Education for sustainable sport management

Much of sport management education is taught along sport science-, business, and communication-related topics. Courses are commonly compartmentalized and the pedagogical approach is traditionally didactic, focusing on teaching what is thought to be relevant content. While students must of course develop sport management knowledge, recent sport management education literature indicates a move towards ‘quality of mind’ competence (e.g., critical reflection; sustainability thinking; interdisciplinary working; forward-looking; communication skills). While future sport management employers have indeed identified such competence as essential to contemporary sport management, research on and praxis examples of the development of sport management curriculum and pedagogical approaches that have desired competence learning effects are relatively rare. Thus, the purpose of our ‘Sustainable sport management education’ project is to (1) develop a competence-oriented sport management program and (2) document the development process in scientific publications.

Our research to develop the program and document the process consists of: (a) a review of existing sport management education, sport management curriculum, and sport management curriculum development literature published since 2010; (b) identification and assessment of Swedish and European sport management education programs; (c) interviews with individuals who work for organisations that would employ sport management students; (d) interviews with former and current sport management students; (e) preparation of curriculum and development of pedagogical approaches; and (f) collaboration with regional and national sport/leisure/exercise/health stakeholders.

The new sport management program is due to start in September 2021.