DEVIANT BEHAVIOR IN SPORTS

Deviant Behavior in Sports

[Bruce E. Carter]

[November 12, 2010]

Deviant Behavior in Sports

Deviant Behavior in Sports

The role of sport participation for high school students in the educational process has been a topic of debate for decades. Critics observe that sport activities deflect time away from the classroom (Melnick, Sabo, & Vanfossen, 2007). Supporters of high school sport programs argue that sport participation improves students' achievement motivation (Casey, 2009; Parker & Johnson, 2007), improves students' grades, keeps them in school, raises their educational aspirations (Melnick, Sabo, & Vanfossen, 2007), helps them appreciate health, exercise and fitness, helps them learn about themselves and learn to handle adversity, and helps them experience team work and sportsmanship (Rasmussen, 2009-2006). Whether high school games programs advantage or negatively influence the learned accomplishment of scholar participants continues a theme of controversy. While the quantity of research literature in this field is growing, its uneven quality provides no evidence to afford a clear understanding of the nature on the issue (Greendorfer, 2007). To date, the educational consequences from participating school-sponsored sport activities for high school students are still not fully understood.

Literature on the connection between students' participation in sports and their diverse psychosocial and psycho-educational factors provides blended findings. The findings of a group of studies indicated that participation in sports increased students' overall interest and commitment to schooling as well as their engagement in more student-teacher contact, more positive attitudes about schooling, more parent-school contact (Crain, 2007; Trent & Braddock, 2007). Moreover, Slavin and Madden (2009) found that sports could facilitate positive racial/ethnic relations as well as positive inter-group attitudes and behaviours among northern and southern desegregated schools. Crain (2007) reported similar findings.

African-American male scholars, and offered mixed findings. Sport participation seemed to have positive effects on their educational aspirations (Braddock, 2006, 2007; Hanks, 2009; Picou & Huang, 2007; Wells & Picou, 2006), self-esteem (Braddock, 2007; Hanks, 2009), college enrolment and graduation (Braddock, 2007), competitive orientation (Wells & Picou, 2006), and adult earnings (Picou, McCarter, & Howell, 2005). For this group of students, sport participation had mixed effects on their grades (Braddock, 2007; Wells & Picou, 2006). In addition, Braddock and Royster (2007) conducted a study of the impact of participation in sport activities on academic resilience among African-American 8th grade male students. Their investigates demonstrated that sport participation for these scholars was positively associated to their aspirations to enroll in college preparatory programs in high school, to have decisive designs to complete high school and go in college. Both interscholastic and intramural sport participants drawn from communal rank advantages (i.e., attractiveness and sense of significance) amidst their schoolmates, which were exactly associated to their engagement in sports. They were less likely to be involved in school related social misconduct problems, more likely to look forward to their core curriculum classes, and less likely to be judged by their teachers as not giving full effort in their class work.

Deviance can be characterised as demeanour or undertakings that break usually distributed communal norms. Shouting, using a mobile ...