The Doctoral Program of the Physical Education College is a sub-discipline program of Sport Sociology under the first-level discipline of Sociology.
The College offers supervisions in three research areas in Sport Sociology, namely theOrganization andDevelopment ofCommunitySport,Research ofMajorSocialIssues inSports, andSocialPsychology ofSports, which are lead by Professor Tian Yipeng, Professor Yuan Lei, and Professor Yang Jie respectively.
The faculty of this discipline consistsof fifteenpeople including tenprofessors andthreeassociate professors with elevenof them having acquired doctorates, and the remaining twoare doctoral candidates.
1.Organization and Development of Community Sport
This area of research mainly analyzes the forms of organization and operational mechanisms of community sports throughinterdisciplinary studies betweenCommunityTheoryand relevant research methodologies withSportSociology. The theoretical grounding of this research area is mostly vested in modernSocialChangeTheory,CommunityDevelopmentTheory,TheoryofSociology ofOrganization, TheoryofPublicOrganization, etc., with social sports organizations as the research subject, which can be seen as collaborative systemswith specific objectives formed by interactive individuals or small groups in the fieldsof sports. The distinctive feature of this research is to explore the source, development,and operational mechanism of community sports in China with a series of research methods including traditional community research approaches, relevance studies, historical researches,acombination of qualitative and quantitative methods, etc., thus focusing not only on the inspections of the current development of community sport organizations but also, on a greaterscale, the special roles of such organizations in macro-social systems. Moreover, the research in this area is conducted as interdisciplinary studies between sociology and sports science.
The academic leader and members of theresearchgroup of this programhave published sevenbooks and more than 100 academic papers, and have also presided over and participated inthreemajor National Social and Scientific Fund Programs, covering topics including formation and changes of the Danwei Institution(government bodies, enterprises, and public institutions) system in China, innovations,and pathways of development for the organization and management of communities, and local cultures of the northeast region of China.The research group has undertaken more than twentyprojects additionally with a fundvolume of more than one million yuan.The academic leader of this research area has achieved marked results in studies in community building and community organization development, the end of the Danwei society and its social risks, “the end of village communities” and the reorganizations of farmers, andacademic papers in the said fieldswerewholly reprinted byXinhua Digest,China Social Sciences Digest, and the Information Center for Social Science of Renmin University, which can be seen as manifestations of the academic status of this College in community studies, especially in researches concerning the community building in the Danwei Institution system in old industrial areas in the northeast part of China. Combining the results from the research in community studies with sportssciences could generatea new interdisciplinary field of research and its potential advantages will further expand the boundaries of sociology and sport sciences.
2.Studies onMajorSocial Issues in Sports
The major purpose of studies in this area of research, from the perspective of sociological theories, is to optimizeinterpersonal interactions, facilitatesound progressinorganizationsand society, and promotesocial welfare through qualitative and quantitativeapproaches totopics including social stratification, social class, social mobility, social religion, socio-legal issue, and deviant behavior. The research subjectmostly concernssocial behaviors and interpersonal interactions at themicro-levelandsocial systems and structuresat themacrolevel. Sport, as a kind ofsocial behavior, can be studiedunder theFunctionalTheory,ConflictTheory,InteractionTheory, andCriticalTheory ofSociology, and is often considered as the lubricant, catalyst,and driving force in interpersonal interactions, organizational development, and social progress. This area of research focuses on major social hot-spot issues (e. g. Falungon, a heresy in China),takes“sport-people-society” relations as the starting point of its research,builds onsports’ function to addresssocial issues and conflicts,aims to discuss the role of sports inthedevelopment of peole, organization, and society,as well asthe characteristics, approaches,and methods of value exportation withsports.
In recent years, the academic leader of this research area, who has been included in the “Cross-Century Outstanding Talents” program from the Ministry of Education of China, has presidedover or undertakenseveral national, provincial, and university-level research projects, which include: Scientific Research of Sports Development intheHarmonious Society (National Social and Scientific Fund Program), Research on the Change of Sports Concepts from the Perspective of Balanced Development (National Social and Scientific Fund Program), Theory Constructions and Expansion Modes of the International Rights of Speech of Sports in China, (Program of Humanity and Social Sciences Fund of the Ministry of Education of China),andResearch of Sports Diplomacy Strategies of China (Fundamental Research Funds). The team has also published more than fortyacademic papers on core Chinese sports journalsand fourbooks and is well-established in sport and social academic circles.
3.Social Psychology of Sports
Social Psychology of Sports is interdisciplinary research on the psychology of sports groups and the rules of their social behaviorschanges.This research area analyzes issues concerning people’s health and social development with theories in psychology and sociology, which includes: (1)people’s sportsconcepts,relevant psychological states and cognitive characteristics; (2)children’s cognition and social development,focusingmostly on issues including children’s early cognition and social development in different stages, gender difference and education tactics, screening, intervention, and guidance of learning and development obstacles, as well aschildren’s cognition on sports and social developments; (3) processing mechanismsof people’s motor, learning, and memory process, which focus on the process of people’s movement, learning activities, or information processing to exploreearly development anddeterioration of memory, and interactions and relations among visual representations, actions, and languagesin the memory process through combinedmethods from researchesof motor behaviors, clinical research, developmental research and cognitive neuroscience. Our research team has developed greatvitality,research strength with prominent outcomes,and thekey members enjoygreat promise in academic research and sustained innovation.
The academic leader and theresearchteam has presided over sixresearch projects of provincial levels or above in the past fiveyears, including the Research on Sports Concepts in the Outlook of Balanced Development (National Social and Scientific Fund Program), Research on the Brain Mechanism of Prospective Memory Alzheimer Patients and Its Applications (project supported by National Natural Science Fund), Research on the Brain Mechanism on the Prospective Memory (General Program of Humanity and Social Sciences Fund of the Ministry of Education of China), and Research on the Influence of the Training of Prospective Memory on the Academic Performance of Children with ADHD (2009 Ministry of Education Youth Project under the 11thFive-Year Plan of National Education Science). The team has published twenty-eightacademic papers on core domestic and international journals and twobooks, and has thus received widespread recognitioninthe academic circle. Up till now, more than twentypostgraduate students have graduated from programs in this area of research, which showsthat the College has acquired the competence in fostering high-end talents in Social Psychology Sports.