ABSTRACT

Introduction Contemporary concerns about youth disaffection/disengagement have resulted in a call for action to be taken to ‘fix’ the problem. Such action includes a plethora of programmes and projects designed to re-engage and rehabilitate young people within an educational context. Reflecting a historical belief (in theory and in public policy) in the potential of sport to build ‘good character’, many of these initiatives make use of physical activities, both within and outside of school, in order to foster positive youth development and facilitate young people’s socio-moral education (Holt, 2008). A growing body of evaluation research is providing increasing evidence that sport/physical activity initiatives can indeed have a positive impact on the young people who participate in them; both immediate impact and, in some cases, sustained impact (e.g. Crabbe et al., 2006b; Sandford, Armour and Duncombe, 2008a). Moreover, knowledge is slowly building about how future initiatives can be designed in order to maximize the potential benefits for young people and facilitate the sustainability of positive impact (e.g. Sandford, Duncombe and Armour, 2008b). Nonetheless, significant questions remain about whether and how young people can transfer positive impact beyond the boundaries of a specific programme to broader school and community contexts (Armour and Sandford, 2006; Theokas et al., 2008). It could also be argued that much of the data available on school-based positive youth development programmes are what might be termed ‘adult-centric’, reflecting the priorities of programme funders, teachers, activity leaders and youth mentors. Thus, although most researchers have taken young people’s views into account in evaluation studies (e.g. Duncombe and Armour, 2005; Armour and Sandford, 2008), the data have tended to address the adults’ research agendas. What is missing, we argue, is a genuine youth insight into the process of being ‘engaged’ through sport/physical activity initiatives.