The stigmatized physical educator

Abstract

The purpose of this autoethnography is to challenge the traditional, hegemonic, able-bodied identity of a physical educator and to create a space for ‘non-traditional’ physical educators to speak up about their personal experiences and embodied identities. Specifically, I utilise a personal narrative approach in my attempt to address issues of embodiment, ‘the body’ and illness in relation to my teacher identity, with a particular focus on how I have navigated a spinal injury, partial paralysis and lower back surgeries as a physical education teacher educator. Throughout this article, I first explore how my teacher identity was initially centred on my athletic, able-bodied self as a young, naïve secondary physical education teacher. I then delve into how my teacher identity as a physical educator has been changed and altered due to an unexpected ‘illness’ and deteriorated physical conditions I have encountered over the past decade, causing me to question, challenge and critique my perceptions of my teacher identity in my altered and new ‘body’. I situate my teacher identity around Goffman’s (1963) theoretical concept of ‘stigma’, with a particular emphasis placed on the type of stigma associated with abominations of the body.

Keywords:

• autoethnography
• physical education teacher education
• identity
• physical limitations
• body

Notes

1. To protect the anonymity and vulnerability of the individuals, I include in this autoethnography, I have used pseudonyms for all of the composite characters (Ellis 2004).

2. I write in traditional text as my first and primary voice to describe my experiences and my collective story. However, I employ an inner voice, which is displayed in italics (Ellis 2004), to represent my critique and analysis of these experiences, both at the individual and societal levels.

3. According to the Handbook of Autoethonography (Jones et al. 2013), autoethnographic writing/autoethnography is distinguished from other personal work/writing based on four salient characteristics: ‘(1) purposely commenting on/critiquing of culture and cultural practices, (2) making contributions to existing research, (3) embracing vulnerability with purpose, and (4) creating a reciprocal relationship with audiences in order to compel a response (p. 22).’ It is my hope that I have achieved all four characteristics in this paper.

4. I have inserted first person by using [brackets] in numerous direct quotes in placement of second or third person to make it more personal as if the quote is directly about/in relation to me.

5. Glute is short for gluteus maximus, the largest muscle in the buttocks.

6. Crip is placed in parentheses of ‘crippled’, because according to Robert McRuer (2006) in his groundbreaking book, Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability, crip is the current and known pejorative term in which individuals with a disability identify. McRuer’s work focuses on the culturally produced and construction of ‘compulsory able-bodiedness’, which, he argues, creates disability.

7. As I cited the American with Disabilities Amendments Act of 2008 (USDCRD 2014) earlier in the paper to define ‘disability’, I turned to the ADA to define a disabled person. However, the ADA specifically identifies disability, but not disabled, even though they use the terms interchangeably to define a person with a disability/disabled person as ‘an individual must have an impairment that prevents or severely restricts the individual from doing activities that are of central importance to most people’s daily lives’ (USDCRD 2014). Thus, I prefer to use Peers’ (2012) use of the term, ‘disabled is intended to connote a person who is being disabled by society’ (p. 187).