Gymnastik- och idrottshögskolan, GIH

I det här kapitlet riktar vi blicken mot de normer och föreställningar om funktionsduglighet som påverkar människors villkor att vara fysiskt aktiva.

Despite the intense and long-standing interest surrounding early sport specialisation, scholars still debate its nature and implications. Previous researchers have also identified the need for further research relating to the psychological aspects of early specialisation such as lower quality motivation, dropout and burnout. To help guide future research it is important to build upon the quantitative literature concerning such psychological aspects of early specialisation. The specific aims of this paper are to provide an overview of research results of quantitative studies that set out to explore relationships between early specialisation and psychological aspects, and to critically examine the designs of such studies. As such, study design characteristics including participant demographics, the psychological aspects represented, and the research questions and results are explored. Data searches were conducted in PubMed, SportDiscus, and PsychINFO using search terms such as "early sport speciali*". Twenty-one relevant papers met the inclusion criteria. The results highlight that the published papers in this area are broad in some respects (variety of sports, performance levels, and gender), but narrow in others (North American dominance, few psychological aspects explored, and few papers per psychological aspect). Many of the studies are based on cross-sectional and retrospective self-reports. Overall, this paper serves as a foundation on which to design future research studies in this area.

I det här kapitlet riktas fokus mot barn- och ungdomsidrotten utveckling. Med utgångspunkt i några av de mål som idrottsrörelsen såväl som staten formulerat redogör jag kort för några av resultaten i ett 20-tal doktorsavhandlingar på området. Därefter diskuterar jag om idrottsrörelsens utveckling, från en mansrörelse till en ungdomsrörelse för både pojkar och flickor, kan ses som en framgångssaga i alla avseenden. Frågor som behandlas är i vilken omfattning barn och unga deltar, hur de upplever sitt idrottande, vad unga lär sig och vad idrotten fostrar till samt vilken miljö som leder till optimal idrottsutveckling. Barn- och ungdomsidrottens utveckling är framgångsrik på många sätt men flera utmaningar återstår.

It has long been stated that children have the rights to protection from, e.g., abuse and to the provision of age-appropriate leisure, play, and recreational activities along with participation in all matters that concerns them. Yet, the full range of children's rights to and in sport has not yet been explored in detail. To do so, it is relevant to turn to the Scandinavian countries, which are praised for promoting children's rights and well-being, with organized sport forming part of the daily lives of many children and youths. In this paper, we examine the organizational policies in Scandinavian sport in order to develop foundational knowledge about how the range of children's rights to and in sport may be supported. Comparing key policy documents of the major sports confederations in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, these analyses identify great variety in the following: 1. when and how children's rights to and in sport have been made explicit in the three countries; 2. whether the emphasis is on protection and/or provision of sport to children and youths or their participation in shaping sporting activities; 3. the degree to and ways in which such rights are regulated. In sum, our findings reflect a disparity between organizational policies in the three countries, with a more liberal and individualistic approach to public policy in the Danish context, providing some explanation of the only recent development in and scattered enaction of regulations to support children's rights to and in sports. Furthermore, we identify that political attention has mainly been drawn to the protection and provision of sports to children and youths, while their participation in shaping sport is a shared challenge for sport confederations in the Scandinavian countries and beyond.

Introduction: Youth participation in organized sport, a longstanding leisure-time activity in Sweden, is both popular and polarized. There are variations in levels of participation related to sociocultural aspects such as gender, socioeconomics, and demography. This ongoing doctoral project investigates young people's evolving engagement in different forms of movement culture, emphasizing and investigating young people’s taste for different forms of movement culture and their perceived reliance on digital technologies. Situated within the research school"School, sport, screens," the study primarily explores youth participation in movement culture. The project is, to some extent, a continuation of earlier studies regarding young people’s participation in movement culture (Larsson 2005, 2008, 2019; Nilsson 1998).

Aim and Theoretical Framework: This research examines young people's participation in movement culture and how it is valued and perceived in the digital era. Drawing on sociocultural and pedagogical perspectives, the theoretical framework, inspired by Bourdieu and Engström, incorporates the contextual role of digital technologies. Movement culture, defined as socially formed physical activity outside daily obligations (Engström, 2013), is used as a foundation to describe different forms of organized physical activity and is analyzed using Bourdieu's concepts of practices, logics, habitus, and taste.

Method and Selection: Using a mixed-method approach, the study combines interviews and a cross-sectional survey in four different Swedish regions. This enables a comprehensive exploration of participation influences and trends, including sociocultural factors and the participant’s own perceived reliance on digital technologies. Data collection spans from December 2023 to February 2024.

Results, Discussions, and Conclusions: Preliminary findings will be presented at the conference.

In this paper, we want to contribute to and expand the ongoing discussion about coaches’ constructions of youth and the impact it has on young athletes’ chances to have a voice in sport. The focus is on sports coaches in Swedish equestrian sport, more specifically termed riding instructors, and their views of why youth should have a voice (or not).

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, the aim is to explore how the instructors’ construction of youth affects young equestrians’ (aged 15–17) chances of having a voice. The analysis is based on over 200 hours of fieldwork including observations and ten interviews with riding instructors in two riding schools. Four constructions of youth emerged from the analysis: Youth as incompetent, Youth as uninterested, Youth as interested, and Youth as competent. These different constructions influenced instructors’ ways of giving youth a voice (or not).

The Convention on the Rights of the Child states that all children and young people have the right to have a voice in matters concerning them, in accordance with age and maturity. In the endeavour to make youth sport a safe place free from abuse and harassment, it is crucial to ensure that young athletes can exercise their participation rights. Drawing from an online study involving over 550 Swedish young equestrians aged 15–17, the aim was to investigate whether and in what ways young equestrians can make their voices heard. The results show that the possibility to have a voice is conditioned by sociocultural factors such as what type of stable the youths are active in. The results are analysed from ‘The ladder of participation’. In sum, social interaction and access to horses are important conditions for how young equestrians experience the possibility to have a voice.

This special issue aims to examine rights-related issues in the everyday context of organized youth sport.

En internationell studie visar att de flesta VM- och OS-medaljörer ­hållit på med flera sporter och valt sin huvudidrott relativt sent. AIK och ­andra klubbar gör fel när de sorterar bort 10-åringar och satsar på ­”akademier”. Prestationshetsen måste bort, för både folkhälsans och elit­idrottens skull, skriver 17 idrottsforskare.