Towards a culturally relevant sport pedagogy lessons learned from African Australian refugee-background coaches in grassroots football

There is a body of research that indicates the need for community-driven and culturally responsive pedagogies in sport-based interventions. There is much to learn from the pedagogical approaches and experiences of African Australian refugee-background coaches who work with refugee-background young people toward acceptance and affirmation of their cultural and racial identities. This paper explores African Australian refugee-background coaches’ pedagogies in working with African Australian refugee-background young people in a grassroots football programme in Melbourne. Participants included an African Australian refugee-background young woman and four coaches. Data collection spanned a six-month period and included observations and semi-structured interviews. The findings were analysed using Ladson-Billings’ [Ladson-Billings, G. (1995b). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465–491. https://doi.org/10.3102/00028312032003465; Ladson-Billings, G. (2009). The dreamkeepers : Successful teachers of African American children. Jossey-Bass Publishers; Ladson-Billings, G. (2014). Culturally relevant pedagogy 2.0: A.k.a. The Remix. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 74–84. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.84.1.p2rj131485484751] conceptualisation of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. The study identified three main themes. First, the coaches considered themselves ‘barrier breakers’: they were able to connect the African Australian refugee-background young people to different resources in and outside of sports contexts to develop their success in football and in life. Second, the coaches considered the sport programme ‘a family’ where they were willing to nurture and support cultural competence by sharing power with the participants and their community. Third, the coaches created spaces for young people to develop awareness that allowed them to critique some of the social inequities experienced. Future studies should continue to move beyond a focus on predominantly white and middle-class providers and coaches in sport-based interventions. By including and foregrounding the voices of coaches who have diverse experiences, more diverse cultural knowledges are validated, enabling the translation of this knowledge into more culturally responsive sport programmes.