Aim and Research Questions: Internationally, the concept of school sports usually refers to competitive sports organised in a school setting. In Swedish upper secondary education, school sports is practised within the school subject “special sports” and is taught by teachers having a degree in special sports. Special sports as a subject is equivalent to other school subjects as it has its own syllabus and grading criteria (Ferry & Lund, 2018). The subject is designated for young athletes with potential to achieve sporting success at elite level and all pupils in 9th grade can apply. However, the admission to this subject is restricted, i.e., there is a selection of applicants. On an overall level, the admission process is governed by both the Swedish Education Act, and school sport policy documents issued by the Swedish Sports Confederation (SSC). The Education Act states that the applicant who is considered to have the best chances of utilizing special sports should be given priority when selections are made. SSC states that the purpose with school sports is to support talents with the prerequisite skills to reach elite level as adults. Consequently, identification and selection of young athletes are indispensable, and are performed by the special sports teachers. Against this background, the aim of this paper is to study special sports teachers’ perspective on the admission process, and furthermore to analyse current methods used to assess and select student-athletes.

Theoretical Framework and Literature Review: Previous studies have showed that individual practitioners’ subjective judgements of recognizing and “seeing” talent are essential when assessing young athletes’ potential(Christensen 2009, p. 372; Roberts et al., 2019). In this paper we propose that the admissionprocess can be viewed as a social practice performed in a specific community. Therefore, the concept community of practice (CoP), as described by Wenger (1998), is used to frame the discussion. Wenger suggests that a CoP displays three characteristics: (a) a shared practice;(b) a common engagement forged in participating in a practice together; and (c) a set of tools developed to help in the practice’s performance. Hence, the special sports teachers can be considered as a community who share a practice, a common engagement in the practice and aset of domain-specific tools.

Research Design, Method, and Data Analysis: This paper is designed as a multiple case study. Data were collected through six focus group interviews with 18 special sports teachers (male = 13, female = 5) from six individual sports (alpine skiing, canoeing, cross-country skiing, orienteering, swimming, and track and field) at eleven upper secondary sport schools. The teachers were divided into groups based on their sports. The interviews were conversational, researchers and participants were perceived as collaborators discussing the admission-process and methods used for assessing the applicants. Thereafter, a theoretical thematic analysis, as suggested by Braun and Clarke (2006), was undertaken where the interest was to find in what ways the characteristics of a CoP appeared in the data.

Results: The results indicate that the admission process involves: (a) identification of, outreach to, andpre-selection of young athletes; (b) evaluation of applicants on site (via tests, training,interviews, and social activities); and (c) a collective final selection based on summarizedoverall pictures of the applicants. Furthermore, the admission-process constitutes individual subjective assessments of young athletes. However, our findings imply that the final selection of student-athletes is a cooperative process. The teachers use their shared competence and joint accumulated experience to select the applicants considered to have the best chances of utilizing special sports and have the potential to reach elite level as adults.

Discussion and Conclusions: The results imply that the admission process is influenced by, and negotiated through, acommunity of practice. In this community, the inherent sport culture is reflected through special sports teachers’ assessments of applicants who preferably have the right character, willingness to train, and work hard. On one hand, the community deepens their knowledge and expertise in the admission process by interacting continuously, which should enhance the validation of their selections. On the other hand, the community may limit its development by imposing implicit boundaries and reproducing values and beliefs. To avoid path dependency, it is essential that communities continuously reflect upon, renegotiate, and renew their practice.