2018 Volume 63 Issue 2 Pages 853-870
The development of reforms covering extracurricular sport activities at school is one of the mostimportant issues facing sports administration in Japan. Several measures are being discussed to rectify theproblems identified with such sport activities. In particular, it has been suggested that relationships withcomprehensive community sport club activities should be built in order to alleviate the burden on teachers,enhance expertise in sport instruction, and create suitable sport conditions for individual students. In Japan,however, there are not many existing examples of good relationships between extracurricular sport activitiesand comprehensive community sport clubs, probably because of disparity between the intentions of sportadministrations and those of schools (faculty members).
In this research, we conducted an interview survey of 6 former supervisors who had been engaged in sportadministration at local government level. They also had experience of being in charge of extracurricular sportactivities as school teachers and working as staff members in charge of facilitating comprehensive communitysport clubs. Analysis of their statements helped to clarify opinions and attitudes of administrators concerning thedevelopment of comprehensive community sport club activities: (1) Through the facilitation of comprehensiveclubs, the former supervisors gained much awareness about their own sport instruction. (2) The former supervisorsrealized that sport administration faces many dilemmas within the educational administrative organizations towhich it belongs, thus revealing the structure of conflicts within those organizations. (3) Although they indeed hadpositive opinions about building good relationships between extracurricular sport activities and comprehensivecommunity sport club, the former supervisors became reluctant to realize such relationships after they resumedworking in schools.
From the above findings, we conclude that an attitude of reluctance to normalize reform and follow-up existswithin sport administration. It can also be said that reform of extracurricular sport activities in Japan will notoccur as long as the current system of sport administration and occupational culture is sustained. In Japanesesport administration including local governments, we should positively consider appointing private citizensthrough whom efforts should be made to change the consciousness of administrative officials and schools (facultymembers) .
