Rethinking Life Skills in Sport - Dr Martin Camiré (Pt1) - Meaningful Sport Series

The idea that sport contributes to positive youth development and helps to develop life skills has a prominent role in our societies and the research discourse in sport psychology. These ideas however, are not without critiques, based on conceptual and ethical arguments as well as empirical findings. Can we say that the research topic is in some sort of crisis? Do we need to rethink some of the ideas surrounding life skills, and where might we go from here?

This episode with Dr Martin Camiré explores the critiques of life skills and how Martin and his colleagues have recently made substantial efforts to destabilise the neoliberal assumptions and power dynamics associated with life skills. Our conversation draws on the recent article by Martin and his team titled Reimagining positive youth development and life skills in sport through a social justice lens.  

Dr Martin Camiré is an Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa whose work has made a substantial contribution to our knowledge base on sport-based positive youth development and life skills. His recent work has focused on reimagining life skills through a social justice lens, as well as explored life skills through postqualitative inquiry.

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Timestamps: 

7:22 Positive development is not an automatic outcome of sport participation

11:10 Are positive youth development interventions in sport achieving their goals?  

14:45 What's wrong with life skills in sport as we know them today?  

21:30 Reimagining life skills through a social justice lens

27:35 What else can we learn from sport in addition to life skills?        

30:35 Does research always need to have practical application? 

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Liked this episode? You might also find the episode with Greg Dryer interesting.