Problem-based learning for social justice in a socio-cultural sport programme: supporting shared goals and real-world learning

Problem-based learning (PBL) is a pedagogical model or instructional approach that can be applied to a range of subject areas across all stages of education, and utilised as an established rationale in authentic, student-centred learning strategies (Savin-Baden and Howell-Major, 2004). In critical and social studies of sport, there are few published examples of PBL in action, aside from the valuable case study and collection of resources from Dart (2009) published with the Higher Education Authority (now AdvanceHE). There are examples of PBL success from other sport disciplines, including sport psychology (Heaviside et al., 2018), biomechanics (Duncan et al., 2006; Wallace et al., 2020), and sport performance (Duncan and Al-Nakeeb, 2006), which have highlighted the value of PBL for authentic graduate-level work and lifelong learning. Authenticity is not merely realistic work tasks but also includes preparing students for a changing digital world, developing students’ higher-level thinking, and equipping them for the challenges/opportunities they will encounter (Elkington and Chesterton, 2024). This chapter addresses how PBL can be used to introduce and explore social and cultural issues in critical studies of sport through problem-framing and knowledge sharing. Students of critical and social studies of sport end up in a variety of graduate careers, and here I use sport development and physical education (PE) graduate employment as examples for ways to add authenticity into undergraduate studies. I will outline some of the benefits and uses evidenced for PBL based in constructivist learning theories, then introduce how I use and continue to develop PBL in practice, focusing on two elements: designing and structuring a unit of learning, and managing inclusive teaching and learning in PBL.