Developing young athletes: the role of private sport schools in the Norwegian sport system
Elsa Kristiansen
Barrie Houlihan
2134/18948
https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/journal_contribution/Developing_young_athletes_the_role_of_private_sport_schools_in_the_Norwegian_sport_system/9627095
The aim of the paper is to analyse the increasingly prominent role of private sports schools in the
development of elite athletes in Norway. The context for the analysis is the apparent paradox
between the emergence of a network of sports schools, the most successful of which are private
and require that parents pay a fee, and the social democratic values of Norway. Data were collected
through a series of interviews with 35 respondents from nine stakeholder groups, including
athletes, coaches, parents and sport school managers. The research describes an elite sport system
that is successful in producing medal-winning athletes, but which is organisationally fragmented,
uncoordinated and under-funded with regard to youth talent identification and development
and susceptible to tensions between key actors. The primary analytical framework is Kingdon’s
multiple streams framework augmented by path dependency theory. The findings include, a picture
of an elite youth sport development system in which multiple and overlapping problems have
received, at best, only partial policy solutions some of which, such as the growth of private sports
schools, have emerged by default. When focusing attention on the relationship between structure
and agency in the policy process it is argued that the government, through its inaction, has allowed
sports schools the policy space to expand. The consequence is that the government has, whether
deliberately or not, enabled the strengthening of a commercial elite youth sport development
system, while still preserving its egalitarian and non-interventionist credentials.
2015-10-05 13:55:40
Elite sport schools
Multiple streams
Norway
Path dependency
Sport policy
Youth talent development
Medical and Health Sciences not elsewhere classified
Sociology