A NEW WAY OF THINKING? TOWARDS A VISION OF SOCIAL INCLUSION

The Role of Recreation in Promoting Social Inclusion

by Peter Donnelly, Faculty of Physical Education & Health, University of Toronto
and Jay Coakley, Dept. of Sociology, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs

Freiler identified three intersecting dimensions of social inclusion / exclusion from a literature search:

• Spatial: social inclusion as proximity, closing social and economic distances; social exclusion as 'unacceptable social and economic distance', 'being put and kept at a social distance'.
• Relational: social inclusion defined as a sense of belonging and acceptance; reciprocity and positive interactions; being valued, having valued social roles; participation.
• Functional: social inclusion as the enhancement of capacities, capabilities, competencies.

We believe that it is important to add a 'power' dimension to these three in terms of "who has to shift?" for social inclusion to occur. Social inclusion might also be seen as the process through which the skills, talents, and capacities of children are developed and enhanced so that all are given the opportunity to realize their full potential, and to fully participate in the social and economic mainstream.

Children's lives are spent in three principle, and overlapping, contexts -- home and family; school; and community, with play and recreation occurring in all three. In these contexts, play and recreation have received the least attention in terms of research and social policy priority. This is surprising, given that play and recreation are widely accepted as being fundamental to the health, well-being, and the social and physical development of children. There seems to be a widespread assumption that play is 'natural' to children. 'Good' parents, communities, and schools ensure play and recreational opportunities for their children, but there is no evidence of widespread shared responsibility in this case. And, in order to experience the benefits and to be 'socially included', it is necessary to participate. Thus, inclusion is an access issue [unlike education, it is not mandatory]. If physical recreation is to be involved in the process of social inclusion, it is necessary to have opportunities to participate in physical recreation; and it is clearly important to delineate the terms of those opportunities.

With regard to the three contexts of children's lives:

• families have widely differing capacities to provide opportunities for recreation / social inclusion -- and this context also needs to be understood in terms of the increased demands on parents to know where their children are, and what they are doing, 24 hours a day;
• communities may be divided in terms of income and ethnocultural heritage, and also differ widely in their capacity to provide recreational opportunities;
• schools, despite the existence of religious and private schools and the growth of home schooling, are in the best position to provide recreational and social inclusion oppportunities for children -- although they may also reflect community divisions, and there are structural elements (cf., Paul Willis, Learning to Labour) which may ensure the reproduction of social exclusion rather than the promotion of social inclusion.

No studies have been found which specifically test the ability of recreation to promote social inclusion, or which examine projects purporting to have this aim. However, the literature (which is concerned almost exclusively with more formal, adult organized programmes, rather than informal recreational opportunities for children and youth) is suggestive, on a number of points, of the terms under which recreation might promote social inclusion. These include:

• Accessibility -- without access to recreational opportunities (which includes issues of cost, transportation, awareness of opportunities, safety, etc., etc.), any analysis of this issue is moot;
• Agency -- we must recognize those circumstances in which programmes of physical recreation acknowledge the agency of the participants -- in which participants are able to determine (within guidelines of safety, and appropriate to their level of development) "the forms, circumstances, and meanings of their participation" (Donnelly, 1993). Such democratized participation seems likely to be best suited for furthering the development of citizenship and social inclusion (cf.,skateboarding research);
• Competence -- a wide array of research indicates that the development of physical abilities to the point where an individual feels 'competent', has powerful effects on self-esteem and confidence -- important conditions for processes of social inclusion;
• Continuity -- short-term grant / research based programmes of recreation rarely include attempts to measure programme impact and outcome (e.g., 'midnight basketball), and while it is impossible to determine effects on social inclusion, there is some evidence that continuity and consistency of provision are likely to result in a greater impact (e.g., Offord noted the short term impact on behaviour of one of his programmes);
• Integration -- programmes targetted to specific populations (e.g., low income) are less likely to have social inclusion effects than those which bring together children and youth from different backgrounds;
• Leadership -- the real benefits of involvement in physical recreation seem to derive from the potentials that are released in children and youth with 'good', educated and sincere leadership. It seems that almost any types of programme seems to work with the right people running them. So, in addition to knowing what works, it is necessary to know how to find, or educate, the 'right' people.
• Motivation -- social control motivated programmes are quite common, by no means ideal. They may be a necessary starting point for some populations, and some children may benefit in significant ways. But it is not enough in an exploration of social inclusion and recreation to suggest that they are 'better than nothing', and even programmes that start with paternalistic and controlling motives should ideally shift to a more inclusive orientation.

Coakley's (in press) summary of the research with respect to youth development has a striking relevance for this analysis of social inclusion:

At the risk of oversimplifying an impressive array of research and theory on youth and youth development, I have concluded that positive transitions from childhood to adolescence to adulthood are most likely when young people live in a context in which they are: (1) physically safe; (2) personally valued; (3) socially connected; (4) morally and economically supported; (5) personally and politically empowered; and (6) hopeful about the future.

To the extent that [recreation] programs serve these needs, we can expect them to contribute to the positive development of participants. Social inclusion is implicit in programmes that are run along these lines, not only because they are intended for all, but also because the aims of inclusion are evident in several of the six needs.

Peter Donnelly is Director of the Centre for Sport Policy Studies, and a Professor in the Faculty of Physical Education and Health at the University of Toronto. He was born in Chester, England, studied Physical Education as an undergraduate, and taught school for several years. In 1969, he moved to the United States where he completed undergraduate studies in New York City, and then received Masters and PhD degrees from the University of Massachusetts. He came to Canada in 1976, where he taught at the University of Western Ontario from 1976-79, and McMaster University from 1980-98.

He has published numerous scholarly articles, with a particular interest in sport policy and politics. Recent books include: Taking Sport Seriously: Social Issues in Canadian Sport (1997; 2nd edition, 2000), and Inside Sports (with Jay Coakley, 1999). He has a particular interest in children’s rights in sport and phsyical activity, and in the politics of fitness and health.

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