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 the Organization and Development of Community Sport, Research of Major Social Issues in Sports, and Social Psychology of Sports, which are lead by Professor Tian Yipeng, Professor Yuan Lei, and Professor Yang Jie respectively.
The faculty of this discipline consists of fifteen people including ten professors and three associate professors with eleven of them having acquired doctorates, and the remaining two are 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 through interdisciplinary studies between Community Theory and relevant research methodologies with Sport Sociology. The theoretical grounding of this research area is mostly vested in modern Social Change Theory, Community Development Theory, Theory of Sociology of Organization, Theory of Public Organization, etc., with social sports organizations as the research subject, which can be seen as collaborative systems with specific objectives formed by interactive individuals or small groups in the fields of 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, a combination 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 greater scale, 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 the research group of this program have published seven books and more than 100 academic papers, and have also presided over and participated in three major 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 twenty projects additionally with a fund volume 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, and academic papers in the said fields were wholly reprinted by Xinhua 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 sports sciences could generate a new interdisciplinary field of research and its potential advantages will further expand the boundaries of sociology and sport sciences.
2.Studies on Major Social Issues in Sports
The major purpose of studies in this area of research, from the perspective of sociological theories, is to optimize interpersonal interactions, facilitate sound progress in organizations and society, and promote social welfare through qualitative and quantitative approaches to topics including social stratification, social class, social mobility, social religion, socio-legal issue, and deviant behavior. The research subject mostly concerns social behaviors and interpersonal interactions at the micro-level and social systems and structures at the macro level. Sport, as a kind of social behavior, can be studied under the Functional Theory, Conflict Theory, Interaction Theory, and Critical Theory of Sociology, 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 on sports’ function to address social issues and conflicts, aims to discuss the role of sports in the development of peole, organization, and society,as well as the characteristics, approaches, and methods of value exportation with sports.
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 presided over or undertaken several national, provincial, and university-level research projects, which include: Scientific Research of Sports Development in the Harmonious 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), and Research of Sports Diplomacy Strategies of China (Fundamental Research Funds). The team has also published more than forty academic papers on core Chinese sports journals and four books 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 behaviors changes. This research area analyzes issues concerning people’s health and social development with theories in psychology and sociology, which includes: (1) people’s sports concepts, relevant psychological states and cognitive characteristics; (2) children’s cognition and social development,focusing mostly 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 as children’s cognition on sports and social developments; (3) processing mechanisms of people’s motor, learning, and memory process, which focus on the process of people’s movement, learning activities, or information processing to explore early development and deterioration of memory, and interactions and relations among visual representations, actions, and languages in the memory process through combined methods from researches of motor behaviors, clinical research, developmental research and cognitive neuroscience. Our research team has developed great vitality, research strength with prominent outcomes , and the key members enjoy great promise in academic research and sustained innovation.
The academic leader and the research team has presided over six research projects of provincial levels or above in the past five years, 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 11th Five-Year Plan of National Education Science). The team has published twenty-eight academic papers on core domestic and international journals and two books, and has thus received widespread recognition in the academic circle. Up till now, more than twenty postgraduate students have graduated from programs in this area of research, which shows that the College has acquired the competence in fostering high-end talents in Social Psychology Sports .