Login

Follow us on...twitter

Strategic Partners

Learning Through Sports
Become a Strategic Partner
2020 Vision PDF Print E-mail
The Center for Sport Policy and Research (CSPR) will be a distinctive academic research and instruction center that provides a platform where practical solutions for sport can be researched, designed, developed, advocated and implemented.

Sport: 2020 Vision

*  A Contextual Theoretical Approach to Critically Examining Sportsmanship

Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological theory of human development provides CSPR’s Strategic Research Agenda: 2020 Vision with a theoretical framework for investigating sport-related issues from a global perspective.  The purpose of utilizing a theoretical framework is to guide investigations focusing on phenomena by directing the questions asked, the design of the study, the data collection procedures, and the interpretation of findings (Riddick & Russell, 2008).  Therefore, to add insight into sportsmanship behavior, Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory of human development will provide a basis for analyzing and interpreting the development of sportsmanship behavior from a life span and ecological systems perspective.

The ecology of human development was defined as:
“the scientific study of the progressive, mutual accommodation, throughout the life course, between an active, growing human being, and the changing properties of the immediate settings in which the developing person lives, as this process is affected by the relations between these settings, and by the larger context, in which the settings are embedded” (Bronfenbrenner, 1989; p.188).

In essence, each person lives at the center of their ecosystem, and is greatly affected by interactions taking place in several ecosystems around them.  These ecosystems include:

  1. Microsystems (e.g. family, friends, and sports/team)
  2. Mesosystems (e.g. family-school; family-team; family-sport club)
  3. Exosystem (e.g. school board; athletic associations; sport associations)
  4. Macrosystem (e.g. society; politics; economy)
  5. Chronosystem (context of time)


The microsystem represents the intimate social and immediate physical environment while the mesosystem is the process of interaction.  The exosystem includes external networks which directly or indirectly influence a person, while the macrosystem defines the prevailing societal framework.  Taken together, these systems represent the social context of human development.  Positioning the individual and their ecosystem in the context of time creates the last system, the chronosystem.  As human development progresses, interactions within the ecological system increases in complexity, remaining dynamic, bidirectional and transactional (see figure 1.1 page 14).

In essence, the proposed investigations seek to create a greater understanding of the ways in which perceptions of sportsmanship behavior generate sportsmanship knowledge over time. The model’s framework references the potentiality to understand the salience and prevalence of the individual systems throughout a life span of development, hypothesizing their effect in accordance with the specific research questions.  Furthermore, the sequential design methodology incorporated into much of the S.R.A. investigations may provide greater understanding of the developing perceptions of sport competence and psychological growth with respect to societal support and direction, as a function of social change and cumulative effect over the lifespan.

 


 
 
MTSU