By Rui Jin, PhD student
Growing up in China, I saw the Olympic Games as extraordinary. Watching athletes compete, I admired their discipline, determination and pursuit of excellence. I imagined that entering the Olympic world meant becoming an athlete. Years later, I arrived in Olympia by a different route: as a doctoral researcher at the University of the West of Scotland, attending the 33rd International Seminar on Olympic Studies at the International Olympic Academy (IOA) in Athens. I had come not to compete, but to explore what the Olympics might mean for education.
Walking into History
Walking through the Krypte into the Ancient Stadium was an unforgettable moment. Its simplicity contrasted with the spectacle of the modern Games. Yet the experience also unsettled my assumptions. What did this historic place tell us, and what were we bringing to it through our own expectations? The archaeological site and museum offered evidence, but not ready made conclusions. Artefacts acquire meaning through questions, context and interpretation. History, I realised, does not simply provide answers. It teaches us how to ask better questions. Martínková (2018) interprets Coubertin’s Olympism as one part of a wider educational project. Reading her work alongside my visit helped me look beyond sporting achievement towards the educational purposes attached to the Olympic Movement. It also reminded me that the educational significance I perceived in Olympia was an interpretation to examine, not a conclusion supplied by the ruins themselves.
When the Books Began Talking
At the IOA, another kind of encounter changed my relationship with knowledge. Researchers I had previously known through books and articles were now people I could listen to and question. The seminar made scholarship feel less like a collection of settled answers and more like a conversation in which ideas remain open to scrutiny.
Professor Jim Parry’s lecture, The Concept of Punishment, was particularly thought provoking. His attention to familiar terms made me reconsider how easily researchers can assume that they share the same definitions. This experience was distinct from his published work, but it led me back to Parry (2020), whose analysis of Olympic sport examines the ethical commitments implied by rules and competition, including fairness and equal treatment.
I began to ask a deceptively simple question: what exactly do I mean by Olympic Education?
From Different Interpretations to Different Cultures
Discussions with participants from different academic and cultural backgrounds made that question harder, and more productive. People could approach similar evidence yet reach different interpretations. Rather than asking only which account was correct, I became interested in how each account was constructed, which assumptions shaped it and what evidence could support it.
Parry (2006, p. 191) argues that Olympism may find different expressions in “time and place, history and geography”. His distinction between a general concept and its differing conceptions offered a way to think about universal aspirations without assuming identical interpretations everywhere. But Parry’s argument concerns Olympism more broadly; applying it to Olympic Education is a question for my research, not an answer he provides.
Binder’s research takes that problem into educational practice. Reflecting on the development of Olympic Education curricula, she asks of Olympic values, “Are they, as the Olympic Movement professes, universal?” (Binder, 2012, p. 288). She also questions whether methods developed in Euro American contexts are appropriate elsewhere. Binder does not simply dismiss shared values. Instead, her questions expose the need to investigate how values are understood and taught in particular settings.
Read together, these perspectives revealed an assumption I needed to challenge: using the same Olympic language does not necessarily mean that educators attach the same meanings to it. Equally, different interpretations do not automatically rule out common principles. That tension deserves investigation rather than a premature conclusion.
What Olympia Changed in My Doctoral Research
This matters directly to my doctoral study of how Olympic educational ideas are interpreted and translated across cultural contexts. In planning interviews and case studies, I want to look beyond whether an Olympic Education programme exists or which values it names. I want to ask how participants understand those values, why they emphasise particular meanings and how educational institutions and cultural experiences shape their decisions.
It will also influence how I analyse evidence. Rather than treating one account as the standard against which others are measured, I intend to examine the reasoning and circumstances behind differing interpretations, while remaining alert to contradictions and alternative explanations. This does not mean accepting every interpretation uncritically. It means making my own assumptions visible and testing claims against evidence. The IOA did not give me a definitive definition of Olympic Education. Its greater contribution was to sharpen my research questions and make me more attentive to the distance between a philosophical ideal and its educational practice.
Bringing Olympia Back to UWS
I returned to UWS with photographs, a diploma and memories of extraordinary conversations. More importantly, I returned with a clearer responsibility as a researcher: to listen carefully, question concepts and explain how interpretations are formed. My childhood dream brought me towards the Olympic world; Olympia taught me to approach it with curiosity and critical care.
Perhaps the most enduring legacy of the IOA is not an answer, but the determination to keep asking better questions.
References
Binder, D.L. (2012) ‘Olympic values education: evolution of a pedagogy’, Educational Review, 64(3), pp. 275–302. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2012.676539
Martínková, I. (2018) ‘Education and Olympism: Coubertin’s unfinished symphony’, Diagoras: International Academic Journal on Olympic Studies, 2, pp. 47–60.
Parry, J. (2006) ‘Sport and Olympism: universals and multiculturalism’, Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, 33(2), pp. 188–204. https://doi.org/10.1080/00948705.2006.9714701
Parry, J. (2020) ‘The concept of sport in Olympism’, Diagoras: International Academic Journal on Olympic Studies, 4, pp. 131–148.
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