Negotiating the discursive spaces of inclusive education: narratives of experience from contemporary Physical Education

Abstract

Responding to calls about the urgent need to better understand young disabled people's experiences in the subject of Physical Education (PE), this paper adopts a narrative approach to explore how they experience and value teaching and learning in PE; when and how they feel in/excluded; and to ask ‘what barriers/facilitators are perceived to be of importance for their sense of in/exclusion?’ Narratives structure and illuminate not only young people's own experiences and self-identities, but they also reveal insights about the socio-cultural locations they inhabit. When they are well told they can persuade us to revisit our taken-for-granted realities about disability and inclusive education. Analyses of a case study of stories from the discursive spaces of PE lessons reveal that the deep culture of schooling and the hegemonic ‘truths’ of PE, not least of performativity, often result in segregated and alienating experiences, in which the disabled student is defined as malfunctioning and lacking ‘ability’.

Keywords:

• inclusion
• exclusion
• narratives
• disability
• Physical Education
• youth

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the two anonymous referees for their insightful comments on two earlier drafts of this article.