  concepts and theories.
• Be able to communicate their ideas effectively in
  oral and written presentations.

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Learning teaching methods

• This module was delivered through
  experience-based learning groups.
• Students were given activities in groups designed
  to draw out their wealth of cultural knowledge
  and competences
• Mapping out how we use gyms or spaces of sport
• Making Christmas cards
• Listing foods with special meanings
• Confessing the brands that we couldnt live
  without
• Reflecting on our different experiences of
  shopping

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Learning teaching methods

• Learning group activities enabled the elicitation
  of contemporary aspects of consumption.
• Throughout the module, we sought to provide
  students with
• The historical context within which particular
  forms of consumption emerged.
• Conceptual tools with which to understand past
  and present forms of consumption.
• Theories of identity to help them make sense of
  their experiences.

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Challenges and responses

• Getting students to open up
• Being an active participant yourself
• Shifting deeply-held perspectives on our
  identities
• Providing a supportive environment while taking
  risks
• Building students confidence and ability in
  applying theories to unexplored terrains,
  including ourselves
• Micro-level approach which makes explicit where
  and how we can use theories in our research
• Modelling the steps of analysis using original
  (and personal) data

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Learning teaching methods

• Jacques (2000 77) argues that learning groups
  are engaged in two different forms of learning.
• Task aims are concerned with
• Exercise of critical judgement
• The ability to analyse statements and cases
• Questioning underlying assumptions and values
• Maintenance aims are concerned with
• The running of the group if the task is going to
  be achieved
• Emotional responses and social patterns of
  behaviour

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Experience-based assignments

• Produce a critical and independent analysis of an
  act of consumption in sport, leisure or popular
  culture.
• This is assessed by an oral presentation (10
  mins) and an essay (3,000 words)
• The presentation will
• Describe the act of consumption you have chosen
  to analyse.
• Convey a rationale for researching the act of
  consumption i.e. how does your analysis
  contribute to the existing literature on the
  consumer society?
• Outline the theories and concepts that you have
  selected from the literature to apply to your
  chosen act of consumption.

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Experience-based assignments

• Produce a critical and independent analysis of an
  act of consumption in sport, leisure or popular
  culture.
• The essay will
• Historicise the act of consumption within the
  emergence of consumer society.
• Applying the theories and concepts covered in the
  module, analyse what is being commodified in the
  act of consumption.
• Discuss the act of consumption in relation to the
  construction and maintenance of social
  identities.

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Kates analysis of Puma football boots

• The influence of my icons was prominent in my
  choice of football boots growing up when Benito
  Carbone joined my club, Sheffield Wednesday, in
  1996, he became a hero of mine. He often wore
  blue and white football boots (the team colours
  of Sheffield Wednesday) which meant I too, at
  only 11 years old, wanted to possess this
  commodity as well. McCracken (1990 110)
  reiterates this feeling, The individual
  anticipates the possession of the good and, with
  this good, the possession of certain ideal
  circumstances that exist only in a distant
  location. I certainly, at age 11, believed that
  by possessing the same boots as Benito Carbone
  would help me towards playing like him.

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Kates analysis of Puma football boots

• When I was 16, coloured boots were extremely
  popular and I purchased a red pair of Puma King
  boots without even liking them, simply because I
  wanted to adhere to societys expectations and
  fit in with those around me If a person does
  not want something, the quickest way to instil
  the necessary desire is to create urgent and
  inescapable. (Simmonds cited in Tomlinson, 1991
  136). This was indeed what influenced my choice
  of football boots at a young age, the feeling
  that I needed to have a particular type of
  boot.

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Kates analysis of Puma football boots

• The internet advertisement also relies on
  consumers cultural capital concerning Puma Boots
  which includes the recognition of the classic
  black and white colours as a signifier that they
  are Puma King football boots, as opposed to any
  other brand. I like the nostalgic aspect that
  Puma boots incorporate in the design of their
  boot, the classic black and white colouring has
  remained since early boots designed and made by
  Puma. It is this traditional and nostalgic
  quality that contributes to my attraction towards
  buying Puma football boots.

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Daves analysis of WingTsun

• I chose to study this martial art above others
  because the concept of winning without the need
  for strength appealed to me. I was surprised
  when I originally started to learn that the
  moments were all typically female, or feminine in
  their quality. My personal history just prior to
  learning marital arts was one of violence at
  school, and a fairly rigid outlook on the decorum
  of masculine behaviour because much had been
  informed by my experiences at an all-male school
  and in the army cadets.

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Daves analysis of WingTsun

• My consuming martial arts completely changed my
  outllook on your identity and allowed me the
  benefits afforded by post-modernism so lauded by
  Featherstone (1991). The fact that choice in
  studying various martial art styles is now
  seemingly boundless, and not limited by Chinese
  secrecy allowed me to choose WingTsun as my art
  of choice. In doing so, I have been able to
  destabilise gender narratives that had been
  installed in me by the public school system and
  the army.

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The social and cultural study of sport

• Learningis a dynamic, two-way relationship
  between people and the social learning systems in
  which they participate. It combines personal
  transformation with the evolution of social
  structures. (Wenger, 2000 227)
• In other modules, we have developed similar
  strategies
• Unravelling myths associated with sport
• Deconstructing everyday images of sport
• Analysing auto-biographies of sport celebrities
• Reflexive diaries theorising own experiences

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Experiences of the Olympics

• Revisit your chosen experience or memory of the
  Olympics.
• Try to remember how you felt.
• Write down any words that describe the range and
  strength of feelings you had.
• Share these with the partner you worked with
  previously.

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London 2012 Bid Experience
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Affective power of the sport spectacle

• Affect identifies the strength of the investment
  which anchors people in particular experiences,
  practices, identities, meanings and pleasures,
• The affective plane is organized according to
  maps which direct peoples investment in and into
  the world mattering maps are like investment
  portfolios
• Affect is the missing term in an adequate
  understanding of ideology. (Grossberg, 1992
  81-2)

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Affective power of the sport spectacle

• The potential cynicism of the postmodern
  sensibility is kept in abeyance by the passion of
  the athletic performance.
• Despite the parodic, self-referential,
  meretricious extravaganza that surrounds the
  staging of the Olympics, the spectacle mobilises
  nationalistic sentiment through the affective
  investments in sport contests.
• Sport spectacles like the London 2012 Olympic Bid
  are ideological places - affective magnets -
  which organise peoples mattering maps
  (Grossberg, 1992 281-282).

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Concluding comments

• In our modules, we try to use concepts such as
  affect, mattering maps and affective magnets to
  make sense of students complex, often
  contradictory, experience of sport and sport
  spectacle.
• Through this strategy, we help students to
  acknowledge the strength of their investments in
  sport whilst developing a reflexive, critical
  engagement.
• I love the Olympics! (Sues critical analysis)