Sports are activities enjoyed by many across the globe, regardless of age. The existence and promotion of youth sports has often been based on various assumptions about its value and role in society. Sports participation is assumed to be fun and good and is assumed to contribute to the development of young people. As a result, sports are often seen as an essential part of life for youth. Participation in sports and physical activity is assumed to help young people to develop in a context in which they are able to learn important positive societal values (Fraser-Thomas et al., 2005; Holt, 2008). Although there is a widespread belief in the positive dimensions of sports participation for young people, there is a need for research and theory that identifies and critically looks at the processes through which sports participation by youth is experienced and shapes their lives (Coakley, 2011). I return to this critical perspective after I elaborate on the ways sports are viewed as important effective activities for positive youth development.
The impact of organized youth sport on youth development depends on various conditions in the pedagogical climate, such as how sport is delivered by youth sport coaches. While this is broadly acknowledged and provides a basis to improve youth sport and its developmental outcomes, little is known about the pedagogical perspectives of youth coaches on their practice. This study uses semi-structured interviews with 32 youth sport coaches in diverse youth sport contexts in the Netherlands. Reflexive data analysis is employed to garner insights into coaches’ role perceptions, coaching goals, and underlying values. The findings show that while youth coaches focus on sport-centered activities, many foreground non-sport dimensions such as life mentoring and working towards social inclusion as critical elements of their work, reflected in five pedagogically-oriented goals: discipline, autonomy, resilience, social abilities, and aspirations. Underlying these goals are pedagogical values such as building and maintaining caring relationships with participants. These goals and values echo scientific literature on pedagogical sport climate conditions (e.g. positive youth development), and challenge notions of youth sport as a performance-oriented and uncaring setting. The results contribute to existing knowledge about youth coaches’ pedagogical orientations, and inform the development of strategies to stimulate positive sport practices and developmental outcomes for participants.
The ‘Sport Physical Education and Coaching for Health (SPEACH) project, co-financed by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union (2015-2017) aims to increase awareness and behavioral change in sport professionals and European citizens towards an active and healthy lifestyle. The target is to develop and test Health Enhancing Physical Activities or HEPA modules that can be integrated in Physical Education Training Education structures and Sport Coaching courses. The different steps in this EU project are: (1) needs analyses among students (survey, interviews, focus groups), (2) development of most relevant HEPA modules based on the needs analysis results, (3) teach-the-teacher course (4) testing of 3 selected HEPA modules in a real-life setting with physical education and sport coaching students (n=60, from 8 countries) and teachers (n=12, from 7 countries), (5) sustainability of the project results, coordinated by the European Network of Sport Education (ENSE). The project is in its last phase (step 6). The titles of the three field-tested modules are (a) Development of a family-based HEPA project in the school & sport club context, (b) Promoting health enhancing physical activity among children and youth, and (c) Designing educational sport environments for children with special needs. The presentation will illustrate how the module on family-based HEPA was build up in content and didactical approach. The students were given the task to work out a health promotion project together with local sport clubs, school(s) and other local organizations. The goal of the intervention was to enhance (and maintain) health with children and make sure that parents are aware of possibilities to integrate PA in daily life for their children and themselves. A stepwise approach in small students groups was worked out concentrating on the themes: insight in stakeholders and their role in health promotion, behavior change theories, motivational interviewing and intervention mapping protocol. Advices for implementation on different educational levels (vocational, bachelor and master) and usefulness at national and international educational contexts will be given for the family-based module and for the project in general. Acknowledgements: this project is co-finance by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union, 557083-EPP-1-2014-1-NL-SPO-SCP) Keywords: health policy, family-based intervention, school and sport club context, teacher training, sport coaching courses,
The central aim of this project is to increase the participation of people (all ages) with severe multiple disabilities (PIMD) in the field of sport, exercise and physical activity, by expanding the number of coaches and organizations who offer a Motor Activity Training Program in a professional and custom way. This aim will be achieved by the following activities:- Creating a more appropriate and varied offer of sport, exercise, and physical activity to increase the choice of the PIMD target group. - To develop a curriculum for MATP Coaches and Trainers (PE Teachers, Physical Therapists, etc). - To implement, test and contextualize a PIMD offer in 3 EU countries, this will be done with local stakeholders. - Strengthening the connection between sport, education and health care organizations to enable participation of the PIMD people in the field of sport, exercise, and physical activity. - Consortium members create a European network and exchange knowledge, including through best practices
Even though considerable amounts of valuable wood are collected at waste collection sites, most of it remains unused and is burned: it is too labor-intensive to sort, process and upcycle useable parts. Valuable wood thus becomes worthless waste, against circular economy principles. In MoBot-Wood, waste collection organizations HVC and the municipality of Amsterdam, together with Rolan Robotics, Metabolic and AUAS investigate how waste wood can be sorted and processed at waste collection sites, using an easy-to-deploy robotic solution. In various preceding and on-going projects, AUAS and partners are exploring circular wood intake, sorting and processing using industrial robots, including processes like machine vision, 3D scanning, sawing, and milling. These projects show that harvesting waste wood is a challenging matter. Generally, the wood is only partially useable due to the presence of metal, excessive paint, deterioration by fungi and water, or other contamination and damages. To harvest useable wood thus requires intensive sorting and processing. The solution of transporting all the waste wood from collection sites to a central processing station might be too expensive and have a negative environmental impact. Considering that much of collected wood will need to be discarded, often no wood is harvested at all, due to the costs for collection and shipping. Speaking with several partners in related projects, the idea emerged to develop a mobile robotic station, which can be (temporarily) deployed at waste collection sites, to intake, sort and process wood for upcycling. In MoBot-Wood, research entails the design of such station, its deployment conditions, and a general assessment of its potential impact. The project investigates robotic sorting and processing on location as a new approach to increase the amount of valuable, useable wood harvested at waste collection sites, by avoiding material transport and reducing the volume of remaining waste.
The COVID19 pandemic highlighted the vulnerability in supply chain networks in the healthcare sector and the tremendous waste problem of disposable healthcare products, such as isolation gowns. Single-use disposable isolation gowns cause great ecological impact. Reusable gowns can potentially reduce climate impacts and improve the resilience of healthcare systems by ensuring a steady supply in times of high demand. However, scaling reusable, circular isolation gowns in healthcare organizations is not straightforward. It is impeded by economic barriers – such as servicing costs for each use – and logistic and hygiene barriers, as processes for transport, storage and safety need to be (re)designed. Healthcare professionals (e.g. purchasing managers) lack complete information about social, economic and ecological costs, the true cost of products, to make informed circular purchasing decisions. Additionally, the residual value of materials recovered from circular products is overlooked and should be factored into purchasing decisions. To facilitate the transition to circular procurement in healthcare, purchasing managers need more fine-grained, dynamic information on true costs. Our RAAK Publiek proposal (MODLI) addresses a problem that purchasing managers face – making purchasing decisions that factor in social, economic and ecological costs and future benefits from recovered materials. Building on an existing consortium that developed a reusable and recyclable isolation gown, we design and develop an open-source decision-support tool to inform circular procurement in healthcare organizations and simulate various purchasing options of non-circular and circular products, including products from circular cascades. Circular procurement is considered a key driver in the transition to a circular economy as it contributes to closing energy and material loops and minimizes negative impacts and waste throughout entire product lifecycles. MODLI aims to support circular procurement policies in healthcare organizations by providing dynamic information for circular procurement decision making.
