Developing Communities of Practice to Maximize the Usability and Impact of Clean Sport Education in Europe

Background Communities of Practice represent an important tool that can help both academics and practitioners identify good practices, enable knowledge transfer, and promote innovation by recognising novel solutions to existing problems in a given area or topic. Despite their expected utility and benefits, and their applications in several educational, technological, healthcare, and commercial domains, Communities of Practice have rarely been applied in the context of Clean Sport Education. Objectives O1: Identify and utilize relevant empirical evidence to guide the development of the first community of practice (CoP) for clean sport education (CSE) in Europe.O2: Develop face-to-face and virtual CoPs for CSE.O3: Enable knowledge sharing and the emergence of best practices in CSE.O4: Increase awareness of anti-doping organizations and sport stakeholders across Europe about the benefits of using CoPs for CSE, policy-making, and research, and for stimulating future innovative CSE practices. Implementation The consortium of project IMPACT utilised a flexible management and implementation approach in order to cope effectively with the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic during the second half of the project. The consortium held 3 transnational face-to-face project meetings, which were followed up by online meetings, and 5 multiplier sport events were completed. Following a 12-month extension granted by EACEA due to COVID disruption, the project was successfully completed on 31.12.2021. Achievements The key results of the project IMPACT include:1. The development of the first formal Communities of Practice for the promotion of Clean Sport Education in Europe. 2. The development of the first online, open-access Clean Sport Education database to support the sharing of good practices and knowledge among relevant sport stakeholders.3. The development of specific recommendations and guidance on how to develop, implement, monitor, and evaluate Clean Sport Education Communities of Practice.