Barnidrott på vuxnas villkor : En undersökning av tillgänglighet till demokratiska processer för barn inom idrottsföreningar

• Main Authors: Lindskog, Klas, Olsson, Elin
• Format: Others
• Language: Swedish
• Published: Umeå universitet, Pedagogiska institutionen 2020
• Subjects: democracy; sport; sports clubs; United nations convention on the rights of the child; Barnkonventionen; demokrati; idrott; idrottsföreningar; Social Sciences; Samhällsvetenskap; Pedagogy; Pedagogik
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-174542

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) was adopted in 1989 and became a current topic again when the Swedish government incorporated it into Swedish law on the 1st of January 2020. UNCRC contains 54 articles and one of them is article 12, which states that all children have the right to express their views on any issue that concerns them. Research shows that this is rarely the case within sports clubs, and children struggle to make their voices heard. Therefore, the aim of the study was to bring knowledge about the board of the sports clubs point of view on this issue, and their experience of children's access to the democratic processes. Data were generated through interviews with 9 chairmen within different sports clubs. The results showed that the chairmen had very different definitions of democracy, and therefore their perceptions of children's access to it varied. On this basis a majority of the sports clubs believed the children had good access to the democratic processes within their sports clubs. In the cases where the opinion was that the children did not have good access, explanations were based on children's maturity or the coach's lack of time and knowledge. Another conclusion is that sports clubs in general make decisions based on what they think is best for the child or ask their parents instead, and therefore claim their club activities are good for children.