Scheduled for Symposium: The Dilemma of the Disability Label, Wednesday, April 9, 2008, 1:45 PM - 3:00 PM, Convention Center: 202D


Constructions of Disability That Inform Inclusive Education

Michelle Grenier, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH

As an educational philosophy, inclusion is a comprehensive, school-wide effort that encourages teachers to provide high outcomes for all students and to insure flexible groupings in the development of appropriate curricula (Villa & Thousand, 2000). The practice of inclusion has developed from an extended history that reflects educational equality and innovation on many levels for students with disabilities (Skrtic, 1996). Peters (2005) notes that an understanding inclusive education tends to vary across locations, which in turn will translate into a variety of practices and arrangements. Stubbs (1997) identified the main barriers to including students with disabilities as the attitudes, beliefs and systems that are not designed to support students. Thus, the means for understanding difference can no longer be simply the individual, it must also include the cultural and social setting as well as the beliefs of teachers who interact with students with disabilities (Carrington, 1999). As a conceptual framework, social constructionism merges principles of a social-political philosophy and diversity that stresses the interactions of individuals through their situated experiences within the school culture. The purpose of this qualitative, case study research was to examine administrator and teacher perceptions of disability as a way to understand the systematic processes of inclusive education. A secondary purpose was to examine teacher practices in an inclusive physical education classroom through the lens of “the individual-in-action-within-specific-contexts” as each aligns within the systematic processes of the school (Artilles, n. d.: 90). Administrators and teachers, including paraprofessionals were interviewed over a 16 week period (Bogdan and Biklen, 1992). Field notes consisted of observations in two inclusive physical education classrooms (Schatzman & Strauss, 1973). Documents were also collected for review. Boyzaitis's (1998) five-step process was utilized in the analysis. Administrators approached inclusion as a social and political entity with equal educational opportunity at the heart of their system wide efforts. Teachers espoused functional beliefs that informed three emerging streams including the social, physical and the academic. Both deficit and inclusive views populated teacher thought. The findings from this case study contribute to the growing body of literature on school philosophy and practices that address inclusive physical education from a social-cultural perspective.


Keyword(s): adapted physical activity, multiculturalism/cultural diversity, research

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