Speaker
Description
Sport for Development (SfD) is often situated within a Freirean approach. A Freirean approach advocates a critical, flexible and contextualized curriculum as part of transformative education processes through sport. Critical literacy and critical pedagogy, as described by Freire, consists of the ability 'to name the world and to change it'. This change is based on a theoretical premise of dialogue as an 'essential necessity'. The methods used to collect data for such projects usually assumes participants are able to articulate their experiences, feelings and thoughts and understand each other. Forced migration, however, has meant many people are on the move. This move is accompanied by complexities of language and of cultural understanding making it difficult for participants of SfD to communicate with and comprehend each other. This complexity suggests that other methods may be needed. Forced migration and Freire’s notion about the need for critical thinking are not necessarily tied to specific forms of literacy however, especially since new media for recording communication are readily available. A relatively ‘new’ method that attempts to circumvent these methodical difficulties is Participatory Video Research (PVR). PVR draws on digital resources to enable participants in projects to communicate their thoughts and feelings. We examined how the use of PVR by youth living in an asylum refugee reception center allowed them to a create videos of their sport participation experiences while also enabling researchers to collect data about how these experiences might contribute to positive health and wellbeing of participating youth.
