Sport as a development tool for transformational social change: Practitioners' perceptions

Sport for Development organisations seek to use sport as a vehicle to transform participants lives. However, little is known about the social processes and social interactions that practitioners use in their delivery. An increased understanding of how practitioners deliver an intervention focused on social impact has the potential to contribute to identifying good practice and developing successful programmes.

This research examines how practitioners in a Sport for Development agency make sense of their work with a focus on the processes and interactions which they believe to be effective in delivering social mobility. There are two objectives. To identify how Sport for Development practitioners make sense of the contexts, mechanisms and outcomes in delivering social mobility and to examine how Sport for Development practitioners seek to engage in impression management before different audiences.

This research investigates the perspectives of practitioners across a Sport for Development organisation, including officials, coaches, senior management, directors, volunteers, funders, and trustees. The research is underpinned by the unique combination of two social scientific approaches: the realist evaluation framework of Context-Mechanism-Outcome (CMO configurations), and Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical model of social interaction, which is introduced to the academic field of Sport for Development. Using this framework, this thesis provides unique insights at both organisational and everyday levels into how Sport for Development can transform lives.