Praxticing Critical Coaching: Disrupting Traditional Youth Sport Coaching With Social Justice and Critical Consciousness

• In Event: AERA Poster Session 9
  In Poster Session: Individual and Contextual Factors Affecting Child and Adolescent Development

Abstract

The current study explored identities and roles that youth sport coaches hold as well as how they enact social justice within youth sporting communities. Using convergent mix-methods design, critical consciousness (Freire, 1970) was the theoretical framework and method of analysis for this study. Results suggested that youth sport coaches hold both multiple and intersectional identities that are reflected in the ways coaches describe their level of connection to communities. Furthermore, community-based sport coaches are engaging in and enacting social justice within youth sporting communities in ways that mirror critical consciousness’ patters of dialogue, reflection, and action. The implications inform the future empirical study of youth sport coaching, and intervention development that theoretically considers the integration of intersectionality into critical consciousness.

Author

• Dana Nicole Dunwoody, Boston University