The relation between youth sport and character development is prominent in public imagination. For example, there is a common expression attributed to Heywood Hale Broun that “Sports do not build character. They reveal it.” Sport is also widely thought to help youth develop character attributes such as leadership and perseverance, but the empirical support is mixed. Therefore, this special issue of the Journal of Character Education, guest edited by Jennifer Agans and Andrea Ettekal, is devoted to research and practice related to character development in and through youth sport. We sought articles focused on describing, explaining, and/or optimizing the development of character among youth within the context of sport, to help elucidate the role of sport in character development.
We approached the special issue with a broad conceptual definition of character as a set of mutually beneficial person ⬄ context relations that enables individuals to enact moral behaviors (Ettekal et al., 2024; Lerner et al., 2022). This definition of character connotes both a (developmental) process and outcome. Thus, studies of character development and youth sport might focus on the exchanges between youth and sport contexts (process) or on particular attributes of youth athletes (outcomes). The articles in this special issue demonstrate various approaches to conceptualizing character but, as a set, underscore the idea that character develops through athletes’ exchanges with the sport context. Earlier work on character, especially as it develops in and through sport, focused primarily on moral reasoning (e.g., game reasoning; Bredemeier & Shields, 1984). Following our conceptual approach to character in this special issue, the attributes of youth that might be indicative of character include moral reasoning, as well as any attributes of youth that enable them to act in moral ways. We also acknowledge that there is considerable innovation and diversity in the approaches that researchers and practitioners take to developing youth character, moving beyond moral reasoning and involving the capacity to enact moral behavior. The expansion of character as including attributes of youth capacity enables our special issue to include studies utilizing a wide range of conceptualizations of character. Next, we provide a brief overview of the articles in this special issue, with a focus on their unique contributions to understanding character as it relates to the sport context.
The articles in this special issue include six empirical studies grounded in academic scholarship as well as three Voices articles that highlight innovative and best practices in the field. The empirical section begins with Samantha Bates and Dawn Anderson-Butcher’s examination of the impact of coach training in character-building strategies. This study reverses the common approach to studying coach training, which is to examine the impact on youth athletes, by focusing on the impact of character-focused coaching on the coaches themselves. The study demonstrates the importance of coach training in character development for coach longevity and success. The second study, authored by Jennifer Agans, Andrea Vest Ettekal, Theresa Melton, and Richard Lerner, uses retrospective data on patterns of childhood sport participation (e.g., extent of trying out different sports vs. focusing on one sport) among high school athletes and found that attributes of youth indicating their concurrent approach to sport (i.e., extent of focus on personal improvement) were more important for character development than childhood participation patterns. This study highlights the need to attend to participation experiences when character development is the outcome.
In the third study, Helene Jørgensen, Colin Deal, and Nicholas Holt present a qualitative study of parents’ strategies to support character development among youth athletes, demonstrating the importance of parenting behavior surrounding youth sport. This study provides empirical evidence of the importance of synergy across sport and family contexts (i.e., the mesosystem; Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006). The last three empirical papers examine the character development of college athletes. Gail Orem, Skye Arthur-Banning, Margaret Domka, and Sarah Stokowski examine the moral reasoning of club sport athletes; and David Light Shields and Christopher Funk present two studies, one assessing predictors of purpose and integrity among intercollegiate athletes, and another assessing self-esteem through virtuous behavior and through competitive success. Orem and colleagues expand the literature with their focus on intramural sport participation, and their finding that (contrary to prior work; e.g., Priest et al., 1999), moral reasoning in sport was not lower for experienced (compared to less experienced) athletes. Shields and Funk also expand the literature in their studies, which found that contesting orientations were associated with character attributes such as integrity and athletes’ purpose in life (attributes rarely of focus in sport research); and that self-esteem linked to virtuous motivations positively predicted sportspersonship, compared to self-esteem linked to competitive motivations, which negatively predicted sportspersonship.
The special issue closes with three Voices articles. In the first of these, Ted Wohlfarth and Satabdi Samtani raise important questions about what sport is and could be. Their inclusive vision emphasizes the importance of collaboration for character development and aligns with Shields and colleagues’ (this issue) idea of competing with rather than against the opponent. The second Voices article, by Luc Martin, Karl Erickson, Jen Coletti, Kelsey Saizew, Cailie McGuire, Chris Primeau, Meredith Wolff, Brandy Ladd, and Jean Côte, nicely illustrates the program creation process and the value of research-practice partnerships. The program they describe, the 1616 Project, is also an innovative approach to intervention via engaging young athletes in a storytelling process. Last, Pete Paciorek presents an evidence-based coach training program that is based on the PRIMED model for character education.
The articles in this special issue reinforce what was previously known about character development in and through youth sport, such as the importance of coaches as facilitators of character development and that goal orientations matter for youth experiences in sport. The articles also advance the literature by highlighting several constructs that warrant further study, including those that are sport-specific such as contest orientation, and those that signify well-being, such as having a purpose in life. A general hope is that the special issue draws attention to character research in sport that goes beyond moral reasoning and begins to examine the array of attributes that might provide youth athletes the capacity to enact moral behavior. In that vein, we see considerable opportunity for continued research in this area. On the one hand, we find that although the empirical studies in this special issue illustrate the character development of youth involved in sport in a variety of ways, they do not “open the black box” to explore the process of how sport may function to support this development. The Voices articles, on the other hand, examine specific programs and practices and give thought-provoking ideas about how the sport context could be modified to better support character, but without strong empirical evidence to support their observations. We view this (albeit small and nonrandom) sample of the literature on character development in and through youth sport as an important reminder of the necessary synergy between research and practice. This special issue thus exemplifies what Overton (2015) describes as different “moments of analysis,” whereby although disparate research projects taking different approaches each only examines one aspect of a phenomenon, together they can present a more complete picture.
Furthermore, across the articles in this special issue, it is clear that all levels of the ecological system (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006) are involved in character development, and the collection of these papers into the special issue allows us to see across multiple levels even though each article only examines one level. Character development is not only the responsibility of coaches or parents or the athletes themselves—a systems approach is needed in both research and practice. We therefore close our introductory remarks with practical implications for actors working across various levels of the ecological system:
Programs and interventions should be designed thoughtfully through partnerships between researchers and practitioners.
Leagues and governing bodies should prioritize coach training in youth development and character development, for the benefit of both youth and coaches themselves.
Coaches should promote task orientation, help athletes reflect on contesting orientations and moral reasoning, and think about different approaches to implementing sport experiences.
Parents should think about parenting in a holistic way that encompasses sport, and help youth select sport contexts that are supportive of character development.
Youth involved in sport should reflect on why they are playing, what it means to them, and how their experiences in sport are connected to the rest of their life.
