The Legacy of the Rio 2016 Olympic Education Programme: An evaluation of Physical Education Classes in Public Schools of Rio de Janeiro

Abstract

The Olympic Movement affirms that cities that host the Olympic Games can accomplish more than two weeks of a sport celebration. The competition would be a catalyst for changes, as Pierre de Coubertin proposed when developing the concept of Olympism, and areas such as tourism, sustainability, transportation and education would benefit from its legacy. A great number of researchers, however, indicate a lack of evidence to prove an effective socio-economic development achieved by hosting the tournament.

The 31st edition of the Olympic Games was the first one in South America. The city of Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil, was chosen as host seven years earlier, in 2009. The legacy factor played a major role since this bidding process. As one of the initiatives to promote lasting benefits, the Organizing Committee developed an Education Programme called Transforma. Besides promoting Olympic values and knowledge about the Games, Transforma had as one of its goals to increase the number of sports practiced in public schools of Rio de Janeiro.

Brazilian schools are known for teaching only the magic four in the Physical Education (PE) classes: football, basketball, handball and volleyball. This causes two main problems for students: limited motor skill learning, since different sports promote different movement abilities, and the tendency of young people who do not enjoy traditional sports to avoid PE classes and suffer bullying in many cases.

In order to stimulate the practice of diverse sports, Transforma organized trainings for PE teachers with the help of Brazilian national and local Sport Federations. Athletes or coaches would teach the educators basic rules and movements of their sports, so later this knowledge could be applied in the schools.

This research investigates if the objective of implementing new sports on PE classes in public schools of Rio de Janeiro was achieved, which factors influenced the process and what was the impact on students. It is, therefore, an examination of the efficiency of one of the Olympic legacy initiatives from the Rio 2016 Games.

To conduct this study, the author collected data from 105 PE teachers that joined the Transforma training through an online survey with open-ended and closed-ended questions. The questions were based on the framework of Guskey (2000), which establishes five levels of professional development evaluation. This model measures the participants first reactions to the training, their level of learning, the school support, the use of the new knowledge and the outcome for students.

First results indicated that 82.9% of the participants included a different sport in the PE classes after the training. For the second step, the researcher performed a logistic regression, which showed that the most significant aspect for the implementation of a new sport was the fact that PE teachers would learn during the training how to build the sports equipment with alternative and cheap material. This result might be explained by the context in which Brazilian schools are inserted. Most of the respondents complained about the lack of resources, a fact that is supported by previous literature. If teachers learn how to build the sports equipment in an inexpensive way, they are able to overcome the school funding issue and rely only on their efforts. The third step was to investigate the impact of the training on students. Teachers responses revealed that, despite of some hesitancy at the beginning, students were very satisfied with the new activities. Both quantitative and qualitative findings indicated an increase in participation. Those young people who avoided PE classes felt included and excited with the new sport. Most of the teachers said the students asked to play the sport again, demonstrating that they are willing to transcend the magic four if the PE teacher is prepared to include new activities.

Transforma was found to be an effective programme in terms of increasing sport participation in public schools of Rio de Janeiro. However, the programme was ended after the closing ceremony of the Rio 2016 Games, even though 97% of the teachers declared in the survey they would like the activities to continue.

The researcher suggests the Olympic Movement to deeply reflect about the continuity of legacy projects such as Education Programmes, starting from the bid process to choose the host city, so they are not over once the Games end. A more systematic evaluation is also necessary to measure and improve the impact of those initiatives, justify expenses and support the argument that the Olympics are worth investing on. In addition, the researcher believes that teaching educators how to build sports equipment with cheap material could be considered as a legacy programme in countries with educational realities similar to Brazil, in a way to strike the lack of resources, but also in wealthier environments, as a tool to promote different sports and sustainability. Final recommendations are addressed to future researchers, who could focus on other stakeholders perceptions, specially giving voice to students.

Keywords: Olympic legacy, Physical Education, Rio 2016 Organizing Commitee, Transforma, Education Programme, sport training, sport participation