Building Bridges or Gates between Game and Play?

Gilles Lecocq
Catholic Institute of Paris

 https://doi.org/10.53656/phil2025-01-02

Abstract. This essay proposes an exploration of two distinct styles of cultural activities: one centered on individual engagement, exemplified by play, and another emphasizing comparative performance, exemplified by game. The primary aim is to examine how an unexpected creative power facilitates emancipatory somatic education to delineate the relational dynamics between adults and youth, which form the bedrock of well-being education. Additionally, it seeks to elucidate the correlation between the waning influence of stereotypes and two key psychosocial concepts: Compassionate Assertiveness and Authentic Resilience.

To achieve these objectives, the article employs two methodological approaches. Firstly, it advocates for grounded theories to foster both intra- and interpersonal dialogues. Secondly, it underscores the importance of retrospective and prospective dimensions facilitated by interactions with adolescents and adults. These methodological dynamics collectively foster authentic strategies for organizational change within educational and sports contexts, encouraging meaningful interactions between young people and adults.

Keywords: compassionate assertiveness; authentic resilience; comprehensive approach; grounded theory; adolescent-adult relation; gamified sport

 

1. Introduction

During the summer of 2024, several generations of spectators crossed paths on the Olympic and Paralympic stages to forge shared memories. Once the lights of the Olympic and Paralympic arenas went out, as autumn 2024 approached, adults and teenagers returned to their evolving ecological niches, where it is difficult to remember what was, a few weeks earlier, reality, illusion and imagination, and where some new perspectives for action and thoughts are transferable from the sporting venues (Woodley of Menie 2021).

What then remains of the staging of Olympic and Paralympic spectacles when adult coaches and adolescent athletes find themselves confronted with a cardinal educational virtue of Olympic education: welcoming new people to a sports venue, where rites, norms and symbols already exist? This confrontation stages, between conformism, acculturation and deviance, psychosocial processes which, following grandiose shows, challenge sports organizations that are reluctant to welcome people who do not have the same cultural and symbolic capital on their territories. Following the summer of 2024, it is as if sports clubs prefer to promote a privatization of sports venues to develop a dominant influence of self-segregation on the social mix and to promote the “keep to themselves” as obvious evidence taken for granted (Kilvington 2024). This is what leads us to elaborate several questions: Are sports arenas places where bridges and gates distinguish gamified and playful situations, between younger and older generations? How to manage a border where risk of stigmatization and will of openness for all face each other (Atkinson, Blandy 2013)?

However, like the three Princes of Serendip who discover fortuitous clues on their way to forge a skill in adapting to the most unexpected circumstances, the irruption of a Teenage Generation 2024 at the door of sports organizations questions their skills to adapt to unexpected situations (Vuong 2022). In this respect, the age of adolescence is a merciless analyzer for sports organizations that forget their educational roles, when teenagers refuse to share the self-evident things that cement habits and customs, which are rarely questioned. The arrival in the fall of 2024 of an unexpected Adolescent Generation within sports organizations causes this cement to burst, especially where the authority of an adult-coach is questioning, until the moment when he or she agrees to take on the trappings of an adult-educator. A latency period is necessary for an identity transition to become effective in order to make an adult an educator-coach. A temporary disorganization of sports organizations is a fundamental step, before access to a “well-being together” shared and accepted by adults and adolescents emerges. In addition, it is necessary to accept the agreements and disagreements instilled by these overlappers of borders who burst into sports organizations and allow a meeting between antagonistic and yet complementary worlds. In this text, an architectural metaphor serves as a support for a hypothesis that appeals to adults who firmly hold the reins of sports organizations: they build bridges to allow people to play together, despite their differences, in competitive situations.

2. Welcoming adolescent newcomers to sports territories: a cultural and generational conflict has to be assumed by adults-coaches-educators

Physical activity in the areas of sport clubs have proven to be an efficient tool in the process of improving a culture of narcistic self-retribution. However, adults and adolescents counterbalance this idealized vision when they find themselves on the same educational scene where physical activities for sports purposes are developed. It thus appears that, if everything works perfectly in theory, the realities of some practices are another matter. In this essay, we propose to focus first on the gaps that exist between the representations that adults and adolescents make about the educational virtues of physical practices. Secondly, we question the relationships that are to be favored between a theoretical approach to a psychosocial phenomenon and the realities of human behavior that structure it (Lecocq, Andrieu, Agostinucci, Lorente, Legendre 2022). To do this, the conflictual and harmonious dimensions of stereotypes need to be summoned in their evolutionary dynamics in order to question the relationship styles that adults and adolescents feature on sports scenes. It is then an opportunity to identify the psychosocial processes that allow understanding how the twilight of certain stereotypes leads to the emergence of new stereotypes in order to serve a shared well-being between adolescents, coaches, educators and teachers. Access to shared well-being, within a social organization is the result of temporary imbalances that favor the establishment of equilibriums that are themselves provisional. Several processes are at work to promote a heuristic and transformative device of stereotypes that are at the service of individuals and social organizations:

– the one where active non-legitimized minorities instill new habits of living together within a social organization and challenge some orthodox stereotypes;

– the one where a confrontation between heterodox and orthodox stereotypes provokes the emergence of a provisionally pacified compromise;

– the one where active minorities that have become legitimate develop new forms of action that will become stereotypes for the younger generations.

Moreover, in spite of evolving stereotypes that structure the norms to be valued within sports cultures, an educational masterpiece is hopefully never achieved. Therefore, this essay proposes to specify some contours of this reconfiguration by staging two major actors who make a path of sporting life the supports of a double existential challenge:

– That of teenagers who experience on sports stages the achievement of some fundamental needs. First, the need to feel recognized in their areas of excellence by the adults who have authority over them. Second, the need to free themselves from this authority in order to experience the sensations of autonomy. Third, the need to feel safe in order to feel a recognition as a singular person within an educational community. What is at stake for these adolescents is to be able to combine the joy of intensely experiencing a socio-psycho-physical effort for oneself, as well as during relationships of competition and cooperation with others.

– That of adults who are authoritative on teenagers to accompany them on the paths excellence while offering them the opportunity of being themselves both in moments that bring joy and that generate frustration. What is at stake for these adults is to be able to distinguish their relationship to authority in order to develop a consistent sense of competence with adolescents who are in search of secure psychosocial autonomy.

To listen to adolescents’ and adults’ voices is first to identify how adolescents develop some specific skills to practice physical activity for competitive, fun and/or educational purposes and their feelings about how adults accompany them. Then, secondly, it is necessary to take into account the ways in which adults evaluate their own skills in managing adolescents in search of self-assertion, while they aspire to develop a positive image of their identities as educators and coaches. To do this, we will focus on the particular moments when teenagers challenge and question commonly accepted stereotypes and participate in the emergence of some new ethical perspective against normalization of behavior. By embodying new values through their moral agency, adolescents offer the opportunity to identify the different facets of biopower that punctuate the rhythms of sporting life, beyond a logic of assigning places (Lyon 2018). In other words, it is about understanding how an unexpected vicarious creative power enables emancipatory somatic education to identify what are the styles of relationships between adults and adolescents, which sustain the foundation of a well-being education (Musseau, Zittoun, Clot 2022). Two psychosocial concepts are the roots of this kind of education: the Compassionate Assertiveness and the Authentic Resilience.

Beyond the production of performances, developing a state of inner freedom is an educational virtue that supports some consistent proactive intergenerational dialogue between adults and adolescents (Rudd, Woods, Correia, Seifert, David 2021). Listening to these intergenerational voices is a strategy that allows cracking the nut from the inside, to innovate from the ground up in highly constrained systems (Irrmann 2022).

3. Listening to what teenagers and adults are feeling when they meet each other on sports areas

The present essay favors the establishment of dialogues between several convergent designs by demonstrating the value of combining inductive and deductive reasoning in a hybrid approach to reveal some grounded themes. These themes are then mutually enhanced one another. Mixed analyses necessitate combining some critical realist paradigmatic assumptions and stances. Here, the critical realist notions of abduction and retroduction are crucial (Danermark, Ekström, Karlsson 2019). These notions concern the recognition of data beyond an immediate theoretical framework (abduction) and the reconceptualization of theory based on such analysis (retroduction). Therefore, such an approach should be a theory-generative, rather than a theory-confirmatory (Creswell, Plano Clark 2017). Grounded theory starts with an inductive logic but moves into abductive reasoning to account for some surprises, anomalies, or puzzles. All of these four logics are simultaneously in play. It is in connection with these four logics that this essay proposes to give a voice to adults and adolescents who meet on the same sports areas so that they can evaluate the stereotypes that govern their actions and beliefs. This is an essential step so that adults and adolescents become aware of the unknowable and the unthought that structure the privileged relational modes that are at work in the territories of sports venues. To this end, three dynamics are an opportunity for adults and adolescents to engage in the way of reflexivity (Kendellen, Camiré 2021):  

– A dynamic that allows adults and teenagers to become the narrators of their ways of existing within sports territories. This process is an opportunity for each person to share experiences and to develop jointly a collective and a personal voice.

– A dynamic that gives teenagers and adults the opportunity to take on the role of playwright and to recognize themselves as authors of a personal journey that is part of a community of destiny.

– A dynamic that makes it possible to adjust an optimal scaffolding that allows adolescents and adults to be part of an approach that gives space to social interactions mediated by a bodily practice.

The Harmonious Adult-Adolescent Relation Development Model is a transdisciplinary approach that focuses on promoting strengths and views a person as having resources to develop rather than problems to be fixed (Leavy 2019). This model is part of a positive perspective, which accompany the biopsychosocial development of adolescents and adults, who are in a privileged relationship to develop a complementary and shared education. The life skills process is an ongoing approach by which a person further develops some personal assets in one or more life domains beyond the context where it was originally learned (Pierce, Gould, Camiré 2017). During this process, the relation between an adolescent and an adult is always at the center of the transfer process from one life context to another. Thus, the coach-athlete relationship is a symphony of several voices that develops as the expression of the needs of some resonates with the expression of the needs of others (Kendellen, Camiré 2019).

4. Beyond segregation in Sports: A Concerto in three tempos, where Joy and Play are the roots of an Authentic Adult-Adolescent Relation

The essential function of the approach that promotes the sharing of experiences between adults and adolescents is to distinguish between stereotypes that prevent compassionate coexistence and those that promote the coexistence of differences within sports venues. Listening to the voices of adults and adolescents allow to identify two competing experiential postures that are at work to nourish Adult-Adolescent relationships, that are sometimes lively and sometimes deadly: the power of inhibition, which leads to an impediment to action, and the power of creation, which makes it possible to make thinkable what seems unexpected. It is in connection with these two states of mind that adults and adolescents experience the joint recognition of an intrapsychic dialogue and a transgenerational dialogue. A concerto in three tempos guides by the joy of playing seem to be the roots of an Authentic Adult-Adolescent Relation that develops on the sports and school stages.

Moreover, the dynamic of these three tempos reflects both a collusion and collision between two visions of the meanings of a physical practice. A vision where the pleasant dimensions of a socio-psycho-motor game are valued around a hedonic or even eudemonic motivation where it is the practitioner who defines their own rules of operation and a vision where the practitioner is obliged to respect rules of which the practitioner is not the authors. Then, is it possible to learn while having fun through the Play and through the Game? What is the difference between playing and gaming? Three tempos structure the life story of these teenagers who are not always welcome in sports clubs.

4.1. First tempo: Are you coming to play with Us? Yes, I will comply with what you expect of me! 

What is staging in this first movement of the Experiential Concerto experienced by teenagers is the way in which an “adult culture” attracts an adolescent by giving him/her the hope that he/she will be excellent. In an allegro mode, the teenager accepts to live a personal life as a stranger, while forgetting to be authentic! This first moment of acculturation undergone by a teenager within sports and educational organizations is an opportunity for him/her to experience the need to put the pleasures of free play on hold, in order to conform to rules where conformity prevails over creativity. A search for conformity is accompanied by a submission to social desirability and a tendency to build relationships with others essentially oriented towards the logic of competitive comparison where the more than perfect is launched as a dogma that must be respected.

A teenager discovers an environmental trap that allows a person to feel a false conditional freedom. The acceptance of a life perceived as alien is therefore akin to a process of self-submission that is associating in a loss of power to act. Moreover, the feeling of being included in a collective develops conditionally with the desire to be recognized, mainly through performances achieved. However, this form of need that promotes conditional inclusion is fortunately doomed to be only a stage in a person’s integral development during adolescence. When the meaning of existence becomes powerless, the time has come for adolescents to experience the authentic emotional reality of an inner dialogue that expresses a need for conversion. This need resonates by a feeling of unease experienced by teachers and coaches. They find themselves destabilized by adolescent behaviors that they consider as a challenge to destroy their institutional authority and professional skills. A misunderstanding then sets in where adults find themselves helpless in the face of the feeling that they are no longer authoritative. Then, a confusion is emerging among adults about the educational roles they have to fulfill. Opposing adult authority is a path to access to an assertiveness that allows a teenager to say NO!

4.2. Second tempo: Are you coming to play with Us? No, I do not feel the need to meet your needs anymore!

What is staged in this second movement of the Experiential Concerto experienced by adolescents is the way in which they, after having developed a freely consented submission dare to say NO, following an event in which he/she felt betrayed. An act of courage is necessary for teenagers to embark on a quest for truth that involves an identity conversion where submission to authority gives way to a desire to assert oneself beyond playing a game whose rules seem confiscated by adults. A confrontation with gamification requirements head-on the pleasure and displeasure of practicing a physical activity and confronts a major form of motivation: a self-determined motivation. A life shaken up by the need to find optimal social distancing awakens an attachment to authentic life.

Nevertheless, the conversion process is an invitation to let go and an opportunity to seize a new situation, to allow a metamorphosis to be born. It is then up to the person to feel the combined effects of the self-reflection and the self-surpassing, beyond a path where it was previously only possible to adapt or fail. During a creative experience associated with the experiences of a conversion, a metamorphosis of the person results in a diffuse sensation that allows him/her to admit that a hitherto masked force supports him/her, despite a temporary sensation of existential lack. This is the moment, when a person is ready to agree to make an educational work in his/her own name. The fear of the unknown is replaced by the hope of discovering new possibilities. The principles of hope allow the emergence of the unexpected and the improbable.

At the heart of a critical situation, adults and adolescents, around the following question, deconstruct training habits jointly: how can training strategies be modified when adolescents question the roles of coaches? This question comes at a time when research on the meaning of existence within a transgenerational human collective is becoming a priority. A salutary way out of the crisis will emerge when adults whose professional skills are questioned by adolescents will be able to assert themselves firmly on their temporary incompetence to meet the needs of adolescents. Faced with a need for autonomy expressed by adolescents, it is then up to adults to make an identity transition with regard to the image they have of themselves, in order to accept the identity transition that an adolescent is experiencing.

4.3. Third tempo: Are you coming to play with Us? Yes, if you accept me as I am!

What is staged in this third movement of the Experiential Concerto experienced by teenagers is the way in which they show assertiveness to express himself/herself in the first person singular and to explicit, how their specific needs can be a richness to develop a consistent identity. When an adolescent is no longer looking for cultural over-conformity within an educational organization a new meaning arises: to express the joy of claiming the recognition of a specific place within an organization. A search for authenticity in the face of the gaze of others thus leads an adolescent to affirm a vocation to be and to do what he/she aspires to become. Authenticity is part of skills that infiltrates a person’s psychosocial identity, when they feel accepted in what differentiates them from others.

An over-surpassing of oneself is then based on another being who does what she/he says and who says what she/he has to do because it is necessary, because it is useful, because it is true. The courage of truth will then reveal that the human being is no longer perceived only as a producer of social performance, but also as a person who best deals with some personal conflicts, without alienating a human creative potential. The essence of emancipation reveals itself in listening to one’s own physical, psychological and cultural needs in order to connect with an inner personal world. It is through free will that an adolescent will demonstrate authority when he/she allows himself/herself to make an identity transition by interpreting in his/her own way the tasks prescribed by an educator. It is then the moment to develop a specific professional identity transition, to experience the joy of fostering an inclusive education that turns an existential crisis into an opportunity for the growth of an educational approach, shared between adolescents and adults.

Thus, an adult confronted with some professional skills has a good reason to bring a professional commitment to life: to accept to ignore provisionally what is essential in an educational act. A questioning then becomes an opportunity to distinguish the priority foundations from what is to be crucial to transmit during an educational action. It is therefore up to the educator, the one who works in schools and/or sports venues, to trust some innovative skills that value transgenerational dialogues and that are at the service of an educational act to move forward together with confidence.

4.4. We move forward when we move together with confidence!

The conflictual and asymmetrical relationships, which exist between athletes and coaches, promote access to mutual listening that transforms a conflict into an assumed and recognized assertiveness and an asymmetry into a compassionate equanimity. The gradual disappearance of a stereotype obeys multiple temporalities that stage a letting go where a cacophonous concerto can precede a euphonious concerto. In this respect, a cacophony is not a relational failure between several people but as an indicator reminding us that in a relationship between several people it is essential to take into consideration the rhythm of each one in order to bring an intrapsychic dialogue into harmony with an interpsychic dialogue. The change of habits and the disappearance of a stereotype result from a complex process: on the one hand, the esteem that a person possesses and, on the other hand, the way some environments look at a person who changes some habits and distances himself/herself from a stereotype perceived as deadly.

Thus, from assertiveness to equanimity, listening to each other at the same time and on the same educational scene, where the virtue of excellence is sometimes magnified and sometimes questioned, promotes a reciprocal recognition of the vulnerability of people socially recognized as excellent and the strengths of people who are socially stigmatized as vulnerable (Slote 2007). An educational act then becomes the crucible of an approach where the acceptance of winners and losers, insiders and outsiders, normal people and deviant people testifies to an authentic coexistence of differences. This reveals a bipolar dimension: first, an irreducible generational and cultural difference and, second, an equity in the recognition of the added benefit that a person brings through his originality and uniqueness, within a human collective.

The period of adolescence is a crucial momentum when the authenticity of a human being is in competition with the need to play a sometimes inauthentic role within a human collective. The authenticity is associated with the feeling of being recognized, competent and safe. Thus, the notion of authenticity has to be associated with that of autonomy and assertiveness. Affirming an authentic identity in the form of a coming-out is an essential step for an identity transition accepted by a sustainable environment. However, a step prior to coming-out is essential for the well-being of a teenager. This stage allows a teenager to feel a sense of inner peace and serenity at the sight and contact of their fundamental bodily experiences. This stage named a coming-in is an essential moment to allow an identity transition recognized as singular and unique. It is then a transcultural migration and an endless passionate journey to explore otherness and discover a common humanity (Cools, Lecocq 2023).

Then, several perspectives accompany an authentic process to provoke the twilight of stereotypes:

– Assertiveness and empowerment are two psychosocial virtues, which authorize adolescents and adults to share the richness of the facets of self-determination, resilience and optimism (Ryan, Deci 2017).

– Self-Compassion is a fundamental pillar that allows adolescents and adults to develop a shared eudemonic well-being (Neff 2023).

– The experience of compassion and determination is close to a state of frustration, whether it stems from failure, feelings of personal inadequacy, or life challenges in a more general sense. Self-compassion and self-determination take a nurturing form to meet some needs to change, especially when a self-acceptance is present (Inwood, Ferrari 2018).

The sense of common humanity that is inherent to self-compassion and self-determination helps to feel connected to, rather than separate from, others. That is what can stop a tendency to narrow a skill of understanding and distorts reality. Self-compassion and self-determination fuel the achievement of life challenges, which is part of experiences that everyone can share. When a common humanity relies persons, these feel less isolated and alone (Kuchar, Neff, Mosewich 2023). Thus, the elimination of the stereotypes that punctuate an educational path is a dynamic that emerges from the complex relationships that link adolescents and educators in an intergenerational dialogue which inscribe their speeches and actions in a strategy of change, desired because it is shared. Under the yoke of inner freedom and consistent empowerment, a path opens up to witness the promotion of a Universal Design for Learning.

5. Inner Freedom and Empowerment: Two secure states of mind to develop a Universal Design for Learning

When the meaning of a life is questioned, the search for one’s own place lies within the necessity to explore areas of a yet to be exploited identity. The person is giving himself/herself permission to be himself/herself by giving a new sense to his life and a new life to his/her senses. Entering in the Authentic Self is indeed a movement when an overflow of emotion can give a voice to intimate thoughts allowing a person to feel free to accept his creative potential and fundamental needs (Winnicott 1965). It is then an opportunity for a person to feel a life whose status transforms from one that has an under-inclusive status into an over-inclusive status (Lecocq 2020):

– Trust in what happens at a time when the expectation disappears.

– Acceptance to walk in a u-topical and u-chronic space-time.

– Revelation of an inner free will that transforms the fatigue of no longer being I into a state of self-excitement.

– Feeling to be all-one without being alone.

However, this state of overinclusion indicates a loss of contours in feeling, thinking and moving. Therefore, a lack of the ability to distinguish between the relevant and the irrelevant makes a person indecisive in their choices. Indecision is a state of mind coupled with hesitation that allows a person to recognize that he/she needs to take more time than expected to focus on new life choices. If experiential growth creates scarcity of time, the eternal return to a state of blissful peace develops a synchronicity wherein the person happily finds himself unable to control all the clocks and forces to let go. After all, delusion represents a change in meaning that might not seem so strange (McKenna 2017). In that way, between resistance and letting go, the person undergoes a conversion of identity where it is impossible for him/her to conform to temporalities that have become alien to him/her. The moment has come for him/her to be part of a dynamic where a new flexible link between the I and the We becomes possible (Honneth 2008).

As such, intergenerational relationship is highlighting as a key guiding principle. It focuses on the learner, structured support, autonomy and celebration of diversity through the quest of a universal psycho-pedagogy (Sewell, Kennett, Pugh 2022). Beyond differences and stereotypes, what is immutable in the search of universal way of education is the richness of the dialogues and controversies, which allow adolescents to express to educators their feelings with complete serenity. Empowerment and inner freedom, self-determination and self-compassion are not only theoretical concepts, which explain some twilights of stereotypes in the fields of several educational contexts. Thus, after a twilight experienced as both a liberation and a dark night that puts a person in contact with his inner world, the hope of a dawn full of salutogenic perspectives is necessary. The dawn of a pleasant life, where a dancing mind and a thinking body dialogue each other to develop a bodily ecology sustain an eudemonic motivation which combines intimate and universal dimensions that make up a human being (Diener, Pressman, Hunter, Delgadillo-Chase et al. 2017).

6. Conclusions

Faced with sporting and educational spaces and times punctuated by forms of sociality that are constantly being reconstructed, adults and adolescents have the power to discuss together about some essential experiences that can inhibit some intuitions and prevent some fulfilling perspectives. Understanding what adolescents experience when they leave the status of child to take on the status of adult is a moment that can inspire some learning communities to empower everyone to take care of themselves and others. For that, embracing a culture of lifelong learning requires taking into account places where a co-constructed knowledge, according to an intercultural and intergenerational dynamic, reveals around the following question: How to create an agile learning ecosystem, which is adaptive to all persons’ needs in the face of shifting societal challenges?

Our hope is that the potential of collective intelligences and learnings may profit from this seminal question to set the bases of the alignment needed to assure positive outcomes (Hannon, Peterson 2021). The life story of adolescents is building with chapters where a sport-education diptych constantly has to learn from the triptych acculturation-inclusion-emancipation. It is an educational opportunity to combine the intimacy of some singular storylines and the immensity of some sporting and educational universes. The dialogue between the intimate and the universal is thus a plea for sports and educational venues to accept to become some crucial third places for intercultural and intergenerational dialogues. The time has then come to think of a theory of the adolescents and the educators in conversion who agree to converse in themselves, about their relations to the present, past and future times.

Promoting the twilight of stereotypes in the fields of sport is a process intricately linked to a broader societal transformation. From altering social climates to changing clubs’ dynamics, this essay is oriented to overcoming stereotypes and instilling acceptance. Societal shifts, coupled with strategic clubs initiatives, are essential in ushering in a future defined by equality, equanimity, inclusion, and a healthier community. For that, it is necessary to propose some challenges, which promote inclusion in practice:

– The understanding of the twilight of some stereotypes demands a multifaceted approach, spanning education, encouragement, strategic group dynamics, and the celebration of achievements. While challenges persist, the evolving landscape underscores the need for collaborative efforts to foster a more equitable and inclusive environment across the realm of sports’ areas.  

– Empowering young generations is a priority strategy to assist to the twilight of stereotypes which prevent a person from developing a sense of eudemonic well-being. Collaborative efforts, proactive strategies, and educational initiatives are pivotal in realizing a more inclusive and equitable educational environment for all.

While there is an awareness of these challenges, some perspectives of inclusion need a valorization. Thus, aligning them with transformative oriented approaches, it is appropriate to associate to a vision of inclusion that conceptualizes adolescents and educators not only as data sources. In fact, a recognition of them as being an intrinsic part of a collective humanity is an opportunity for them to assert as people who are not simply determined by their cultural affiliations. They are also the authors of innovations that make their cultural affiliations original. In this, they are the persons most concerned to be heard to create a more equitable, just and human world. Listening to the voices of those who bring sports venues to life is a perspective that is not within our sole competence, but is also not beyond our power. It is never too late to be aware about the quality of the relationships we have with ourselves and with others. To do this, it is no longer a question of disposing of others but of hearing them and responding to them (Rosa 2019).

Bridging the twilight of stereotypes with the dawn of a pleasant life is an opportunity to create a slack wire between a serious game and an autotelic play. However, the development of skills on the sports fields is enriching by a mix of the two forms of learning used by a child and then a teenager in the following way: Be a player and become a gamer. Such a motto carries many stereotypes that make educational scenes places of struggle between what is serious and what is futile, what provides joy and what creates pain. Beyond the fact that the educational relationship is privileged as the paragon that promotes the twilight of some few stereotypes, those who demonize the coexistence of play and game on the same educational stage deserve special attention.

To personalize a game design and a play design, gamified experiences in a learning context and playful experiences in a learning context, the psychological, cultural and somatic characteristics of the persons are essential. It is an opportunity to change the way to look at the pleasant aspects that are associated with the practice of a game and the serious dimensions that are associated with the practice of play. This change of perspective is necessary insofar as the playful dimensions of the latest generation of games, both in the extracurricular context (Schleiner 2017) and in the sports context provide players and gamers with the pleasure to perform. Thus an innovative ecological dynamics framework allows a person to develop some affordances offered by a cultural environment to allow an adolescent to adapt to it, in order to reveal potentialities that have not yet been actualized. This notion of adaptation presupposes that an educational device proposed by an educator offers an adolescent the power to act and a power to choose with equity. Thus, fairness provides opportunities for individuals to display their talents when educators co-design rules that are flexible and sensitive to this requirement. Sensitivity and flexibility are roots of several facets of the human phenomenon. The one where compassion and assertiveness are correlated, the one where resilience reveals a sustainable well-being as a transcultural art and the one where an embodied spirituality attests to what links universal education and self-education (Benn, Pfister, Jawad et al. 2011). In the midst of local, continental and global political challenges and leadership changes the focus on uniting efforts for Peace and Human Development and the importance of educational values has become paramount. The twilight of stereotypes and the dawn of a meaningful life are two landmarks to place the triptych sport-education-health at the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.

At the end of this text, a hopeful path is to be open in several sports’ cultures, mainly with the innovations developed by adolescents who are discovering the joy of practicing a physical activity. This practice allows them to create an incredible wealth: the ability to create, innovate and interact with flexibility, tolerance and generosity. However, inventing vicarious solutions requires adopting changes in some points of view.  In fact, the irruption of new people into sports cultures, far from distorting them, encourages the opening of a debate intended to break the bottleneck caused by overly conformist ways of thinking. Then, a vicarious perspective is not only the substitution of one process for another (Berthoz 2017). It is also a path to feel free to accept a multitude of transgenerational way of life in sports venues.

To do this, it is necessary to remind the adults who hold the reins of sports organizations that it is not enough to build bridges to allow a sporting humanity to fully live a shared living together. It is essential to be vigilant about the functions of the gates that are built at both ends of a bridge. Between a bridge and a door, it is up to sports leaders to accept to play a double role: those who separate the connected and those who connect the separate (Simmel 1994).

 

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Dr. Gilles Lecocq, Emeritus Professor
ORCID iD: 0000-0003-3501-9839
French Society of Philosophy of Sport
Sport Psychologist
Research Unit “Religion, Culture and Society” (EA 7403)
Fragility and Institutions Research Team
Catholic Institute of Paris
21, Rue d’Assas, 75006 Paris, France
E-mail: gilleslecocq26@gmail.com

 

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