EDUC20068: Sport, Education and the Media

- 8 Reading Circle entries (summaries of readings)- not marked but completion worth 10%
- 1600 word case study due mid semester (40%)
- 2000 word media analysis on a current sport issue due beginning of exam period (50%)
- also 80% attendance requirement for tutorials
- 2 compulsory field trips- attendance marked
- 2 x 400 word reflections (not graded)

This is by far the best subject i have taken so far at the university. As a science student i wanted a breadth that was interesting but did not have a heavy workload and this is exactly what i was looking for.

Overall, it is not a large subject so lectures were in a small lecture theatre and often poorly attended, they were recorded and many people did not attend. The lectures were definitely useful though as you needed references in your case study and media analysis to course material. The various guest lecturers were also very interesting. The tutorials are 2-hours every week but often finished early. Karen Lyon was my tutor and she is fantastic. As an ex sports journalist she is extremely knowledgable on sport and the media within sport and many tutorials were spent having in-depth discussions around current issues within sport.

Throughout the semester, you have reading circles to complete (10%). You are assigned reading circle groups in the first tutorial where you each complete a reading each week and then post a 400 word summary of the reading for the group to see. These are used as references in assignments. My only complaint would be that these readings can be quite long, some 20 pages. Creating a Facebook group or a Google Docs is a great way of sharing the reading circles.

In the first past of semester, we focus on sport and how it has developed, sport and children, women in sport, etc. These form the topics you can choose from for your case study. You are provided with scenarios based on each topic and you have to perform a case study in response to the scenario. For example, choosing children and sport you got a topic saying friends of yours had young children 5 and 11 who wanted to start sport. Drawing on everything you looked at in tutorials, readings and lectures you have to advise them what sports to play and what the right age to start playing sport is.

Then you move onto social aspects of sport. The first compulsory field trip was to the Ian Potter Museum on campus. This is done with your tutorial group. We split up into small groups and had to look through all the exhibitions in the gallery. We then had to choose a piece of sport-related art and write a 400 word reflection on what it meant to us. This was not graded, simply a hurdle task. The second compulsory field trip was to the MCG. We were given a free guided tour of the MCG which was very interesting and then taken down to the sports museum. After playing in the interactive area, we had to again choose a piece from one of the exhibitions to write a 400 word reflection, again a hurdle requirement.

The final part of the course covers sport in the media and is probably the most difficult to understand coming from a science background. The media aspect covers issues with sport and the media, how women are portrayed, media power within sport, etc. I found this section to be extremely interesting. The most important lectures and tutorials to attend are covering the 5 social theories and how to relate them to sport. This is critical to understand well as the final essay is centred on social theories.

The final essay is due in the first week of the examination period, so it is a good idea to start it before the semester finishes so it doesn't get in the way of studying for other exams. This essay is 2000 words (+/- 10%) and is split into two separate topics. In the first part of the essay you have to take two newspapers (example- the age and the Australian) and analyse their readership, target audience, articles, images and sporting section and compare the two. This section should be about 40% of the essay, not the major mark. The analysis of the sporting sections should be in detail. The second and major part of the essay is where you choose one or two articles on a current sporting issue and analyse them, like a language analysis and then relate at least 2 social theories to the sporting issue chosen. For example, Russian doping saga. Functionalist and conflict theories are probably the easiest to write on and interactionist is probably the hardest.

If you like sport and are interested in the role the media plays within sport i definitely recommend this subject. I love sport and i loved this subject. I thought the tutorials were fantastic and often consisted of group discussions about current sport issues, which were often very interesting. If you put in the hard work it is a pretty easy and enjoyable subject.

Yes, with screen capture, but sometimes the slides weren't recorded.

Anna Krohn, 3 or 4 guest lecturers
Tutors: Anna Krohn and Karen Lyon

N/A, sample essays were given for both the case study and media analysis

5/5

No textbook. Readings were available on the LMS.

1 x 1 hour lecture p/week, 1 x 2 hour tutorial p/week

Semester 1, 2016

H1

8 brief summaries of readings provided throughout the semester (10% all up, not marked, just a hurdle)
1600 word case study due mid semester (40%)
2000 word essay on a current issue in sport (50%) due end of semester.
In my year there were quizzes but I think they were taken out.
80% attendance requirement.

At the start of semester you cover why sports education has developed into our society, it didn't exist in the mid 19th century. So this covers the meaning of sport to our society, how it became a part of our education system, and then how sport impacts children and how you teach sport to children. This is the task for the first case study, you are given scenarios, e.g. when are kids ready to start sport? What sport or programme should they take up as a start? You just provide a solution to the case scenario.

Then the subject goes into how sport impacts our social life, and the role it can play in socialisation. We actually had a compulsory Field trip to the Ian Potter Gallery on Swanston street and had to look at a piece of artwork that related to sport and write a reflective essay about it and what it meant to you.
We also had another field trip to the MCG sports museum, which was pretty fun, and you get a free tour of the MCG. You have to pick out an exhibition from the sports museum and reflect on it and hand it in and then you're done.

The final part of the course you cover how social theories apply to sport, social theories covered are; feminism, conflict, capitalism, functionalist theory, interactionist theory. You also cover how sport is portrayed in the media, how women are presented in sport, how the sports section in a newspaper may be directed to a particular sex, how it mostly consists of top level elite sports and not a lot of amateur local sport.

In the final essay you have to spend the first few paragraphs analysing a newspaper and describing how it is made up and the significance of this, e.g. advertisements (esp. betting), News, Finance, Sport, Classifieds, etc. For the sport part you elaborate on how much sport is provided, whether it is mostly male sports, or elite sports, what type of sporting code (Melbourne vs Sydney paper). This is only a short part of the essay, and isn't where you get most of the mark.
The majority of the mark is attained from the second part where you pick out 2 or 3 social theories and related them to a recent issue you have found in sport and the media. e.g. if it was 2012 you would find an article on Lance Armstrong and relate these social theories to that. You need to provide the article you found when you submit. Relating the article to a social theory is probably the hardest part, I would recommend feminist theory, or capitalist theory as they are a bit easier to understand, and easy to find articles on those issues.

You also do reading circles in this subject where you talk to people in your group about what you read, and you need to create a Facebook page or e-mail so you can send each other your summaries.

I like sport so I found this subject good and would recommend it to anyone who likes sport or did physical education at school. There are no practical sessions, so I did find it a bit boring. If you don't enjoy sport at all I probably wouldn't recommend it, but you don't have to love sport to do it. If you are passionate about how women are represented in sport, or how certain ethnicities are excluded from sport you would go well in this.
It's a fairly easy subject, so definitely give it a go if you want a subject that you can take a bit easy but still be able to grasp it when you need to.

Maybe, I did but i had a clash, so if you don't have a clash they might not provide them, they get really annoyed if no-one shows up to lectures.

Anna Krohn, sometimes a guest lecturer

N/A but sample essays were provided.

4 Out of 5

N/A, most of the material you will end up referencing is covered in the readings you do, but you might need to reference outside material on the essays.

1 x 1 hour lecture per week. 1 x 2 hour tutorial per week.

2014, S1

H1, 86