sportdevelopment.org.uk

Providing Sports development reference material for students and practitioners

index

Welcome

sportdevelopment.org.uk is a collection of resources for students about sports development in the United Kingdom. The heart of the site is the document library where you can download 100's of sports development documents both past and present spanning 45 years. We have also provided some ruff guides for students, introducing topic areas aimed at getting you started on your research journey.

Feel free to browse around and don't forget to join our National sport development database for professionals and students.

Ruff Guides are designed to introduce a sport development topic and provide you with links to useful resources

The library holds 100's of documents relating to sport development. see our library guide

sports development is an equivocally contested term.

It can mean the development of sport for sports sake and equally the use of sport and physical activity opportunities for the development of society - sport as a social instrument.

Sports development in British society

Sport has been around for a long time, sport development's role as a profession is being redefined both academically and professionally.

First accepted as a term in the Wolfenden report of 1960 there have been many attempts to define it in shifting political sands, from the development of opportunities for everyone to participate in sport in the European notion of Sport For All, to the process and practice of addressing social exclusion through access to opportunities to take part in sport and recreation.

Sport development deals with the opportunities available for people to progress to their potential in sport, from taking part for fun and health to competition and also encompasses the provision of opportunities for addressing the social issues of the day through participation in sport.

Sport for sport's sake deals with activity management, support services and quality of education through coaching with sport for "social good" dealing with a variety of issues from social integration, health, community regeneration, crime and social inclusion.

As a profession sport development needs to justify the claims made for it by politicians and practitioners alike by providing an evidence base for the claims made for it's value as a legitimate social service.

This site is dedicated to providing students and practitioners with sport development resources to assist in the further development of the profession.

Our resources span 45 years of British sports policy and research in terms of the value of sport, From the 1960 Wolfenden Report: Sport & the Community to the very latest policy & research documents like all the research into football. Unlike some "official" sport policy organisations - we believe that the future is best planned by understanding the past.