Drawing primarily from critical pedagogy, decoloniality, and relevant research on "home," we offer critical perspectives on how these areas of inquiry work in dialectical ways to inform our researcher/scholarly positionalities. Largely situated within autoethnographic methods, we link this work to basketball, and as players of the game,…

Context: Many athletic training programs are not meeting accreditation standards involving measures of student success, causing programs to be noncompliant with these standards and showing current and prospective students that their program may not prepare them for a successful career. Studies have shown that psychosocial factors, including…

Research on sports participation related to academic achievement among Black students in the United States has been limited to males. The purpose of this qualitative single case study was to explore how high school administrators and educators in two Kentucky school districts perceived the influence of athletic participation on Black female…

In the literature on Dual Careers (DC) there has been an ongoing debate on whether there is a trade-off between being an elite athlete and achieving academically. Is the time needed to compete at the highest level a barrier to academic achievement? Or can knowledge and expertise obtained from an elite sporting career be transferred into academic…

"Black men made up 2.4% of the undergraduate population at Power Five schools but comprised 55% of their football teams and 56% of their men's basketball teams" (Brenneman, 2018, p. 1). Despite the greater participation rates for college student-athletes, Black male student-athlete degree attainment still lags behind their Black male…

The purpose of this research is to examine factors influencing the academic success of student athletes participating in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA); a growing and largely unstudied group of students. This study uses institutional data collected for the NAIA's Return on Athletics® initiative in 2019-2020 as well…

With the reduction in the number of teachers who also coach, schools are hiring more coaches that are not teachers. For the non-teaching coach, fitting in with the educational staff can be difficult, especially when the coach is new to the school building. Some teachers have a belief that non-teaching sport coaches are there to play sports and win…

The student-athlete literature is rife with studies that examine the factors that appear to improve or inhibit academic or athletic performance. However, internal characteristics that may influence variations in performance have been understudied, and athletic performance tends to be examined separately from academic performance. This study…

Background: Sports related concussions continue to be a public health concern and improving reporting behavior a focus of educational programs. While educational programs have addressed changes in knowledge of concussion symptoms, it has been challenging to design educational programs which have lasting effects on reporting behavior. Aims: The…

To improve academic accountability and graduation rates of student-athletes among its member institutions, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) designed and implemented the Academic Progress Rate (APR) and the Division I Head Coaches Academic Progress Rate Portfolio (HCAPRP). The NCAA believed that the direct influence of the head…

College athletes face a difficult task of balancing their academic and athletic responsibilities while in higher education, which has only increased in difficulty in the recent past. In the past 20 years, the NCAA has passed numerous legislative acts increasing academic requirements to achieve and maintain eligibility, an effort to ensure better…

The relationship between university sponsored student's athletics and academic achievement has been an evolving trend of discussion both at the high school and college level. However, a dearth of literature illustrates this relationship at the college level. This study investigated the importance of college athletics and whether participation in…

The Academic Progress Rate (APR) of 34 sports was investigated to determine whether the top athletic teams performed significantly better "academically" compared to their bottom counterparts. A "p" value of 0.0029 revealed that top athletic teams academically outperformed bottom athletic teams. Further analysis showed the…

Student athletes face challenges that many of their traditional peers do not. Not only are athletes expected to perform in their sport, they're also required to achieve in the classroom, a dual hardship for a demographic already tackling the difficulties associated with non-traditional learning. But with athletics programs entrenched at many…

Parental involvement in student-athletes' lives is ubiquitous and important. Despite efforts of many to determine the best means for student-athletes to succeed academically, little is known about the relationship between levels of parent involvement and an athlete's ability to succeed academically. Having an involved, but not over-involved,…