Learning of and Through Emotions. The Educational Specificity of the Sport Context

This paper aims to provide arguments for reconsidering the specificity of the sports experience as a context where emotions play a fundamental role from an educational perspective. The starting point of this work comes from the philosophical statement which characterizes sport as ‘a sweet tension of uncertainty of outcome’. It seems evident that sport deals with emotions both for spectators and for athletes: firstly, emotions are a peculiar form of movement; secondly, they arise from the interaction between human beings and the world aiming for modifying their being-the-world. By means of a phenomenological analysis of ‘sweet tension’, concepts such as uncertainty, intersubjectivity, ambiguity, and horizon emerge. Results highlight the undeniable bond between sport and emotions capable of laying the foundation for a theory of learning of and through emotions in sport. Athletes experience these learning processes both when they are motivated to learn technical/tactical skills, and when they compete with others during sports contests. Moreover, the latter has the characteristic to generate and amplify emotional charge. Finally, in the sports contests with others, athletes are called to test and challenge their skills, and in doing so, they build their identity both as athletes and as persons.