Editorial
Authors: Saunders John 
Published: February 2020

Perfect vision for the path ahead?

As I write this editorial it seems that once again, we stand on the threshold of yet
another significant date. The fortieth anniversary of ISCPES and also that of this
journal, that has been the voice of the society’s contribution over that period, has been
and gone. This time it is 2020 that looms on the near horizon. It is a date that has long
been synonymous with perfect vision. Many may perhaps see this as somewhat ironic,
given the themes surrounding change and the directions it has taken, that have been
addressed previously in these pages. Perfect vision and the clarity it can bring seem a
far cry away from the turbulent world to which we seem to be becoming accustomed.
So many of the divisions that we are facing today seem to be internal in nature and far
different from the largely: nation against nation; system against system strife, we can
remember from the cold war era. The US, for example, seems to be a nation perpetually
at war with itself. Democrats v Republicans, deplorables v elites - however you want to
label the warring sides - we can construct a number of divisions which seem to put 50%
of Americans implacably opposed to the other 50%. In the UK, it has been the divide
around the referendum to leave the European Union – the so-called Brexit debate.
Nationally the division was 52% to 48% in favour of leaving. Yet the data can be
reanalysed in, it seems, countless ways to show the splits within a supposedly ‘United’
Kingdom. Scotland v England, London and the South East v the English regions, young
v old are just some of the examples. Similar splits seem to be increasing within many
societies. Hong Kong has recently been the focus of world interest We have watched
this erstwhile model of an apparently successful and dynamic compromise between two
‘diverse’ systems, appear to tear itself apart on our television screens. Iran, Brazil,
Venezuela are just three further examples of longstanding national communities where
internal divisions have bubbled to the surface in recent times. These internal divisions
frequently have no simple and single fault line. In bygone times, social class, poverty,
religion and ethnicity were simple universal indicators of division. Today ways of
dividing people have become far more complex and often multi-dimensional. Social
media has become a means to amplify and repeat messages that have originated from
those who have a ‘gripe’ based in identity politics or who wish to signal to all and
sundry how extremely ‘virtuous’ and progressive they are. The new technologies have
proved effective for the distribution of information but remarkably unsuccessful in the
promotion of communication. This has been exemplified by the emergence and
exploitation of Greta Thunberg a sixteen-year-old from Sweden as a spokesperson for
the ‘Extinction Rebellion’ climate change lobby. It is a movement that has consciously
eschewed debate and discussion in favour of action. Consequently, by excluding
learning from its operation, it is cutting itself off from the possibility of finding out what
beneficial change will look like and therefore finding a way by which to achieve it. Put
simply, it has predetermined its desired goal and defined the problem in inflexible
terms. It has ignored a basic tenet of effective problem solving, namely that the key lies
in the way you actually frame the problem. Unfortunately, the movement has adopted
the polarised labelling strategies that place all humans into the category of either
‘believers’ or ‘deniers’. This fails to acknowledge and deal with the depth and
complexity of the problem and the range of our possible responses to it. We are all the
losers when problems, particularly given their potential significance, become addressed
in such a way.

How and where can human behaviour learn to rise above the limits of the processes we
see being followed all around us? If leadership is to come, it must surely come from
and through a process of education. All of us must assume some responsibility here –
and certainly not abdicate it to elite and powerful groups. In other words, we all have a
moral duty to educate ourselves to the best of our ability. An important part of the
process we follow should be to remain sceptical of the limits of human knowledge. In
addition, we need to be committed to applying tests of truth and integrity to the
information we access and manage. This is why we form and support learned societies
such as ISCPES. Their duty is to test, debate and promote ideas and concepts so that
truth and understanding might emerge from sharing and exploring information, while
at the same time applying the criteria developed by the wisdom and experience of those
who have gone before.

And so, we come to the processes of change and disruption as we are currently
experiencing them at International Sports Studies. Throughout our history we have
followed the traditional model of a scholarly journal. That is, our reason for existence
is to provide a scholarly forum for colleagues who wish to contribute to and develop
understanding within the professional and academic field of Comparative Physical
Education and Sport. As the means of doing this, we encourage academics and
professionals in our field to submit articles which are blind reviewed by experts. They
then advise the editor on their quality and suitability for publication. As part of our
responsibility we particularly encourage qualified authors from non-English speaking
backgrounds to publish with us, as a means of providing a truly international forum for
ideas and development. Where possible the editorial team works with contributors to
assist them with this process. We have now taken a step further by publishing the
abstracts in Portuguese, Spanish and Chinese on the website, in order to spread the work
of our contributors more widely.

Consistent with international changes in labelling and focus over the years, the title
of the society’s journal was changed from the Journal of Comparative Physical
Education and Sport to International Sports Studies in 1989. However, our aim has
remained to advance understanding and communication between members of the global
community who share a professional, personal or scholarly interest in the state and
development of physical education and sport around the world. In line with the
traditional model, the services of our editorial and reviewing teams are provided ex
gratia and the costs of publication are met by reader and library subscriptions. We have
always offered a traditional printed version but have, in recent years, developed an online
version - also as a subscription. Over the last few years we have moved to online
editorial support. From 2020 will be adopting the practice of making articles available
online immediately following their acceptance. This will reduce the wait time
experienced by authors in their work becoming generally available to the academic
community.

Readers will no doubt be aware of the current and recent turbulence within
academic publishing generally. There has been a massive increase in the university
sector globally. As a result, there has been an increasing number of academics who both
want to and need to publish, for the sake of advancement in their careers. A number of
organisations have seen this as providing a business opportunity. Consequently, many
academics now receive daily emails soliciting their contributions to various journals
and books. University libraries are finding their budgets stretched and while they have
been, up until now, the major funders of scholarly journals through their subscriptions, they have been forced to limit their lists and become much more selective in their
choices. For these reasons, open access has provided a different and attractive funding
model. In this model, the costs of publication are effectively transferred to the authors
rather than the readers. This works well for those authors who may have the financial
support to pursue this option, as well as for readers. However, it does raise a question
as to the processes of quality control. The question arises because when the writer
becomes the paying customer in the transaction, then the interests of the merchant (the
publisher) can become more aligned to ensuring the author gets published rather than
guaranteeing the reader some degree of quality control over the product they are
receiving.

A further confounding factor in the scenario we face, is the issue of how quality is
judged. Universities have today become businesses and are being run with philosophies
similar to those of any business in the commercial world. Thus, they have ‘bought into’
a series of key performance indicators which are used to compare institutions one with
another. These are then added up together to produce summative scores by which
universities can be compared and ranked. There are those of us that believe that such a
process belittles and diminishes the institutions and the role they play in our societies.
Nonetheless it has become a game with which the majority appear to have fallen in line,
seeing it as a necessary part of the need to market themselves. As a result, very many
institutions now pay their chief executives (formerly Vice-Chancellors) very highly, in
order to for them to optimise the chosen metrics. It is a similar process of course with
academic journals. So it is, that various measures are used to categorise and rank
journals and provide some simplistic measure of ‘quality’. Certain fields and
methodologies are inherently privileged in these processes, for example the medical and
natural sciences. As far as we are concerned, we address a very significant element in
our society – physical education and sport - and we address it from a critical but eclectic
perspective. We believe that this provides a significant service to our global community.
However, we need to be realistic in acknowledging the limited and restricted nature of
that community. Sport Science has become dominated by physiology, data analytics,
injury and rehabilitation. Courses and staff studying the phenomenon of sport and
physical education through the humanities and social sciences, seem to be rarer and
rarer. This is to the great detriment of the wellbeing and development of the
phenomenon itself. We would like to believe that we can make an important difference
in this space. So how do we address the question of quality? Primarily through
following our advertised processes and the integrity and competence of those involved.
We believe in these and will stick with them. However, we appreciate that burying our
heads in the sand and remaining ‘king of the dinosaurs’ does not provide a viable way
forward. Therefore, in our search for continuing strategy and clear vision in 2020, we
will be exploring ways of signalling our quality better, while at the same time remaining
true to our principles and beliefs.

In conclusion we are advising you, as our readers, that changes may be expected as
we, of necessity, adapt to our changing environment while seeking sustainability.
Exactly what they will be, we are not certain at the time of going to press. We believe
that there is a place, even a demand for our contribution and we are committed to both
maintaining its standard and improving its accessibility. Comments and advice from
within and outside of our community are welcome and we remain appreciative, as
always, of the immense contribution of our international review board members and our
supportive and innovative publisher.

So, to the contributors to our current volume. Once again, we would point with some
pride to the range of articles and topics provided. Together, they provide an interesting
and relevant overview of some pertinent current issues in sport and physical education,
addressed from the perspectives of different areas across the globe. Firstly, Pill and
Agnew provide an update to current pedagogical practices in physical education and
sport, through their scoping review of findings related to the use of small-sided games
in teaching and coaching. They provide an overview of the empirical research, available
between 2006 and 2016, and conclude that the strategy provides a useful means of
achieving a number of specific objectives. From Belgium, Van Gestel explores the
recent development of elite Thai boxing in that country. He draws on Elias’ (1986)
notion of ‘sportization’ which describes the processes by which various play like
activities have become transformed into modern sport. Thai boxing provides an
interesting example as one of a number of high-risk combat sports, which inhabit an
ambiguous area between the international sports community and more marginalised
combat activities which can be brutal in nature. Van Gestel expertly draws out some of
the complexities involved in concluding that the sport has experienced some of the
processes of sportization, but in this particular case they have been ‘slight’ in impact
rather than full-blown.

Abdolmaleki, Heidari, Zakizadeh XXABSTRACT De Bosscher look at a topic of considerable
contemporary interest – the management of a high-performance sport system. In this
case their example is the Iranian national system and their focus is on the management
of some of the resources involved. Given that the key to success in high performance
sport systems would appear to lie in the ability to access and implement some of the
latest and most effective technological information intellectual capital would seem to
be a critical component of the total value of a competitive high performance sport
system Using a model developed by a Swedish capital services company Skandia to
model intangible assets in a service based organisation, Abdolmaleki and his associates
have argued for the contribution of human, relational and structural capital to provide
an understanding of the current place of intellectual capital in the operations of the
Iranian Ministry of Sport and Youth. An understanding of the factors contributing to
the development of these assets, contributes to the successful operation of any
organisation in such a highly competitive and fast changing environment. Finally, from
Singapore, Chung, Sufri and Wang report on some of the exciting developments in
school based physical education that have occurred over the last decade. In particular
they identify the increase in the placement of qualified physical education teachers as
indicative of the progress that has been made. They draw on Foucault’s strategy of
‘archaeological analysis’ for an explanation of how these developments came to be
successfully put in place. Their arguments strongly reinforce the importance of
understanding the social and political context in order to achieve successful innovation
and development.

May I commend the work of our colleagues to you and wish you all the best in the
attempt to achieve greater clarity of vision for 2020!