TY - JOUR
T1 - Compulsory collisions and corporate interests in school rugby:
T2 - Challenging distortions in the framing of childhood injury
AU - Piggin, Joe
AU - Batten, John
AU - Parry, Keith
AU - Anderson, Eric
AU - White, Adam
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors were signatories of an open letter which recommended the removal of tackling and harmful aspects from school rugby in the UK. JB, KP and JP are members of the Acquired Brain Injury Research Network. AJW and KP are affiliated with the Concussion Legacy Foundation UK. AJW has previously received funding from the European Union Erasmus programme. He is co-founder of the Concussion Legacy Foundation UK and is co-director of Concussion Legacy Project. He is currently employed as the Head of Brain Health at the Professional Footballers’ Association.
Publisher Copyright:
© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2022. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.
PY - 2022/11/14
Y1 - 2022/11/14
N2 - This article examines how ‘framing’ is used to resist a proposal to remove rugby tackling from UK schools. It focuses on rugby tackling for UK school children, which is often a compulsory part of many schools’ curricula. Specifically, we explore the importance of framing in how the problem is described in various academic publications, how ideas about risk are articulated and how advocates themselves are represented. We show how the corporate interests of rugby governing bodies can become entangled with distortions about injury prevention. These distortions (or framing practices) include omitting arguments, conflating arguments, changing the argument, misrepresenting advocacy positions and skewing advocate identities. Next, the article demonstrates how a combination of recent advocacy, political interventions, research and cultural shifts appears to be changing perceptions about the risks associated with rugby tackling for children in school settings. In conclusion, we argue that while framing can be a useful strategy for policy advocates, there is value in paying attention to how framing is used by different stakeholder groups.
AB - This article examines how ‘framing’ is used to resist a proposal to remove rugby tackling from UK schools. It focuses on rugby tackling for UK school children, which is often a compulsory part of many schools’ curricula. Specifically, we explore the importance of framing in how the problem is described in various academic publications, how ideas about risk are articulated and how advocates themselves are represented. We show how the corporate interests of rugby governing bodies can become entangled with distortions about injury prevention. These distortions (or framing practices) include omitting arguments, conflating arguments, changing the argument, misrepresenting advocacy positions and skewing advocate identities. Next, the article demonstrates how a combination of recent advocacy, political interventions, research and cultural shifts appears to be changing perceptions about the risks associated with rugby tackling for children in school settings. In conclusion, we argue that while framing can be a useful strategy for policy advocates, there is value in paying attention to how framing is used by different stakeholder groups.
KW - Advocacy
KW - Child
KW - Interventions
KW - Policy
KW - Recreation / Sports
KW - School
KW - Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health
UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/9e78ce16-6ee7-3260-acfc-2225e95443be/
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85143498276&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1136/ip-2022-044775
DO - 10.1136/ip-2022-044775
M3 - Article
VL - 29
SP - 79
EP - 84
JO - Injury Prevention
JF - Injury Prevention
SN - 1353-8047
IS - 1
M1 - 044775
ER -