Child abuse, child protection, and defensive ‘touch’ in PE teaching and sports coaching

Abstract

This text introduces recently completed research on 'no touch' sports coaching, by placing it in a broader social context which problematises the way child abuse and child protection (or safeguarding) are conceived and discussed in terms of policy and practice. It also provides a brief indicative summary of the research findings and offers a discussion of moral panic, risk society and worst case thinking, before drawing on Foucault's work on governmentality to offer an explanation of how the current situation arose. The authors suggest that the approach to discussing child abuse, and the guidelines and training stemming from the dominant discourse, for the most part initiated by the NSPCC's Child Protection in Sport Unit, together create an environment in which many coaches and PE teachers are confused and fearful, and consequently unsure of how to be around the children and young people they teach and coach.

“I Know People Think I’m a Complete Pain in the Neck”: An Examination of the Introduction of Child Protection and “Safeguarding” in English Sport from the Perspective of National Governing Body Safeguarding Lead Officers

“…The work was supportive of the FA's efforts but questioned the extent to which SCP was accepted amongst all stakeholders. More recently, Piper and colleagues [21], based on the perspectives of sports coaches who have been subject to new policy developments, argue that the "intrusion" of SCP into sport (and of the CPSU) has caused adults to be fearful of working with (and especially touching) children and has, therefore, had a damaging impact on adult-child relations within sport. Others have drawn attention to the absence of independent research evaluation for the national programme of policy implementation led, since 2001, by the CPSU [22].…”

Exploring Touch in Physical Education Practicum in a Touchy Latin Culture

“…What was once accepted and unnoticed pedagogical practice is now associated with connotations that position the adult within an exploitative role due to the influences of fear-based and moral panic discourses [5,7]. Moral panic has led to the production of guidelines and practices that are concerned with protecting children from abuse and adults from false allegations but where the needs of children are lost [6,10]. Although physical support for specific exercises was previously considered natural or normal in PE classes, it is no longer obvious in today's context [6].…”

“…I felt watched and I haven't responded much to their shows of affection because I was embarrassed. (Ann, female, weeks [10][11] Even though Ann did not make explicit reference to the presence of other adults, the end of a school day in Spain usually finishes in the playground, where parents and other teachers are present. Subjects being watched (or who feel they are being watched) internalise the gaze and regulate their behaviours and subjectivities towards a certain norm [53] which, in this case, was the norm of 'no-touching'.…”

“…Beck [26] first described 'risk society' as an inescapable structural condition of advanced industrialisation involving hidden politics, ethics and morality. Risk and blame have largely been implemented in Western contexts over the decades [31][32][33] to discipline this potential danger by manipulating and eradicating ambivalence [34], so that life's eventualities are subjected to human control in the attempt to avoid all risk [10,30].…”

Managerial Discourse, Child Safeguarding, and the Elimination of Virtue from In Loco Parentis Relationships: An Example from Music Education

“…This work was developed in the UK context through conceptual clarification and small-scale research (Piper & Smith, 2003;Piper, Powell et al, 2006), and more recently through Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded research; first in education and childcare (Piper, Stronach, et al, 2006), then in sports coaching and physical education . Outcomes and implications from this research have been discussed in publications (including Piper & Stronach, 2008;Piper et al, 2013a;Duggan & Piper, 2013), and the following summary account is drawn from such outputs and related work in progress.…”