Call for papers n. 200 (2026)

2026-02-16

Sports Practice and the World of Sports Associations.
For a pedagogy of experience, embodiment, care, and freedom in associative contexts

Sports practice, understood as an embodied and situated experience, constitutes a privileged domain for personal development and a highly symbolic educational dispositif. Within sports associations, the body takes shape as a site of experience and relationship, a space and place of learning and meaning-making: through movement, processes of subjectivation are activated, identities are shaped, forms of coexistence are learned, and modes of participation in community life are experienced.

With reference to the Deweyan perspective on experience, which sees the subject dynamically interacting with the environment (Dewey, 1938), sport practiced within sports associations can be understood as a context of transformative learning, in which the body in action becomes an opportunity for reflexivity and growth. This view engages in dialogue with phenomenological pedagogical epistemology (Bertolini, 1988) and with the concept of transformative learning (Mezirow, 2000): the former invites us to interpret education as an intentional process rooted in lived experience; the latter emphasizes the critical-reflective value of educational practices.

The logic to which sport is often subjected—mere technical and performance-based exercise—can be overcome by envisioning sport as a complex educational practice capable, thanks to professionals trained in educational perspectives, of influencing individuals’ biographies in terms of openness to possibility. This potential, however, is conditioned by reductionist dynamics: the body viewed solely in its functionality, the failure to respect rights—particularly those of minors—and the growing bureaucratization and economic instrumentalization of sports organizations risk impoverishing its educational value. Not infrequently, there is a lack of awareness of sport’s educational significance—something that cannot be taken for granted—which risks transforming sports practice into a predominantly training-oriented dispositif.

Pedagogy is therefore called to undertake both a critical and generative task: to question the educational and formative meaning of sporting action, freeing it from purely economic, instrumental, and performance-driven logics. Dialogue with Sport and Exercise Sciences—academically strained, though not interrupted, by the relocation of key disciplinary sectors into the biomedical area—can contribute to a deeper understanding of embodied learning processes, by adopting corporeality as a fundamental pedagogical category and movement and sport as spaces of educational care (Mortari, 2015), that is, practices oriented toward attentiveness to others, responsibility, and the promotion of generative possibilities.

Within this framework, sporting experience can also be interpreted as a potential practice of freedom (Freire, 1970), insofar as it fosters processes of voice, critical awareness, and active participation, thereby counteracting forms of passive adaptation and the reproduction of inequalities. The Capabilities Approach (Sen, 1999; Nussbaum, 2011), particularly in Nussbaum’s elaboration, recognizes sport as a fruitful domain, conceiving it as a space in which to develop substantial freedoms—opportunities to choose and act freely. In sports contexts, and even more so in associative ones, individuals can acquire bodily, relational, and ethical capabilities essential for leading a life of value.

From this integrated perspective, sports associations and, more broadly, sports organizations (Promotion Bodies, Federations, and the Olympic Committee itself) can emerge as educational contexts and communities of practice (Sennett, 2008), provided they operate under the sign of educational intentionality. They can represent protected spaces in which individuals may freely experiment, including learning to confront error and render it sustainable; contexts in which to work on personal biography while also cultivating collective belonging and dynamics of recognition and inclusion; spaces in which decisive processes of agency unfold, contributing to the construction of educational communities and the promotion of active citizenship.

This monographic issue aims to gather contributions of empirical research, theoretical reflection, and practice analysis that, explicitly adopting a pedagogical perspective grounded in experience, care, and freedom, in dialogue with Sport and Exercise Sciences, explore the role of associative sports practice as a complex and transformative educational and formative experience. The objective is twofold: on the one hand, to critically deconstruct performance-driven rhetorics and implicit educational models in sport; on the other, to outline theoretical horizons and pedagogical frameworks capable of supporting processes of human development, emancipation, and the construction of educational communities.

Thematic Areas for Further Exploration

  • Sports practice as transformative educational experience

  • The coach as pedagogical mediator of experience

  • Agency, motivation, and developmental trajectories in sport

  • Sports associations as generative contexts and spaces of inclusion

  • Sport and educational vulnerability

  • Sports associations as territorial educational communities

  • Gender, interculturality, and educational justice

  • Rights and inclusion

  • Initial and continuing education of sports practitioners

  • Associative sport between volunteerism and professionalization

  • Educational and ethical responsibility of associative sport

Deadlines –“Pampaedia” - Issue no. 200/2026

  • Submission of the abstract: Authors are requested to submit a Word file containing an abstract of approximately 600 (six hundred) characters, including spaces, in both Italian and English, together with relevant keywords, full name of the Author, institutional affiliation, and institutional email address.
    The abstract must be sent by 15 March 2026 to:
    donatella.lombello@unipd.it; carla.xodo@unipd.it; antonio.borgogni@unibg.it; pampaedia.aspei@gmail.com.

Notification of acceptance or non-acceptance of the abstract will be sent to the Author by email by 25 March 2026.

  • Submission of the full paper: The full manuscript, in Word format, must include: abstract (in Italian and English), related keywords, full name of the Author (and, in the case of co-authored papers, the name of each Author, with specification of the section written by each), institutional affiliation, and institutional email address.
    The paper, between 25,000 (twenty-five thousand) and a maximum of 35,000 (thirty-five thousand) characters, including spaces, must be submitted by 30 April 2026 to:
    donatella.lombello@unipd.it; carla.xodo@unipd.it; antonio.borgogni@unibg.it; pampaedia.aspei@gmail.com.

  • By 25 June 2026: completion of the issue (table of contents, etc.), ready to be sent to Pensa Multimedia.

  • Publication date: 30 June 2026.

All contributions will undergo a double-blind peer review process.
Deadline for submission of any revisions requested by the referees: 30 May 2026

 

LINK TO EDITORIAL STANDARDS download