Sports practice as an educational tool: working with values and resilience

Abstract

Brazilian society is currently facing the challenge of organizing and conducting massive sports events of large social impact. Within this context, the sport activity can be regarded as an efficient tool of psychosocial intervention, especially with children and youngsters. The present study aimed at the investigation of situations and experiences of high-performance athletes associated to the learning process that accompanied their insertion in this context and the values espoused therein. Interviews were carried out based on the life history method with four athletes belonging to two athletics teams from the State of São Paulo. Data were categorized, and the contents were analyzed qualitatively. The results pointed to various contributions of the insertion of these people into the sports context, some of them linked to external changes, such as the improvement of their aesthetic, financial or social inclusion status, and others related to internal or subjective aspects, such as the reinforcement and development of values of cooperation, friendship, solidarity, and the capacity to share and overcome adversities (resilience). The study concludes that sports activities, if well conducted (by well-prepared professionals), can both improve the practitioner's global development, and benefit the other environments in which he or she is inserted, such as family and peer group, thereby extending the contributions to the whole of society.