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Tuesday, March 18, 2025

International conference on physical education

by

Anand Rampersad Ph.D.
16 days ago
20250303

The Na­tion­al Sports Uni­ver­si­ty in con­junc­tion with Goa Uni­ver­si­ty, Dom Bosco Col­lege, the Min­istry of Sports and Youth Af­fairs, the In­ter­na­tion­al Coun­cil of Sport Sci­ence and Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion (IC­SSPE) and the In­ter­na­tion­al So­ci­ety for Com­par­a­tive Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion (IS­CPES) host­ed an in­ter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence on the theme “Fit for Life: Em­pow­er­ing Youth through Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion, Sports, and Tra­di­tion­al Sports,” Feb­ru­ary 18-20, 2025 at Goa Uni­ver­si­ty, Goa, In­dia.

The con­fer­ence brought to­geth­er a group of glob­al schol­ars and ac­tivists to ad­dress 24 keynotes on the im­por­tance of de­vel­op­ing and em­ploy­ing sys­tems to raise aware­ness and en­hance phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion, and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty through ro­bust re­search, pol­i­cy de­vel­op­ment, im­ple­men­ta­tion and mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion.

Shrad­dha Chickerur, Pro­gramme Of­fi­cer, So­cial and Hu­man Sci­ences, UN­ESCO, pro­vid­ed an overview of UN­ESCO’s work in pro­mot­ing sport as a fun­da­men­tal hu­man right for chil­dren. While recog­nis­ing the progress that has been made, she ar­gued that the lack of re­search and da­ta in some coun­tries stymies the achieve­ment of de­sired goals and ob­jec­tives of the pro­gramme. The lack of re­search and ro­bust da­ta was a re­cur­ring theme through­out the con­fer­ence, es­pe­cial­ly in the de­vel­op­ing coun­tries. Sushil Ram (Ad­vi­sor, Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tari­at) dis­cussed the work of the Com­mon­wealth in pro­mot­ing sport and phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty. A good ex­am­ple of the work of the Com­mon­wealth is the Com­mon­wealth Youth Games, which was held in T&T in 2023.

Jens Se­jer An­der­son, Founder and se­nior ad­vi­sor to Play the Game, ad­dressed the is­sue of “Strength­en­ing Ath­lete Pow­er in Sport.” This is a crit­i­cal is­sue as it re­lates to cre­at­ing safe spaces for youth sports de­vel­op­ment to pre­vent all forms of abuse- sex­u­al, phys­i­cal, men­tal, and fi­nan­cial. The need for ex­plic­it poli­cies, im­ple­men­ta­tion, mon­i­tor­ing, and eval­u­a­tion is rai­son d'être in pro­tect­ing ath­letes from ne­far­i­ous be­hav­iour from fel­low ath­letes, coach­es, oth­er tech­ni­cal staff, and ad­min­is­tra­tors. Sim­i­lar­ly, Efthalia Chatzi­gian­ni (Uni­ver­si­ty of Pelo­pon­nese, Greece) and Ver­e­na Burk (Uni­ver­si­ty of Tübin­gen, Ger­many) ad­dressed the im­por­tance of good gov­er­nance in sport at all lay­ers- in­ter­na­tion­al, re­gion­al, and na­tion­al- to pre­vent cor­rup­tion and all oth­er eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal wrong­do­ings in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of sports.

Piyush Jain (Founder of Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion Foun­da­tion, In­dia) spoke about de­vel­op­ing sys­tems to pro­mote phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion and cre­at­ing a cul­ture of phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty in In­dia, specif­i­cal­ly fo­cus­ing on chil­dren from poor­er so­cio-eco­nom­ic com­mu­ni­ties. Jorge Kni­jnik (West­ern Syd­ney Uni­ver­si­ty, Aus­tralia) dis­cussed gamed-based ex­pe­ri­en­tial and fun way of hand­ball ped­a­gogy. A com­mon theme by all the pre­sen­ters was the im­por­tance of chil­dren hav­ing fun learn­ing and prac­tis­ing phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion and ac­tiv­i­ty. Swarup Mukher­jee (Na­tion­al In­sti­tute of Ed­u­ca­tion, Sin­ga­pore) dis­cussed the im­por­tance of un­der­stand­ing, de­tect­ing, and man­ag­ing sport in­juries, es­pe­cial­ly as it re­lates to young ath­letes and ca­reer de­vel­op­ment. Pao­lo Bertac­ci­ni (In­sti­tu­to In­ter­nazionale Ital­iano Stu­di Sport So­ci­eta, (II­ISSS) spoke about en­sur­ing the the­o­ry of sport and phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion is aligned with prax­is to op­ti­mise the de­sired ob­jec­tives where par­tic­i­pants are em­pow­ered.

Tom­my Ng (Na­tion­al In­sti­tute of Ed­u­ca­tion, Sin­ga­pore), Jo­eng Hyung Cho (Chung-Ang Uni­ver­si­ty, Ko­rea), Takashi Fukushi­ma (Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty of Mu­nich/Tokyo Uni­ver­si­ty, Japan), Nao­ki Suzu­ki (Tokyo Gakugei Uni­ver­si­ty, Japan), and Mark Smith (Lough­bor­ough Uni­ver­si­ty, Eng­land) dis­cussed the role of tech­nol­o­gy in de­vel­op­ing phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion in schools, op­ti­mis­ing ath­letes’ tech­ni­cal skill de­vel­op­ment and min­imis­ing the risk of in­juries. Smith’s pre­sen­ta­tion on us­ing tech­nol­o­gy to analyse fast bowlers’ tech­niques and ques­tion­able ac­tions was very il­lu­mi­nat­ing as it can con­tribute sig­nif­i­cant­ly to ear­ly de­tec­tion, cor­rec­tion, min­imis­ing risks of in­juries and pro­long­ing the ca­reers of fast bowlers. The ad­vanced tech­no­log­i­cal App will al­low for quick as­sess­ment and en­able de­vel­op­ing coun­tries such as in the Caribbean to col­lab­o­rate with its young male and fe­male fast bowlers from an ear­ly age to ad­dress any tech­ni­cal is­sues.

Ak­shai Mans­ingh (Dean, Fac­ul­ty of Sport, UWI), Mar­tin Toms (Uni­ver­si­ty of Birm­ing­ham, Eng­land), Maria Beat­riz Rocha Fer­reira (State Uni­ver­si­ty of Camp­inas, Brazil), Eliana Lu­cia Fer­reira (Pres­i­dent of the Latin Amer­i­can As­so­ci­a­tion of Sports Sci­ences, Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion and Dance, AL­CID­ED), Anand Ram­per­sad (Fac­ul­ty of Sport, UWI), Gopinathan Kishore (IS­CPES), Fran­cis­co Ser­ra­no Romero (IS­CPES) and Wal­ter Ho (IS­CPES) ad­dressed var­i­ous el­e­ments of the so­cio-eco­nom­ic, cul­tur­al and po­lit­i­cal ecosys­tem that in­flu­ences and shapes en­gage­ment in phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion, phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty and or­gan­ised sports.

He­len Mil­iou (Uni­ver­si­ty of Athens), (Sharmel­la Roopc­hand-Mar­tin (Deputy Dean, Fac­ul­ty of Sport, UWI), Rosa Lopez de D’ Am­i­co (IS­CPES, Pres­i­dent), Claire Bour­si­er (Uni­ver­si­ty Paris Nan­terre, France), and Akash Jha ad­dressed sport in­clu­sive­ness as es­sen­tial el­e­ments of the UNS­DGs based on gen­der, dis­abil­i­ties, and in­dige­nous games through re­search, pol­i­cy de­vel­op­ment, im­ple­men­ta­tion and mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion.

The con­fer­ence ad­dressed top­ics cen­tral to pro­mot­ing phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion, phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty, and sports as a vi­tal hu­man rights as­pect. The chal­lenge is for pol­i­cy­mak­ers and ad­min­is­tra­tors to demon­strate com­mit­ment to achiev­ing these de­sired goals in a sound, en­abling gov­er­nance sys­tem.


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