Positive Youth Development through Sports

Name

Institution

Positive youth development through sports refers to a strength-based outlook where every child and adolescent is assumed to have the potential to realize changes that are developmentally positive instead of being perceived as problems that need to be solved. It encompasses all the courses of action towards realizing individuals’ optimal development through their engagement in organized activities and not merely a single construct. This paper sheds more light on positive youth development through sports, including relevant theories and models, the use of perspectives to inform work in a youth sporting setting, and applying these in specific work contexts.

PYD has three models, including developmental processes, youth programming, and a philosophical approach. The focus of these three is to foster positive outcomes from the subjects besides other meta-theoretical commonalities. However, they have diverse manifest focus and have been challenging to determine the fit between theory and practicality. The study puts forth three principles to positive youth development through sports. These tenets serve to assess and evaluate both the social and personal benefits individuals gain by engaging in organized sporting activities. Among these is youth life skills, which refer to the set of skills developed to enable individuals to deal with everyday life challenges and demands. Life skills designed to foster positive youth development are categorized into either cognitive, physical, or behavioral. They can be applied in other life situations without the sporting environment. The life skills taught in the context of sporting tend to emphasize the strengths and positive outcomes by youths and adolescents instead of highlighting the shortcomings to empower individuals with values, competencies, and connections needed for both life and work environments. The life skills also amplify youths’ voices and engagement, therefore making them great decision-makers and their contribution and impact meaningful. Sports also promote communal change by fostering the spirits of collaboration and involvement among the youth.

The perspective may be used first to select coaches to ensure that they possess both the life skills and personal characteristics that could be emulated by the youths and adolescents towards positive development. The coaches have to be trained to impart them with the necessary competency and strategies that will enable them to promote positive youth development by creating an enabling environment and encouraging the young athletes’ autonomy. Since adolescents and youths highly regard their parents’ perspective towards their sporting activities, parents must therefore make deliberate efforts to ensure that their children are motivated to participate in sporting activities, which eventually leads to PYD. However, the degree of parental influence must be guided to avoid infringing on the autonomy of children. Parents must also provide the necessary support and resources needed to encourage independence and support them to promote high satisfaction and coordination.

Positive youth development in sports can be applied in psychology to assess assets’ existence, both internal and external, in development programs for youths. It is also essential for defining life skills as those transferable to other life domains and presenting a model through which life skills will be taught through sport. The application of PYD in sports also lays the foundation for further studies, both qualitative and quantitative, for researchers in psychology.

References

Holt, N. L., Deal, C. J., & Pankow, K. (2020). Positive youth development through sport. Handbook of Sport Psychology, 429-446.

Holt, N. L., Neely, K. C., Slater, L. G., Camiré, M., Côté, J., Fraser-Thomas, J., … & Tamminen, K. A. (2017). A grounded theory of positive youth development through sport based on results from a qualitative meta-study. International review of sport and exercise psychology, 10(1), 1-49.