EDF3613 - Research issues in sport and outdoor recreation

Leader(s): Dr T Brown

Offered

Peninsula First semester 2009 (Day)

Synopsis

Students will consolidate their understandings of the social and ecological challenges shaping sport, outdoor recreation and experiential education by incorporating the role of research and its findings. Students will examine research focussed on the study of movement and meaning-making; environment, places, relations and nature; and active communities as promoters of physical activity, health and wellbeing. Students will critically examine the conceptual resources, theoretical framings and empirical evidence of the study of movement, environment and community as they combine to form a distinctive social ecology of sport and outdoor recreation.

Objectives

Upon successful completion of this unit, students should be able to:

1. Understand and differentiate how social, cultural, global and ecological factors are influencing the discourses of sport, outdoor recreation and experiential education.
2. Appreciate and understand how current research activity provides conceptual resources and empirical insights into the development of sport and outdoor recreation studies, discourses and policies.
3. Understand the contribution of scholarly inquiry and research into the interrelations of movement, environment and community experiences in examining sport, outdoor recreation and experiential education discourses.
4. To identify possibilities for further research in the study of movement, environment and community and their contribution to a critical appraisal of certain trends and socio-ecological issues in sport and outdoor recreation.
5. To identify, collect, analyze and synthesize the current literature of conceptual and empirical relevance to further inquiry and research in issues central to the future role of studies in movement, environment and community.
6. To demonstrate a basic understanding of different approaches to scholarly inquiry and research in sport, outdoor recreation and education.
7. Be familiar with how research contributes to knowledge production, the formation of epistemic communities and claims on the truth of bodies of knowledge, adequacy of discourses and professional organisations.

Assessment

Two assessment tasks at 50% each (2000 words equivalent for each task)

Contact hours

3 contact hours per week, 9 hours private study including readings, completions of set tasks and self-directed learning