Tackling Irregularities in Sport through Education on Whistleblowing

Recent years have brought to the attention of sport specialists new challenges in education, aiming to defend ethics and integrity in sport. Doping, match fixing and corrupted sport governance represent ongoing threats to the integrity, good reputation, and societal welfare dimension of sport. At the same time, from the athletes’ perspective, abuse, sexual harassment, bullying, violence and psychological pressure are other types of threats to the ethics in all sport domains. Different educational approaches that aim to achieve a culture of ethics and integrity in sport have been designed and implemented. Recently, whistleblowing has been promoted as a useful means in the fight against corruption in sport. This trend called for more educational efforts designed to encourage the participation of those involved in the sport phenomenon (i.e. athletes, coaches, managers, spectators) in whistleblowing in order to prevent the violation of ethics. The paper is an analysis of the usefulness of an educational material on whistleblowing implemented in Romania. In order to promote models of good practice, information is directly related to the educational rationale through an explanation of not only what knowledge and skills can be expected to be gained, but also what professional capabilities will be achieved. The conclusions of the paper emphasize the need to develop and test new education and training methodologies, promoting whistleblowing in sport, which will be adapted to the needs of the target sport population aiming to induce positive beliefs and behaviours about whistleblowing.