A case study of the curriculum logic of a South African university degree programme in sports management and its appropriateness to the labour market
type: CreativeWork
description: Over the past 50 years, sport has undergone a process of commercialisation and professionalisation, and has become “big business”. It now requires adequately trained professionals to manage the daily operations of sport businesses. The question in which this research originated was: are universities able to provide the kind of education needed to equip managers with the knowledge and skills necessary to manage sport in South Africa? The specific aim of this study was to determine the curriculum logic of a selected South African university degree programme in sports management and its appropriateness to the labour market. There has been little research in the South African environment in terms of how sport management is taught. Several studies have, however, been done elsewhere, showing that there is a need for a systematic study of sport management in academia, that sport and business need to be studied congruently and that sport management curriculum should move away from the science of movement (Masteralexis et al., 2015; Skinner et al., 2015). Adopting a qualitative, case study approach, and after an initial stage of desk-top research, one South African university undergraduate programme in sport management was selected for indepth research. Data was collected by making use of the curriculum details found on-line in the university's yearbook, as well as by conducting one in-depth interview with a faculty staff member. Each of the modules across all three years of study, as well as the interview with the member of faculty were analysed, on two levels. In the first level analysis, the curriculum was analysed using international guidelines provided by sport management programme accreditation bodies in the United States which identify the core elements that should form part of a sport management curriculum. The second level of analysis draws on conceptual models from the field of curriculum studies to evaluate the curriculum logic of the chosen sport management curri…
abstract: Over the past 50 years, sport has undergone a process of commercialisation and professionalisation, and has become “big business”. It now requires adequately trained professionals to manage the daily operations of sport businesses. The question in which this research originated was: are universities able to provide the kind of education needed to equip managers with the knowledge and skills necessary to manage sport in South Africa? The specific aim of this study was to determine the curriculum logic of a selected South African university degree programme in sports management and its appropriateness to the labour market. There has been little research in the South African environment in terms of how sport management is taught. Several studies have, however, been done elsewhere, showing that there is a need for a systematic study of sport management in academia, that sport and business need to be studied congruently and that sport management curriculum should move away from the science of movement (Masteralexis et al., 2015; Skinner et al., 2015). Adopting a qualitative, case study approach, and after an initial stage of desk-top research, one South African university undergraduate programme in sport management was selected for indepth research. Data was collected by making use of the curriculum details found on-line in the university's yearbook, as well as by conducting one in-depth interview with a faculty staff member. Each of the modules across all three years of study, as well as the interview with the member of faculty were analysed, on two levels. In the first level analysis, the curriculum was analysed using international guidelines provided by sport management programme accreditation bodies in the United States which identify the core elements that should form part of a sport management curriculum. The second level of analysis draws on conceptual models from the field of curriculum studies to evaluate the curriculum logic of the chosen sport management curri…
author: Landman, Megan
keywords: sport education
date published: 2021
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:22:46Z
provider: University of Cape Town
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: School of Education

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/33754