Anna Renström & Staffan Karp
Umeå University, Sweden
In Europe, Sport for All includes increasing adults’ physical activity levels. Drawing on frame factor theory, this article examined the establishment of a sports programme offering recreational and fitness activities for adults within the Swedish Sports Confederation. Data from eight interviews with local sports instructors were analysed to investigate the content of activities for adults and how and why the instructors carried out these activities. The main finding is that sports as fitness and recreation activities for adults are carried out by the instructors within three patterns: participatory, mediation, and continuous. There is a ‘logic of enabling’ that emerges from these patterns: the instructors strive to make it possible for adults to practise sport for fitness and recreational purposes through a range of adjustments. However, the cues for the instructors regarding how to carry out a practice for adults are vague. The results also show that these groups for adults will only be offered as long as the resources for the traditional elite groups and groups for children and youth are not at risk.
Click here to read this peer reviewed article in Scandinavian Sport Studies Forum, Vol. 9, 2018
ANNA RENSTRÖM has master degrees in both sport education and science journalism. She has been teaching education, sport education and sport pedagogy at the Department of Education, Umeå University. Currently, being a PhD student, her research revolves talent development and learning processes within elite sport contexts.
STAFFAN KARP is an Associate Professor in pedagogy at Umeå University. Since the mid-1990s, he has been interested in fostering and socialisation processes in organised children and youth sports, and in the 2000s he also studied change and resistance to change in the sports movement as a system.
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