Olympic education in Britain

In the United Kingdom, Olympic education was a distinct part of planning, celebrating, and delivering the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and remains a feature of legacy debates in the post-London 2012 epoch (Armour & Dagkas, 2012; Griffiths & Armour, 2013; Kohe, 2015; Kohe & Bowen-Jones, 2015). Not unlike previous host-cities, the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (LOCOG, in conjunction with the British Olympic Association [BOA] and British Paralympic Association [BPA]), developed educational materials and platforms (to be discussed shortly) that both fulfilled the movement’s imperatives to promote Olympism as a social/civilising project but also, quite strategically, engaged public audiences and educational practitioners and communities, enmeshed with central government sport and physical activity policy, and aligned with Physical Education’s core practices and remit (Bloyce & Lovett, 2012; Bloyce & Smith, 2012; Bullough, 2012; Devine, 2013; Girginov, 2012).
Our specific interest in this chapter is to examine facets of Olympic education in the United Kingdom and explore possibilities for its effective and meaningful development in the future. First, we briefly detail how the political and policy context of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games provided the backdrop for the establishment of education resources and consider the roles of various stakeholders (e.g., LOCOG, the BOA, Physical Educators, community sport providers) in this period. We discuss how resources such as the Get Set digital platform (www.getset.co.uk), Kent 20in12 (www.kent20in12.org.uk) programme, and sport participation initiatives of the Youth Sport Trust (www.youthsporttrust.org) are contoured by London 2012 rhetoric. Lastly, and to redress what we believe are some of the limitations of Olympic education in the UK and writ large, we advocate for a pedagogical reimagining of Olympic education. Essentially, we suggest, a reconceptualization of both philosophy and praxis that is more flexible, critical, ethically orientated, theoretically engaged, and cultural sensitive and sensible.