Abstract:
Olympic education has been enacted in multiple countries, but has received scant attention in
the research literature. The existing studies on Olympic education are limited and tend to be
descriptive, rather than analytical or even critical. Going beyond the dominant research foci on
the effectiveness, practices and outcomes of Olympic education, this thesis critically explores
the implementation of Olympic education as a requirement for winning the bid for the 2022
Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in China. Specifically, it draws on the Foucauldian
notion of governmentality to examine the rationalities and technologies that schools and
stakeholders employ in their conduct of Olympic education, as well as the impact Olympic
education has on students’ and teachers’ subjectivities.
The study itself is a critical ethnography of two primary schools in Beijing, China. My
evidence was gathered from a range of sources: observations within and outside of the
classrooms; note taking; conversations with school personnel and external providers; and
documentary evidence, such as the government policy announcements, school websites, and
media releases. The evidence was analysed via a Foucauldian-style discourse analysis, where
I critically examined the rationalities, technologies, and subjects of government.
The findings suggest that the Chinese government employed two key technologies to
achieve its ambition of improving China’s international profile through Olympic education:
policy announcements and outsourcing. Private stakeholders, such as winter sports equipment
companies, adopted the technologies of floor winter sports equipment and expertise to achieve
their profit-making aims. These technologies indicated the dominance of a hybrid socialistneoliberal rationality of Chinese government, which contains authoritarian and neoliberal ideas
and strategies. In contrast to prior studies, which tended to portray schools, students, and
teachers as disinterested participants in Olympic education, my ethnographic research
illuminates how schools considered Olympic education to be a type of performance whereby
they employed certain technologies for self-promotion in the public education system.
Similarly, students and teachers both exercised power within the discursive practices and
technologies of Olympic education to actualise their own personal ambitions.
Overall, I argue that Olympic education is a technology for disparate stakeholders and
individuals to achieve their governmental aims, and call for a rethinking of what Olympic
education – and Olympic education research – is, or could be. Olympic education is not simply
a neutral educational programme, nor one that necessarily promotes Olympic values. Rather,
it serves as a promotional programme within which actors pursue their self-interest, and where
students’ and teachers’ subjectivities are shaped in (un)predictable ways.