This is the blog of the Australian Research Council funded project:
The Well-Rounded Person: The Role of Sport in Shaping Physical, Emotional and Social Development.
The chief investigators are: Catharine Lumby; Elspeth Probyn; Jenny O'Dea; Kath Albury
The reason why I have started this blog is to provide a central hub for the project. As project manager it enables me to provide an online office for those involved. The chief investigators can know where the project is at, have easy access to the research and literature review, be informed about upcoming events, and provide feedback for one another. Often chief investigators and researchers are very busy with many projects, so it can be hard to get them together in a 'real' sense.
The blog also offers a central filing system and up-to-date database. Further to this, it's free and saves money for the project because we don't have to have a website built and a html-code expert to maintain it.
The user-friendly format and online aspect also makes the research available to other researchers, community groups and the media .The project is very public. Anyone can make use of the research as it happens and have a space to offer up-to-date suggestions and requests.
As a fan of cultural studies I like the way the blog offers up a way of doing cultural research that places it square in the public sphere for debate as it happens. The research is then with the public rather than about them. The blog opens up the research to as many voices as possible who may wish to debate the direction of the project, and the political, cultural and social issues that the research will bring up. By placing the research in the public sphere I hope it works to demand that the writing up of the research is as accessible and as practical as possible. .
The central aim of this project is to discover how young Australians experience participation in sport, how we can encourage more participation, and how we ensure sport continues to play a central and positive role in developing the bodies, minds and social selves of our youth.
The aims of this project are to:
(1) Elaborate, test and further develop a conceptual understanding of what ‘the well-rounded person’ means and could mean in Australian society;
(2) Discover what the barriers are to participation in sport for teenagers and young adults, and what they like and don’t like about physical activity;
3) Investigate the way participation in sport shapes the relationship teenagers and young adults have to their bodies;
(4) Investigate the way participation in sport shapes the way teenagers and young adults understand gender and sexuality;
(5) Discover what emotions teenagers and young adults associate with playing sport;
(6) Discover what values sport teaches teenagers and young adults about forming relationships, including social and intimate relationships with others.