Disabled children and young people in sport, physical activity and physical education

ABSTRACT

Much of the albeit limited research relating to disabled children and young people in sport, physical activity and physical education settings is from the perspective of teachers, school leaders, coaches, support assistants and special educational needs coordinators. While this research has undoubtedly contributed to developing a rich tapestry of knowledge about disability and sport, physical activity and physical education, the views and experiences of disabled children and young people are conspicuous by their absence. Thus, in this special issue, we showcase research that centres on the experiences and amplifies the voices of disabled children and young people. When reading these articles, we encourage you to reflexively consider the ways and extent to which your own research and practice endeavours to include, empower, and emancipate disabled children and young people. If nothing else, we hope that this special issue will encourage sport, physical activity and physical education scholars, especially those who ‘do not research disability’, to consider the significance of including disabled people as active participants in more general research studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Disabled children and young people
• pupil voice
• physical education
• physical activity
• youth sport

Introduction

Many of the special issues featured in Sport, Education and Society developed from local, national or international conferences (e.g. Stride et al., 2018; Thorburn et al., 2019; Welch et al., 2021). That was not the case for us. This special issue is the result of numerous conversations we have had over the past four years or so about our shared commitment to and passion for centring the experiences and amplifying the voices of disabled children and young people in sport, physical activity and physical education settings. It is now well established that disabled children and young people participate less frequently and in fewer activities than their peers in all these settings (see Jeanes et al., 2018; Jung et al., 2018; Maher, 2018). Problematically, even at times when disabled children and young people are permitted access to activities in these settings, they are commonly relegated to passive, unimportant or tokenistic roles (Fitzgerald, 2005; Haegele, Kirk, et al., 2020). We also know that disabled children and young people are more likely to experience peer-led social isolation and bullying (Holland & Haegele, 2021) which may lead to self-harm and self-isolation (Haegele & Maher, 2021). Further, disabled children and youth people are likely to receive inappropriate support (Maher & Macbeth, 2013) and instruction (Morley et al., 2021), and have their bodies and abilities judged negatively by non-disabled peers and teachers through an ableist gaze (Haegele, Hodge, et al., 2020; Haegele, Kirk, et al., 2020). Perhaps unsurprisingly, physical education specifically is a space that many disabled young people do not experience feelings of belonging, acceptance or value, particularly in mainstream or integrated contexts (Haegele & Maher, 2021; Holland & Haegele, 2021). Of concern, the challenging experiences described by disabled children and young people in settings, like physical education, are antithetical to concepts associated with inclusion (Haegele, 2019; Spencer-Cavaliere & Watkinson, 2010) and are likely to lead to disengagement from activities outside of the classroom.

Initially, we were sceptical that there would be an appetite for a special issue dedicated to a group who often experience marginalisation and even ostracisation in sport, physical activity and physical education research and practice. We were wrong. We were not surprised by the unwavering support provided by the editor-in-chief of Sport, Education and Society, Professor John Evans, but we were surprised by the extremely strong response to our call for papers for this special issue. Given the number of abstracts we received, this special issue could have easily spanned two issues. Instead, we decided to narrow the focus so that we could support and shine a (brighter) light on scholars who shared our commitment to trying to amplify the voices of disabled children and young people in sport, physical activity and physical education scholarship. Hitherto, much of the albeit limited research in this field is from the perspective of teachers (e.g. Morley et al., 2021), school leaders (e.g. Maher et al., 2020), coaches (e.g. Cronin et al., 2018), support assistants (e.g. Vickerman & Blundell, 2012) and special educational needs coordinators (e.g. Maher, 2017). In short, adults who have not lived nor embodied disability. While this research has undoubtedly contributed to developing a rich tapestry of knowledge about disability and sport, physical activity and physical education, the views and experiences of disabled children and young people are conspicuous by their absence. For far too long adult stakeholders have been cast as the ‘inclusion experts’, making decisions about disabled young people, often without their input or consent. This phenomenon is aptly represented by the proliferation of practice-based articles and texts that depict strategies for educating or servicing disabled children and young people without mention of discussing these strategies with them prior to dissemination. By having conversations with disabled children and young people about their experiences, rather than about them and with other stakeholders, the emphasis moves to the voice of the disabled young person and allows for their perspective to be central to constructions of their experiences. As such, salient features that inform experiences, and feelings attributed to those experiences, can emerge (Spencer-Cavaliere & Watkinson, 2010). Thus, many of the articles that feature in this special issue include empirical data gathered either with or from disabled children and young people. This aligns with our commitment to centring the experiences and amplifying the voices of disabled children and young people (Pellicano et al., 2014) and decentralising non-disabled voices in research about disabled children and young people (Goodwin & Howe, 2016), and ties nicely to the ‘nothing about us without us’ mantra that is championed by the disabled people’s movement (see Barton, 1996; Charlton, 2000). As such, it is our intention to help create a shift in power, where disabled children’s and young people’s voices are acknowledged as the important force in the construction of their experiences, rather than relying on stakeholders’ perspectives to share the meaning of experiences (Pascal & Bertram, 2009).

When you read these articles, we encourage you to reflexively consider the ways and extent to which your own research and practice endeavours to include, empower, even emancipate, disabled children and young people. If nothing else, we hope that this special issue will encourage sport, physical activity and physical education scholars, especially those who ‘do not research disability’, to consider the significance of including disabled children and people as active participants in more general research studies. Indeed, it has become much more common for researchers to develop sampling and recruitment strategies that use gender, socio-economic status and race and ethnicity as eligibility criteria. Disability, though, is rarely included in sampling and recruitment strategies and is seldom reported as a potential characteristic or identity of participants (Haegele & Hodge, 2017). Here, we argue that disability should be added to sampling strategies because, like others, it is an identity marker that is lived, embodied, and thus inevitably shapes the views and experiences of people. The excellent work presented in this special issue should be considered essential reading for those who want to learn more about involving disabled children and young people in research, centring their experiences, and amplifying their voices in sport, physical activity and physical education as part of the multi-stakeholder approach advocated by Vickerman and Maher (2018).

The first article embraces the commitment to amplifying the voices of disabled young people and sets the tone for the entire issue. Sharp, Coates and Mason co-develop and utilise innovative participatory methods to explore the experiences of young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) who engaged in United Kingdom (UK) School Games. For this, young people with SEND were at the centre of methodological decisions, resulting in the use of vlogs to gather data, video editing workshops for representing data and young people-led workshops for disseminating findings. Key findings of the UK School Games are discussed in relation to: (1) Opportunities for inclusive school sport; (2) Challenging perceptions; and (3) Meaningful School Games. The significance and implications of the findings are valuable to those who endeavour to offer ‘inclusive’ sporting opportunities, but also for those researchers who want to learn more about engaging young people with SEND in participatory research.

The second article, offered by Sandford, Giulianotti and Beckett, investigates a sports-based educational programme in the UK, called Playdagogy, which was developed for young people with the intention of: (1) raising disability-awareness; (2) promoting positive attitudes to disabled people; and (3) fostering inclusion. This article recognises the importance of multi-stakeholder perspectives and the intersubjectivity of disabled young people’s experiences by gathering data from disabled and non-disabled young people, as well as programme staff and educators. Using a multi-method approach, the authors explore how a combination of games-based activity and critical discussion created spaces for learning about disability and inclusion, and disrupting normative assumptions, disability stereotypes, and social biases. Among other key findings, light is cast on the importance of teachers being appropriately educated about and buying into how Playdagogy can be used to facilitate affective learning in physical education.

In the third article, Rubuliak and Spencer from Canada remind us that many disabled students either withdraw or are excluded from recess and thus miss out on important opportunities to engage and interact with age-peers through outdoor play. Guided by relational ethics, the authors explore the perspectives of disabled young people about their experiences of the recess using a qualitative multiple-case study informed by narrative approaches. Specifically, Rubliak and Spencer embraced our call for innovative methodological approaches that centre the experiences of disabled young people by using one-on-one semi-structured interviews, drawings, photo elicitation, mind-mapping, field notes and reflexive journaling to generate qualitative data. In concluding, the authors argue that to re-shape and/or create inclusive play spaces (social, cultural and physical), school stakeholders need to deconstruct existing spaces. Accordingly, this can only be done by engaging with disabled young people as equal partners so that normative and ableist modes of thinking and ways of doing can be disrupted and dismantled, something that we support and would extend to wider sport, physical activity and physical education spaces.

There is a slight shift in focus for article four, wherein Goodwin, Rossow-Kimball, and Connelly explore the relationship between disabled children in Canada and their teaching assistants, referred to as paraeducators in the article, with a specific focus on the meaning of the physical and symbolic presence of paraeducator support in physical education for students experiencing physical impairment. Like Rubuliak and Spencer, Goodwin and colleagues used relational ethics as a conceptual framework for the study. Here, it is interesting to note that the physical presence and over protection of paraeducators thwarted social skill development, distancing some disabled students from their peers. In high school the participants lamented the loss of their paraeducators as valuable communication conduits, leaving them feeling abandoned. Thus, the authors recommend that paraeducator support be discretionary, with students (and parents) determining support requirements, in anticipation of an increasing need for autonomy during high school years.

The fifth article of the collection is offered by Hortigüela-Alcalá, Bores-García, Barba-Martín and González-Calvo. This article gathers data from disabled university students, their families and teacher educators in Spain to explore motivations for wanting to become physical education teachers and perceived obstacles to achieving that goal. The findings suggest that disabled university students were highly motivated to become physical education teachers, feeling valid and useful to contribute because of their knowledge and experiences. However, disabled university students perceived and experienced significant and diverse obstacles along what they, their families and teacher educators acknowledged would be a challenging journey. These obstacles manifested mainly but not exclusively in negative attitudes towards disabled people, and a lack of infrastructure and adapted material to be able to practice physical education. All participants agreed that there is still a long way to go to achieve inclusion in physical education and physical education teacher education. We support the authors’ claim that this research makes a significant contribution to the existing literature not only on the subject by amplifying the voices of future disabled PE teachers but also analysing the views of their families and university teachers. This allowed them to delve deeper into a subject that is influenced by educational, social, economic and political factors.

The final article in this collection, offered by Samantha Nanayakkara and colleagues, does not centre on the voices of disabled students. Rather, in this study physical educators were interviewed about their viewpoints about inclusion in physical education classes in Sri Lanka. Whereas this special issue focuses largely on amplifying the voices of disabled young people themselves, we found it an important opportunity to share work focused on physical education for disabled students in a context where little is known internationally. Interestingly, the physical educators within this article admitted to having low confidence and perceived competence in teaching disabled young people in their classes, which was largely attributed to little and poorly conceived training and a lack of support from administrators and governmental authorities. The quotes shared throughout this paper are refreshingly honest, explicating a lack of knowledge and experience, and how these deficiencies influence their abilities to construct educational contexts that may be meaningful for disabled young people.

As editors of this special issue, we are proud to share the collective work presented here, which we believe signifies a shift from overvaluing the perspectives and opinions of stakeholders to amplifying the voices of disabled children and young people when constructing depictions of their experiences in sport, physical activity and physical education. We would be remiss not to extend our sincerest thanks to each of the authors who have trusted us with their important work. We believe that many of the authors who have contributed to this special issue represent key shareholders in the shift toward decentralising the perspectives of adult stakeholders, and centralising viewpoints of disabled children and young people when constructing experiences. Also, we thank Professor John Evans, editor-in-chief of Sport Education & Society, for his encouragement and support throughout the construction of this issue. We are hopeful that this special issue provides a meaningful contribution to the literature, and it would not be possible without the contributions of each of these individuals.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).