Abstract
High school sport is a popular activity for facilitating holistic development among adolescents in Canada. Nonetheless, many social justice inequities (e.g., racism, ableism) continue to negatively impact the experiences of participants. If we consider that the mission of School Sport Canada is to facilitate the “total development of student athletes through interscholastic sport”, then studying the ways coaches understand, think about, and act for social justice is well warranted. Thus, the purpose of the study was to profile the social justice activism and allyship of Canadian high school coaches. In total, 28 Canadian high school coaches participated in semi-structured interviews which were conducted virtually via Zoom or over the phone. Interview data were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis, which led to two overarching coaching approaches based on the two continua model for life skills teaching (Camiré, 2023). The normative coaching approach (i.e., little, if any, consideration for social justice) and the transformative coaching approach (i.e., proactive social justice activism) were expressed through four themes: (a) I’m (Not) Confident, I (Don’t) Understand; (b) (Un)intentionally (Re)acting; (c) You See Excuses, I See Obstacles to be Toppled; and (d) Teach Me. Findings have practical implications for creating/updating social justice coach education, for developing coaches’ understandings and demonstrations of activism and allyship, and for prompting systemic change to help make the Canadian high school sport system a safer and more socially just environment for all.
