What values can be promoted through sport?

Sport! OP! Opportunities for inclusion of vulnerable youth through sport

All in all, this leads us to an indisputable conclusion. Sport does not educate, but rather it is the professionals using sport who educate. Education is really the product of the series of decisions that are made and the set of conditions that characterise the task. As such, these decisions and conditions have to be aligned in order to give sporting activity an educational facet.

The transmission and development of attitudes and values constitutes one of the ways in which sport can certainly make an impact. Therefore, the different agents involved in the sporting activity, particularly the technical staff, will have a big role to play in ensuring that these attitudes and values are the most desirable ones. But what values are we talking about? Sánchez-Alcaraz, López, Valero and Gómez (2016) conducted a review of different studies on sportbased value education programmes and highlight the following values: respect, self-control, self-esteem, empathy, effort, autonomy, cooperation, helping others and leadership. There are another few that we could add to complete the list: honesty, fairness responsibility and solidarity.

Of course, it is not necessary to forgo sporting goals in order to educate in values, but it is essential to complement these goals with other objectives related to personal and collective development.