Rendering the invisible visible: reflexivity and flexibility in a scoping review on sport for reconciliation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Numerous scholars have argued that sport is a vessel through which to enforce settler-colonial domination; however, sport can also represent a domain in which to support Indigenous-settler reconciliation. Nevertheless, differing understandings of reconciliation, particularly within diverse global contexts, can lead to ambiguity in its definition and application. Therefore, as part of a broader project on sport for reconciliation (SFR), we conducted a scoping review to examine the ways in which the term SFR is used in the academic literature. Through the scoping review process, we screened 2201 articles by title and abstract and conducted a full-text screening of 181 articles. Only four articles met our inclusion criteria. While scoping reviews typically focus on findings, we seek to centre the process itself, emphasising reflexivity and flexibility, two aspects often promoted yet rarely presented and made visible in practice. In response to this gap, we examine the tensions we experienced regarding the implications of exclusion, which were amplified by our understanding of colonialism. We argue that engaging in reflexivity can (re)conceptualise exclusion criteria, shifting from the binary of inclusion and exclusion to a critical investigation of what something is not. Subsequently, we propose a sixth step to Arksey and O’Malley (2005) scoping review methodology, ‘implications of excluded articles and reflexive insights’. We recommend this step be completed before the optional consultation stage. By centring reflexivity and flexibility, we offer a nuanced (re)conceptualisation of both SFR scholarship and the use of scoping reviews, particularly in research shaped by and grounded in colonial logics.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.452 | 0.658 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.008 | 0.008 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.044 | 0.040 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.028 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.034 | 0.048 |
| Open science | 0.008 | 0.022 |
| Research integrity | 0.013 | 0.011 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".