Intervention in physical education and sport: trends and developments in a decade of Francophone research

Mathilde Musard (1) , Marie-Paule Poggi (2)

1 LASELDI - Laboratoire de Semio-Linguistique, Didactique et Informatique
2 CRREF - Centre de recherches et de ressources en éducation et formation

Introduction: The aims of this literature review were to characterize the communications presented during six Association for Research on Intervention in Sport (ARIS) French-speaking congresses from 2000 to 2010 and to compare the research trends between French and English research traditions. The definition of pedagogy is close to the notion of intervention and attempts to study, in an interacting or isolated way, three key components – the educator (professor, coach, teacher's educator), the participants (students, children, adults) and the curriculum/knowledge in specific contexts. The theoretical framework is centred on the social construction of the scientific knowledge. Method: All the communications of the six ARIS congresses (n ¼ 836), reflecting the multiple facets of educational research were analysed. The quantitative treatment of the data, with the assistance of Sphinx software, consisted of univariate (frequencies, percentages) and bi-variate (chi-square statistic) analyses to identify possible significant relations between variables such as the congress, country and sex of author(s), institution, and so on. Findings: The results highlight the commonalties and differences between French and English research about intervention/pedagogy. We notice the continuing expansion of the field of intervention/pedagogy in the Francophone and the Anglophone worlds. But the low participation of the practitioners shows how intricate it is to move educational research closer to everyday practice. The results show that the contexts studied within ARIS are mainly school physical education and teacher's education, then coaching and other contexts. The majority of studies are centred on one component of pedagogy, but rarely on the interactions between the educators and the participants. The Francophone research is essentially descriptive and heuristic, using mostly qualitative methods (interviews and observations). This orientation of Francophone studies towards heuristic research seems to contrast with Anglophone research, even though qualitative research has recently come to dominate. Conclusion: The ARIS researchers have a common object of study (intervention/ pedagogy), share the same ideas and aims, learn how to do it better as they interact regularly and develop a shared repertoire of knowledge, theories and methods. We see here signs of an undeniable wealth of knowledge and the combination of different theories and methods leading to a better understanding of educational phenomena.

Domaines: Education

Mathilde Musard, Marie-Paule Poggi. Intervention in physical education and sport: trends and developments in a decade of Francophone research. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 2013, 20 (3), pp.250 - 267. ⟨10.1080/17408989.2013.817008⟩. ⟨hal-01620916⟩