Adolescents’ experiences of sport education at upper secondary school level: Prerequisites for learning, health and personal development

Introduction
The positive relationship between sport and health is often taken for granted and frequently used as an argument to engage adolescents in sport and physical activity. However, research show that health tends to be secondary in sport. Competitive culture dictates the agenda, even though research has also show that sport settings could act as supportive environments for adolescents’ health. Sport education at upper secondary school level can be a tool to empower adolescents and increase their subjective health, but previous research mostly looked at these environments from a performance perspective and there is a lack of knowledge from a health promotion perspective. The purpose of this study is therefore to explore adolescents’ experiences of a sport education setting at upper secondary school level in relation to prerequisites for learning, health, and personal development. 

Material and methods
A pilot study was conducted in an upper secondary school with sport education, in southern Sweden. The school does not apply any sport related talent selection. A guide with open ended questions was used. Pupils in year one shared their experiences through written narratives in relation to learning, health and personal development. 10 pupils participated, aged 15-16years, a thematic analysis was conducted and member-checked.

Results
A communicative, experience and reflection-based learning strategy functioned as prerequisites for the pupils’ learning, health, and personal development. The narratives included physical, psychological, and social aspects of health where a mutually influential relationship between the individual and the context was identified. The pupils’ learning about their sport was related to knowledge about performance from a short- and long-term perspective.

Conclusions
The results indicate that the adolescents’ experience of learning, health and personal development were dependent on communicative, experience and reflection-based learning strategies. Moreover, the method allowed pupils’ voices to be heard and allowed new aspects of how sport education at upper secondary schools can be understood from the perspective of health and health promotion rather than solely talent development. The method will now be adopted in a larger study including more schools; hence a larger variety of sports and levels of sport participation will be included.