The contribution of the education that are given in The International Olympic Academy (IOA) to the studies to promote the olympism: An investigation from the point of Turkey

The purpose of this study was to investigate the contribution of the education which are given in the International Olympic Academy to the studies to promote Olympism in Turkey, from the point of the Turkish participants who attended in the ?Young Participants Session? of the International Olympic Academy. In this direction, it has been tried to understand whether the education in the International Olympic Academy have made contribution to promote the Olympism in the international area or not and whether the International Olympic Academy has achieved its aim to fulfill the mission in this context or not.One of the qualitative research designs, phenomenology, was used in this research. While collecting the data, interview form method which consists of semi-structured questions has been used. Convenience sampling which is one of the purposeful sampling methods has been selected for the research. Among the 52 Turkish participants who attended to the ?Young Participants Session? of the International Olympic Academy between 1985 and 2011, at least one representative of each of the seven Olympic periods has been reached. The number of the participants in the research is nine.The interviews have been conducted as face to face. The data which were summarized and interpreted in descriptive analysis, have been profoundly processed in the content analysis. After the coding process, theming method has been implemented by gathering the similar data together. This process has been executed by three researchers who are experts in their fields and independent of each other.As a result of this study, participants have stated that they obtained comprehensive information about the Olympism in the International Olympic Academy trainings, gained awareness about Olympism and felt emotions like; international cultural sharing and togetherness. Furthermore, it has been seen from the results of the research that; after the International Olympic Academy trainings, Turkish participants made Olympic studies in order to promote the Olympism in Turkey with the contributions of these trainings and with their personal interests. However, the lack of interaction which was seen after the International Olympic Academy trainings between the other participants and Turkish National Olympic Committee reveals the expectations about eliminating this problem from the point of Turkish participants.In conclusion, it can be said that the trainings which were given in the ?Young Participants Session? of the International Olympic Academy were sufficient, the interaction among the participants from different cultures and geographies made an important contribution to promote the Olympism and International Olympic Academy achieved its mission to promote Olympism in the international area.