Session Information
18 SES 01, Learning in, through and about Physical Education: Social Class, Ability and Empowerment
Paper Session
Contribution
Despite an acknowledgement of the important role which teacher educators play in the pedagogical relay of knowledge in Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) (Kirk 1998), there has been little European research to illuminate teacher educators’ instructional discourses (Dowling 2006; Fernandez-Balboa 2009; MacPhail 2009). This paper will make a modest contribution to knowledge about teacher educators, and in particular, it aims to explore their discourses of disability and ‘ability’, and how these influence upon their narratives of inclusive education. Despite the prevalence of discourses of inclusion in many European countries’ public education system and sports organizations, reflected in campaigns such as ‘The Every Child Matters’ in the UK school system or ‘Sport for All’ (idrett for alle) in the Norwegian Confederation of Sports, I share the concern among many educators with a vision of education for social justice and democracy (Hargreaves 2003; Lingard 2005) that policy rhetoric is bringing about little change in the practices of either school Physical Education (PE), extra-curricula sports participation, or in the practices of PETE. Consequently, inequalities due to social class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, disability and religion persist even though there are many rhetorical claims to the contrary, often couched in terms like ‘closing the achievement or participation gap’ (Armstrong and Barton 2007; Gillborn 2008).
Several scholars have in recent years problematized the PE profession’s current dominant notion of ‘ability’ (Evans 2004; Evans and Penney 2008; Hay and lisahunter 2006; Wellard 2006), which seemingly marginalises a broader definition valuing personal movement development and expression in physical culture, in favour of a hierarchical definition promoting narrowly defined criteria of success and performance in organised sport. Research on young people with a disability tends to confirm this picture with its resulting discrimination of some students in PE (Berg Svendby and Dowling 2012iFirst; Fitzgerald 2009). By focusing upon narratives of disability, the paper aims to shake up the ‘taken-for-grantedness’ of the social construction of ‘ability’, as well as to explore the teacher educators’ stories of inclusion. Personal narratives reveal not only individual ways of knowing the social world (disability/ability) but also reveal the power of broader social structures in teacher educators’ meaning-making and practice (Clandinin and Connelly 2000; Gubrium and Holstein 2009); individual stories of difference reveal something about the current ‘truths’ of PETE.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Armstrong, F. and Barton, L. (2007) ‘Policy, experience and change and the challenges of inclusion’, in L. Barton and F. Armstrong (eds) Policy, Experience and Change: Cross Cultural Reflections in Inclusive Education, Dordrecht: Springer, pp.5-18. E. Berg Svendby & Dowling, F. (2012iFirst) Negotiating the discursive spaces of inclusive education: narratives of experience from contemporary PE. Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15017419.2012.735200 Clandinin, D. J. and Connelly, F. M. (2000) Narrative Inquiry. Experience and Story in Qualitative Research, CA: Josey Bass. Czarniawska, B. (2004) Narratives in Social Science Research, London: Sage Publications. Davies, B. and Gannon, S. ‘The practices of collective biography’, in B. Davies and S. Gannon (eds) Doing Collective Biography, Maidenhead: Open University Press. Dowling, F. (2006) ‘Physical education teacher educators’ professional identities, continuing professional development and the issue of gender equality’, Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 11(3):247-263. Evans, J. (2004) ‘Making a difference? Education and ‘ability’ in physical education’, European Physical Education Review, 10(1): 95-108. Evans, J. and Penney, D. (2008) ‘Levels on the playing field: the social construction of physical ‘ability’ in the physical education curriculum’, Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 13(1):31-47. Fernández-Balboa, J-M. (2009) ‘Bio-pedagogical self-reflection in PETE: reawakening the ethical conscience and purpose in pedagogy and research’, Sport, Education and Society, 14(2):147-163. Fitzgerald, H. (2009) Disability and Youth Sport, London: Routledge. Gillborn, D. (2008) Racism and Education: Coincidence or Conspiracy? London: Routledge. Gubrium, J. F. and Holstein, J.A. (2009) Analyzing Narrative Reality, CA & London: Sage Publications. Hay, P. and lisahunter (2006) ‘Please Mr Hay, what are my poss(abilities)?’: legitimation of ability through physical education practices. Sport, Education and Society 11(3):293-310. Hargreaves, A. (2003) Teaching in the Knowledge Society. Education in the Age of Insecurity, Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.